Chapter 31 Third Night: Hidden Bodies

Looking at the corpse again, I found that it was bloated and gray but only slightly decomposed—obviously, this man hadn’t been dead for long. But instead of turning white after being submerged in muddy water, this corpse’s skin had a blue tinge to it, which was a bit unusual.

There were so many corpses here, and they had all died fairly recently, making it obvious that they were Uncle Three’s people. I thought of the deserted camp and couldn’t help but shudder—these people must have been bitten by the cockscomb snakes and were then transported to this quagmire.

Were they the first ones killed when the snakes attacked, or were they the survivors who went with Uncle Three to the palace entrance? Was Uncle Three among them?

I suddenly remembered that voice calling out “Little Master Three” just now and started to wonder if it wasn’t a person calling me, but the ghost of one of these men. Did they want me to find this place, so they guided me here?

My mind was racing, but then my watch’s backlight went out, plunging me into darkness once more…

I turned the blue light on again and began searching the dead man’s pockets, finding a wallet in his pants that was heavy with water. I weighed it in my hand and then threw it towards the miner’s lamp hanging high up on the cliff. It missed, so I grabbed the flashlight from the man’s belt and threw that next. I knew as soon as I threw it that the angle was all wrong, but it was too late now—the flashlight was already in the air. I was about to slap myself, but this time it actually worked out—the flashlight hit the bush the miner’s lamp was stuck on, causing the miner’s lamp to slip down and fall into the water, where it immediately sank.

I held onto the protruding rock with one hand and stretched my other hand out as far as it could go, barely managing to fish my lantern out of the water. The dead man’s flashlight, which had also fallen, was much lighter than my lantern and ended up getting swept downstream by the current, where it soon disappeared from sight.

Now that I had my miner’s lamp, I could finally see more clearly. I looked at my surroundings and found that this part of the swamp was similar to a circular pool. Water was flowing off to one side, and when I shined the miner’s lamp towards it, I saw that it led to another set of ruins with an animal’s head carved on it. The water flowed downstream towards the ruins and went right through the carved beast’s open mouth. It was just as I suspected—there was a well down there, and trying to get past it would be too dangerous.

I tied the miner’s lamp to my belt and began working my way upstream, trying to keep as close to the cliff as possible. I looked around as I walked, noticing that there were a large number of bodies lying in the swamp. Most of them were submerged in the mud, only their stiff hands or other body parts sticking out at random intervals. There were so many of them that almost the entire bottom of the pool was covered.

I tried to avoid the bodies as I walked, but there were just too many of them. My steps stirred up the water, the small waves washing away the mud covering the bodies. I could see that each corpse’s neck was black and contained two black holes surrounded by a patch of skin that had turned bluish-green.

They had obviously been killed by snake bites. There had been no signs of fighting in the camp, which meant that they must have been bitten directly in their sleep, or they may have suffered a large-scale attack while marching through the forest.

I adjusted the miner’s lamp and anxiously looked at each face one by one, trying to see if Uncle Three was among them.

I didn’t want to search for him, but I knew deep down that this wasn’t something I could avoid. I felt like a parent asked to identify their son’s body—it needed to be done, but you really didn’t want to confirm it and make it a reality. However, all the mud covering the bodies was making it difficult to identify them. I looked them over one by one, but didn’t see anyone who looked like my uncle. While that was a good thing, I still couldn’t be sure that Uncle Three wasn’t here at all.

I was just on the verge of giving up my search when the light of my miner’s lamp suddenly shone on one of the faces that wasn’t completely covered in mud. I instinctively stopped and looked at it, thinking that it seemed kind of familiar. Then it hit me.

It was A Ning!

Her eyes were closed, and her whole body was frozen in a weird posture. She was only covered in a thin layer of mud, so the lividity spots⁽¹⁾ on her face were already very obvious.

I choked and looked around. So those snakes also brought her body here!

Based on what I could see in the light of the miner’s lamp, this was an ordinary corpse that didn’t appear to have undergone any snake-like mutation. So, did that mean the shadow we saw at that time wasn’t A Ning? Then what kind of creature had been making those radio sounds?

I took a deep breath and leaned over. I can’t describe what I was feeling at that time, but I remember stretching my hand out and searching her body, only to find that there was no radio. I then tried to pick her up, but found that I didn’t have the strength. With her face washed clean by the swamp water I had stirred up, and her hair hanging down, she looked strangely peaceful. In fact, at that moment, it almost seemed like she was still alive.

But then I lowered her into the swamp again, and the muddy water hid everything, shattering the illusion.

I felt extremely depressed at first, but as I looked at the scene around me, I found myself becoming more and more frightened—what was this quagmire? Was it the place where they stored their food? Did that mean one of those giant pythons would come here to feed?

I suddenly felt extremely uneasy. This place wasn’t safe; I had to leave here immediately.

I swept the miner’s lamp around, looking to see if there were any places where I could climb up. I soon found that a little ways upstream, there was a tree on the cliff with some vines hanging down into the water. I gripped the handle of the miner’s lamp between my teeth and swam over there, immediately reaching out and grabbing the nearest vine.

By this time, the fog had started to thin out a little bit. I gritted my teeth and started climbing up the vine, but then I remembered what Poker-Face had said about the mud protecting us from the snakes. I immediately climbed back down, scooped some of it up, and smeared it on the parts of my body where the old mud had been washed away by the water. Once that was done, I climbed back up until I reached the branch the vine was wrapped around, only then daring to breathe a sigh of relief.

I walked along the branch until I reached the trunk and was just about to climb down when I suddenly heard the sound of splashing water come from the pool, as if something had fallen in.

I turned to look for the source of the sound and noticed some ripples on the water’s surface, close to the edge of the pool—something had definitely rolled down the cliff. Turning my lantern in that direction, I saw something that looked like a mass of red, intestine-like things… it was actually a large number of cockscomb snakes entangled together, and something seemed to be stuck in the middle of them.

As I continued to stare, there was brief moment where I saw a hand sticking out of the pile of snakes, and then I saw a fat head.

My whole body went cold as I realized that it was Fatty.

<Chapter 30><Table of Contents><Chapter 32>

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TN Notes:

(1) Lividity (or livor mortis) refers to the bluish-purple discoloration of skin after death. It’s a passive process of blood accumulating within the blood vessels in the dependent parts of the body as a result of gravity, causing a discoloration of the skin that varies from pink to dark purplish. (FYI, the wiki page has an actual pic of a corpse with the discoloration so don’t click on the link if you’re squeamish).

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Me, acting like this is the first time I’ve read this: