Chapter 74 Footprints by the Corpse

When we had been traveling in the desert, back before we entered the oasis, it was pretty common to cover our lower bodies in our sleeping bags and leave our upper bodies exposed. That way, we could stay warm but also get up quickly in case there was an emergency. That was how A Ning was lying in the sleeping bag now. I didn’t know how many times I had seen her sleeping like this along the way, but it was definitely a very familiar sight. Then I remembered that she was dead, and I felt miserable all over again.

But when I fell asleep, her body had been completely wrapped in the sleeping bag. Who opened it? Was it Pan Zi? But why would he do that?

I stood up and walked over to the body to take a look, but immediately realized that something was wrong—the body had definitely been moved by someone. For some reason, A Ning’s hands were curled up unnaturally and her whole body looked a bit strange.

I instinctively looked around, but there was nothing to see—the sky was dark and there weren’t as many trees here as there were in the canyon. Moreover, the flame from the fuel canister was too small to penetrate the surrounding darkness.

I turned around and woke Pan Zi up—he hadn’t been sleeping deeply, so he woke up as soon as I touched him—and then asked if he had opened A Ning’s sleeping bag.

Looking puzzled, he came over to see what I was talking about and shook his head. Then he gave me a suspicious look. Based on his expression, I didn’t think he was lying to me, but that just made me feel even more confused.

I suddenly thought of Fatty, and wondered if maybe he had been helping himself to A Ning’s things. Was this bastard so unscrupulous that even his companions’ belongings weren’t spared? But based on my impression of him, he might have been greedy for money, but he wasn’t the type of person to do such a thing.

Pan Zi washed his face with the swamp water, walked back to A Ning’s body, lit a miner’s lamp, and started carefully examining her body to see what was going on.

A Ning’s face was still frozen in the same expression she had right at the moment of death, which looked a little scary now. Her body was wet from the rain, and when Pan Zi squatted down and moved the hair away from her face, we could see that the bite wound on her neck was a blackish purple color. There were mottled dark purple spots all over her skin, making it obvious that her body was already starting to rot—with the high temperature here, it was no surprise that the decomposition of this beautiful body had already begun.

Under the lantern’s light, we found several mud tracks on A Ning’s clothes. Pan Zi touched them and found that they were still relatively fresh. We followed them with the lantern and discovered several tiny marks next to A Ning’s corpse that looked like muddy footprints.

Pan Zi looked at me and then followed the muddy footprints, finding that they led straight to the edge of the swamp. Because of the rain, they weren’t as clear as the ones by A Ning’s corpse, but one thing became very obvious: there was something in the swamp!

We immediately tensed up and looked at each other. Swallowing thickly, I turned to wake Fatty and Poker-Face up while Pan Zi stood up, grabbed his gun, and followed the footprints to the edge of the swamp. He then squatted down and shined the lantern into the water.

Fatty wouldn’t wake up, but Poker-Face opened his eyes as soon as I touched him, making me wonder if he had actually been asleep or not. When I explained the situation to him, he frowned.

The two of us walked over to Pan Zi, but the water was so murky that we couldn’t see anything clearly. Pan Zi showed Poker-Face the muddy footprints and said, “Shit, it seems that something climbed up while we were sleeping. I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep from now on, no matter how tired I am.”

When Poker-Face saw the footprints, his expression suddenly changed. Then, he grabbed the miner’s lamp and quickly swept it around A Ning’s body, pushing us away at the same time.

“What’s wrong?” I asked him.

“There’s only one set of footprints,” he whispered. “That thing hasn’t left yet.”

<Chapter 73><Table of Contents><Chapter 75>