Da Qin, who had volunteered to scout ahead, tightened his cuffs and trouser legs, pulled on his gloves and face mask, wound two layers of cling wrap around his neck, doused himself in medicated oil, clipped on a safety harness, and slowly worked his way down the secured makeshift ladder.
The ladder wasn’t long enough to reach all the way down — it only allowed a person to descend as far as the most prominent protruding boulder. These rocks were fashioned by nature with breathtaking artistry: some round, some flat, some large, some small. Any two of them only made contact with each other over a tiny surface area, each looking as if a single push would send them tumbling — yet they had stubbornly defied that expectation for centuries. Though seemingly disordered, they were stacked with a sense of balance that the human mind could scarcely conceive, the accidental masterpiece of nature’s mountain-building forces. What made it all the more treacherous was that the boulders were blanketed in moss, making them extremely slippery — without a safety harness, a fall from height was a very real risk.
“There are leeches. Not many.” Da Qin’s voice came through the walkie-talkie, not sounding particularly panicked. “Don’t know if it’s because I applied so much medicated oil or because I’m bundled so tight. P.S.: Cling wrap is completely useless against them!”
Ba Yunye took the walkie-talkie. “Do you need the insect-repellent powder?”
Static crackled on the other end, and Da Qin didn’t answer right away. At the same time, the rope stretched taut — he seemed to be pressing forward and scouting downward in one determined push. Several impatient rescue team members grabbed their flashlights and aimed them downward, trying to make out Da Qin’s route, but the protruding rocks blocked their view and he was invisible to them.
“Stay safe!” Diao Zhuo gripped the walkie-talkie and emphasized once more.
Kong Gan sat on the small folding stool he’d brought along, smoking and turning something over in his mind, occasionally sprinkling a little medicated oil around him. After a while, he reminded them again: “Once we’re past the river, I’m heading back.”
“Have you really never been?” Ba Yunye pointed toward the dim, hazy darkness on the other side.
“The elders in the village drilled it into us from childhood — don’t go there. It’s deadly. From what they told us, back during the famine in the 1960s, some people who were starving set off deeper into the mountains looking for food. A group of young men went in, and only one came back. He was wearing Japanese soldiers’ clothing — ragged and torn — screaming that he was in pain, but he didn’t have any serious wounds himself. He was just gibbering and confused, very frightened of people — when anyone came close he would shout and try to bite them. He kept saying things like, ‘it smells, don’t eat me, don’t eat me.’ Afterward, some people said he had eaten his companions; some said he had witnessed his companions being eaten; others said he had come face to face with the ghosts of the old Japanese soldiers. Nobody really knew.”
“And then?”
“He never recovered. He became a madman in the village — anyone could hit him and he never fought back. He just kept muttering the names of several people — the ones who had entered the mountains with him. And later, no one knew where he wandered off to. Still later, he was found dead on a burial hill. The person who went to collect the body came back and said he had died of fright — his head was buried in the earth as if he had been trying to burrow into it.”
“Where is this burial hill?” Ba Yunye asked.
“Also out in the wild. Just one mound after another, all unmarked — a place where people from long ago were buried. Nowadays everyone advocates cremation anyway…”
Ba Yunye rubbed her chin. “What’s so mysterious about that? Either they ran into a wolf pack, or they encountered a bear. And if there really are ghosts of Japanese soldiers there, that just proves those mountains were an anti-Japanese resistance base! Those mountains will naturally take care of foreigners with bad intentions — they’re Chinese mountains after all!”
Everyone couldn’t help but smile, and before anyone could respond, the walkie-talkie crackled with a few bursts of static, followed by Da Qin’s voice — slightly trembling, but with deliberate restraint: “…There’s someone! There’s someone!”
Ba Yunye was startled. Before she could ask, Da Qin’s voice came again: “…A dead person!”
Everyone’s expressions changed. They surged forward, knowing it was futile, but still shining their flashlights desperately downward.
“Male or female?” Ba Yunye asked urgently.
Da Qin seemed to muffle the walkie-talkie with his hand, producing a burst of static, and then went silent — whether he didn’t dare answer, or whether there was some other reason, no one could tell. Diao Zhuo suddenly wrapped his arm around Ba Yunye. Sure enough, her legs buckled, and she nearly collapsed to the ground. He took the walkie-talkie. “Confirm again!”
The walkie-talkie fell silent for a few seconds — but to those waiting above, those seconds stretched longer than years.
Ba Yunye leaned half her weight against Diao Zhuo, staring into the distance with something close to despair. The lingering scent of the insect repellent Long Ge had formulated still hung in the air. She thought of the way he used to brag with stories from his hiking expeditions, and then she thought of the image of him sitting calmly beneath a target, waiting without flinching as she aimed the gun at him.
Diao Zhuo squeezed her shoulder hard. She pressed her hand over his, her palm cold and damp with sweat.
“Pull me up — now!!” The long-silent Da Qin suddenly bellowed.
Not knowing what had happened below — fearing a wild animal attack — everyone acted without a moment’s hesitation, pulling at the rope with everything they had. With so many people, it took no time at all; Da Qin was hauled back up, panting and drenched in sweat, though aside from a few scrapes, he had no other wounds.
“What happened?!” Everyone called out in concern. Ba Yunye stood at the back of the group, not wanting to hear the answer. Diao Zhuo stayed at her side, silent.
“Down there… two people… one alive, one… looks dead.” Da Qin’s face was ashen. “The one who’s alive… it seemed like… like he was gnawing on the dead one… The moment I shone my flashlight over, he noticed me. I didn’t get a very good look at who was lying there — I couldn’t see clearly — but the dead one… big. And then the one who noticed me rushed at me like a lunatic. You didn’t see it… blood all over his mouth and face, eyes glowing green…”
“I told you!” Kong Gan cried out in agitation. “The young man who came back from those mountains years ago was exactly like this! Biting anyone who came near! Just like a wolf!”
The others were skeptical. “Da Qin, are you sure you saw right? Are you certain it was a human, not a monkey?”
“It was a human. He was wearing clothes.”
“Monkeys can wear human clothes too.”
“Please! I’m not so far gone that I can’t tell a monkey from a human!”
“That dead person you mentioned…” Ba Yunye wasn’t interested in the biting creature. “Did you get a good look? It shouldn’t be… Long Ge, should it?”
“Didn’t get a clear look.” Da Qin said apologetically. Several more leeches had latched onto his body, but he was too shaken to notice — it was Kong Gan who spotted them first and hurried over to rub them off with the salt block.
“Could the creature climb up here?” Xiang’an asked worriedly.
Kong Gan was surprisingly calm. “Getting down there isn’t easy. Getting back up is even harder. There’s nowhere to set up a ladder unless you’ve grown wings. Don’t worry — it can’t climb up.”
“You rest for a bit. I’ll go down and take a look.” Diao Zhuo unclipped the safety harness from Da Qin and fastened it to himself.
Tan Lin stopped him. “Since there’s an unusual situation down there, wait a little longer. Better to have more people go down together for mutual support. Besides, Master Ba won’t let you go alone like that.” He gestured toward Ba Yunye with his chin. Diao Zhuo glanced over to find her already strapping on her own safety harness.
“Who’s willing to go down?” Tan Lin called out loudly.
“Me!” “I’ll go too!” “Me, me!” “We’ll… go down as well.”
Ba Yunye looked up — apart from the shaken Da Qin and Kong Gan, every single person had their hand raised, including Liu Ming’s group, who had volunteered of their own accord.
Diao Zhuo raised his hand to quiet them. “Me, Master Ba, Tan Lin, Xiang’an — we’ll go down first to assess the situation. Keep communication open. Qi Zi, Liu Ming, the rest of you — stay alert and pull us back up at once if anything happens.”
With instructions given, the four of them put on their headlamps and descended one by one. All around them was impenetrable darkness; the headlamp beams felt rather feeble against such boundless black. The sounds of insects and flowing water were unceasing. Everyone descended carefully, and heard no other sounds — but the more silent it was, the more unnatural it seemed.
Once they had climbed past a flat, protruding boulder, Ba Yunye could dimly make out a human-shaped mass half-submerged in water below — enormous, reeking, and without any sign of life. Her heart hammered wildly. She wanted to rush down, but she remembered what Da Qin had said about the strange figure, and could only maintain the same descent speed as the other three.
Diao Zhuo and the others had also spotted the corpse, but since the “living person” Da Qin had described was nowhere beside it, they felt simultaneously puzzled and unnerved.
“Hold on.” He said. Then he picked up a piece of broken rock from underfoot and hurled it down, landing squarely in the water beside the corpse with a dull “plop.”
Silence as before.
Da Qin’s voice came through the walkie-talkie. “Can you see them?”
“We can only see the body.” Diao Zhuo replied.
“You need to be careful — I really did see someone else down there.” Da Qin said anxiously.
Ba Yunye switched on her high-intensity flashlight. Just as Kong Gan had described, at the very bottom was a stream that looked quite shallow. The corpse lay face-down, bloated to such a degree that it had nearly split its clothes open. The corpse’s hairstyle and color were completely unlike Long Ge’s — though she couldn’t see the face, she could at least make that distinction. Her heart immediately felt lighter.
Was this one of the people who had been hunting Long Ge? How had this person died? Was there any message left behind by Long Ge?
Ba Yunye looked at Diao Zhuo. He gave a slight nod, and the group descended again, but at a far slower pace than before. Over what should have been a short distance, they spent nearly fifteen minutes. As they drew near the ground, Diao Zhuo once again flung a stone he’d picked up into the water near the corpse — another dull “plop.” This time, the corpse suddenly reacted: its shoulders heaved and shuddered, as if straining to push itself upright, but it was bloated like a balloon and could only sway a few times before going still again.
“What the hell!” Ba Yunye cursed under her breath. Having just been startled by the blinking green-fuzz corpse a moment ago, now this one was showing signs of movement too. She couldn’t help feeling both helpless and horrified. Wasn’t this supposed to be one dead body and one living person who bites? Why was there only one corpse that moved on its own?
The four of them didn’t touch the ground, holding their breath as they waited. Before long, the corpse let out a soft hissing sound, trembled slightly a few times, and its shoulders began to heave again.
Diao Zhuo pointed at the high-intensity flashlight, and everyone understood. He steadied himself, then flung the last stone in his hand — this time not at the water, but at the corpse itself. Simultaneously, the others switched on their high-intensity flashlights and trained them on the body.
From the corner of the corpse’s shoulder, a dark shape was startled by the sudden stone and light. It reared its head abruptly, letting out a harsh, hissing growl. At the same time, a clawed limb bearing vivid-colored markings pressed onto the corpse’s shoulder; its neck puffed and swelled, as though it had swallowed a football. The creature was enormous — nearly two meters in length, its four limbs thick with dense, coiled muscle, its tail like a powerful whip, its face ferocious and ready to lunge at any moment.
Once Ba Yunye got a clear look at the creature, she let out a breath. “Isn’t this a water monitor lizard?”
The “water monitor lizard” was the Dai ethnic group’s name for it in Yunnan — its scientific name was simply the monitor lizard. Its skin had a parasitic tick infection rate as high as 90%, and contact with one made it very easy to get infected. If bitten, the victim could develop septicemia within hours — a slow and agonizing death. This particular monitor lizard had clearly been treating the corpse as its meal. But now, startled by multiple beams of intense light, it seemed to conclude that this meal wasn’t worth the trouble. After a prolonged standoff, it slowly turned around and left, disappearing into the dense undergrowth in no time.
“This is the first time I’ve seen one in the wild. It’s a nationally protected animal. Fortunately it left on its own — otherwise I wouldn’t have known how to drive it away without breaking any laws.” Ba Yunye said lightly. “Do you think Da Qin might have had a momentary lapse and mistaken the monitor lizard for a person?”
Xiang’an found it hard to believe. “Mistaking a monkey and a person for each other is at least somewhat understandable — but what does a monitor lizard have in common with a human?”
Tan Lin was equally incredulous. Da Qin wasn’t the type to panic at the slightest provocation — he was not the sort to confuse a monitor lizard with a human being.
The group remained puzzled as they waited a while longer. Seeing no other movement, they all touched down. Diao Zhuo took a look from a distance — the corpse’s head was caved in on one side, and most of the blood had been washed away by the flowing water. Only the hands, ankles, and other areas that hadn’t touched the water still had patches of blood that hadn’t quite dried, but the wounds were mostly scrapes and the small puncture marks from leech bites. The skin color and the lividity on the pressure points all looked like those of a normal corpse — in stark contrast to the all-green corpse they had encountered earlier.
“How are you all doing?” Da Qin’s voice came urgently through the walkie-talkie.
“Just fine!” Ba Yunye replied playfully in the Shaanxi dialect. She instinctively turned to look for Diao Zhuo — and found him crouched near the body, his expression suddenly changing.
The corpse’s wrist bore several rows of bite marks — bitten deep, with a small section of skin and flesh partially torn away. These bite marks were not from a monitor lizard or a snake. They were unmistakably, as Da Qin had claimed — from a human being.