Without another word, Ba Yunye drew the entrenching tool tucked at her waist. Li Haozhang snapped to attention immediately: “What are you doing?!”

“Hey, come on, let’s dig and see.” Ba Yunye offered him one of her rare friendly expressions.

The allure of a pretty face gave Li Haozhang pause. He deliberated at length, then dragged himself over, shuffling reluctantly. Seeing that she had barely dug a few scoops before something emerged, he realized it was buried quite shallowly. Without much thought he started digging alongside her, and before long they had uncovered an animal skeleton and a human skeleton dressed in rotting rags — the skeleton still clutched a rifle in its hands.

Ba Yunye instinctively switched on the radio to call for backup, but the moment it turned on it erupted in a deafening burst of noise; she hastily switched it off and let out a sigh. She then produced a whistle from somewhere and blew one long and three short blasts.

A short while later, Diao Zhuo, Da Qin, and Liu Ming came over, with three criminals including Yellow Hair following closely behind.

Everyone crouched down to examine the remains. The animal skeleton appeared to be a young rabbit, while the human remains were clearly ancient — they could not have been buried within the last several years. Ba Yunye picked up the rifle still gripped in the skeleton’s hands and turned it over. She had no talent for literature, but she knew guns intimately. “A Type 38 bolt-action rifle? Old hardware from the 1930s and 40s…”

“Japanese soldiers…” Diao Zhuo had found Japanese military collar insignia on the scraps of clothing that remained.

Liu Ming slapped his thigh. “Could this be one of the tens of thousands of Japanese soldiers who supposedly died here under mysterious circumstances, like Kong Gan told us about?!”

Ba Yunye burst into apparent excitement, threw both arms up and let out a cheer: “Down with Japanese imperialism!”

Da Qin was embarrassed on her behalf. “If the legend is true, careful — tens of thousands of Japanese ghosts might come looking for you tonight.”

“Let them come, I’ll put them all down!” Ba Yunye planted her hands on her hips.

Li Haozhang and Yellow Hair had clearly never heard the legend surrounding this forest and thought they were deliberately spreading panic. They had been able to disregard a companion dying from a snakebite — a few Japanese soldiers who had been dead for decades were even less worth their concern. Seeing that night had fully fallen, they pushed Ba Yunye and the others to get back to camp.

When Ba Yunye returned and recounted her discovery of the Japanese soldier’s remains with vivid, dramatic flair, it caused a small sensation as expected. Red Beard listened to the translation from another and gave a small nod, then reflected briefly before saying: “It seems this is not a good place. We should move our camp.”

Diao Zhuo had arrived at precisely the same conclusion, and he felt the prickle of meeting a worthy adversary.

Given that the rabbit and snake meat had only just been half-cooked, Yellow Hair and the others argued at some length until Red Beard agreed to let everyone eat their fill before moving.

Having watched the rabbit being slaughtered, Ba Yunye found the meat somewhat off-putting, and preferred the clean freshness of her own gathered mushrooms. But the criminals were suspicious of them all, convinced they were scheming constantly, so regardless of whether it was rabbit or snake, they forced several of the group to taste each dish first; only once the tasters were unharmed would the criminals eat. The poisonous mushrooms in Ba Yunye’s pocket were temporarily useless.

Diao Zhuo had kept a close eye on Liu Ming’s group throughout. Even now, when everyone was in the same miserable boat, Liu Ming and his companions still kept their distance from the rescue team, unwilling to mingle too closely. Others might simply see them as antisocial; only Diao Zhuo understood the real reason — they didn’t want anyone from the rescue team to recognize them, or more specifically, one person among them didn’t want to be recognized.

Diao Zhuo understood that his own rescue team was now caught between two hostile forces. Unmasking those individuals might make the situation worse than it already was.

From somewhere far away came several wolf howls that echoed and faded in the still, shadowed forest. Strangely, the spot where they had made camp showed almost no traces of animals — no tracks, no droppings, not even a single beetle, only a few non-biting mosquitoes humming around.

“Why aren’t you eating?” Ba Yunye held out her mess tin and asked. More than half the mushrooms had ended up in the criminals’ portion; each of the others had received only a little broth and a few mushrooms.

“You eat. Give me whatever’s left.”

“Probably nothing will be left,” she said — after a day of hiking, everyone was famished.

“Then I’ll eat you,” he said, lightly flicking the tip of her nose.

“At a time like this you’re seriously still—”

Diao Zhuo made a shushing gesture; he seemed to have heard something. Ba Yunye went still and listened — yes, there was a rustling, and it seemed to be coming closer fast.

Leeches? Ba Yunye rubbed the back of her neck but felt no soft-bodied creatures. Though land leeches had been attaching themselves to people throughout the trek, there were far fewer now than during last night’s leech downpour — at most two or three per person per leg.

Diao Zhuo grabbed her wrist and tapped out a rapid message on her hand: Use the confusion to move.

The criminals had also noticed something wrong and halted their gorging, greasy fingers forgotten, hands going to the guns at their waists.

Whatever was out there seemed to be getting nearer. Beyond the rustling of footsteps, there was a scraping sound of something being gnawed. Then, one by one, pinpoints of green light began flickering in the surrounding darkness — blinking on and off, animal eyes, judging by their height low to the ground, or perhaps belonging to creatures small in stature.

What were they? Giant monitor lizards? Or… snakes?

“Hell—!” The criminals’ torch beams swept across the scene, and everyone went still in unison: rabbits.

Rabbits everywhere, packed together in dense masses, larger than domestic rabbits, their coats grey and yellow but their fur lacking any sheen, some patchy and scabrous as though they had mange. They crowded together in one surging mass, pushing toward the group and forming a vast encircling ring.

Rabbits, however frightening their numbers, are not wolves or snakes — in the entire food chain they have always occupied the position of something anyone can pick up and squeeze into whatever shape they like. Spicy rabbit heads, cold-dressed rabbit, braised rabbit meat… a group of rabbits surrounding you is much the same as a group of chickens and ducks surrounding you: it inspires no great dread, and in some people arouses something closer to… hunger.

“They’ve come to us willingly? Let’s shoot several more, bring them along for the road!” Yellow Hair was clearly one of the ones who felt hungry. He rubbed his palms together and rose to go after the prey.

“Wait.” Red Beard halted him sharply, and suddenly stood to his full height. “Move. Right now. Everyone move!”

His authority over the criminals held; they dropped their food, shouldered their packs, and ordered the rescue team and mountaineering club to move with them. But—

It was too late.

The rabbits’ eyes, which should have been vacantly adorable, suddenly blazed with a fierce and lethal light. Their triple-split lips parted to reveal sharp, pointed teeth — the teeth of carnivores, made to tear flesh and sever blood vessels and muscle. They hurled themselves forward like leopards leaping at prey, small in stature but enormous in number, swarming in a tide that held something deeply wrong and disturbing — more horrifying, somehow, than a pack of wolves charging at you.

At last everyone understood why the rabbit shot earlier had had a mouse’s skull in its stomach. But would understanding it now be too late?

“This—” Ba Yunye pointed at the rabbits and grabbed Diao Zhuo’s sleeve.

Diao Zhuo felt the situation becoming critical, but was still struck with the bewildered sensation of yet another certainty being upended. Rabbits could not eat meat — they lacked the digestive system of carnivores. That was common knowledge. But how did one explain what was happening in front of them?

Events were growing stranger and stranger, and there were likely still stranger things waiting ahead.

The criminals, still disdainful of rabbits, didn’t even reach for their guns; some punched and sent several flying, some kicked several more, one grabbed a rabbit by the ears and swung it as a weapon to bludgeon the others.

But the rabbits were simply too numerous. Kick several away here, and several more would immediately fall upon your other leg, biting and tearing. In seconds, every person was surrounded by dozens of rabbits; their leaping ability was remarkable, a single bound carrying them high enough to reach someone’s throat.

Ba Yunye kicked several away; one rabbit launched itself onto her back, then with another leap climbed onto her head and began frantically chewing at her hat — she slapped it down, and it felt no pain whatsoever, much like the two crazed figures they’d encountered earlier, practically bouncing back as soon as it hit the ground and immediately launching itself at someone else. She blinked in shock, and in that instant both her legs came under attack by many rabbits; she kicked them all off, looked at Diao Zhuo and saw two rabbits hanging off his back, one on his shoulder trying to bite his ear, which he seized by the ears and flung to the ground — it immediately vomited blood and began convulsing. But the rabbits kept coming in an endless wave, and no amount of punching and kicking could guarantee even one second free from something gnawing on you.

Looking at the others, Da Qin, Tan Lin, Qi Zi, and Xiang’an were all striking and flailing; at first they seemed almost reluctant to hit hard because the rabbits, however terrible, still looked small and vulnerable, but the repeated searing pain of teeth tearing into them wore that consideration down quickly, and they began fighting back without any restraint, swinging wildly, using stones, entrenching tools, and trekking poles. Liu Ming’s group arrived after the initial shock had worn off and also began fighting back in frantic desperation, their faces consumed by nothing but terror; they wanted to run, wanted to climb trees, but in every direction was an unbroken sea of rabbits — nowhere to put a foot without stepping on one. The physical advantage humans possessed was being stripped away before this united, flesh-eating rabbit army; every person was beginning to struggle for their own survival.

“Ahh! These rabbits!! They’re incredible!”

“They’re biting! Real biting! Everyone watch out!”

“Am I dreaming?! How can there be rabbits like this! Are they trying to eat us!”

The criminals pulled out their guns and fired wildly, but their limited bullets were worthless against the limitless rabbits; kill one and ten more would clamber over its corpse to close in. These flesh-eating rabbits felt no fear at the death of their companions. In the chaos of wild firing, shots inevitably struck their own people; sure enough, a bullet from somewhere tore through Yellow Hair’s thigh — he cried out and dropped to both knees, the wound spraying blood in a way that suggested a severed artery.

He screamed in anguish, but the blood scent only drove the flesh-eating rabbits into greater frenzy; they surged over Yellow Hair in a wave and swallowed him whole, until from a distance he looked like a furry mound. His screams tore through the air with nowhere to go, and no one could spare a moment to help. He was consumed by the rabbits — tossing and thrashing, body rolling continuously — and it was almost impossible to imagine what kind of pain he was enduring: the agony of the arterial wound, or the agony of being gnawed alive by rabbits?

Every rabbit in the world seemed to have gathered around them. Even Red Beard, powerfully built as he was, was so hemmed in by rabbits he could barely move; even when someone used fire to drive them back temporarily, the rabbits behind that person would immediately leap upon them. Red Beard was strong enough to crush a rabbit’s skull with a single slap; the rabbits beneath him piled up like a small hill, and other rabbits simply climbed the hill of their dead companions to bite at him.

Da Qin also tried to climb a tree, but climbing required the use of both hands and feet; the moment you stopped dislodging the rabbits clambering over you, they would bite until you couldn’t move at all, and he hadn’t made it even a meter up before he had to give up.

When their peripheral vision caught Yellow Hair again, they realized he had lost the strength to resist, and at least half of his body had been reduced to bone. Yet he was still alive — watching with his own eyes as the flesh was stripped inch by inch from his lower half. This was something close to being cut apart by ten thousand blades; even the camouflage-bandana guard’s death from the snakebite was gentler than this.

Ba Yunye swung away several rabbits and finally found a moment to draw her knife, driving it into the eyes or foreheads of each one that charged at her, disabling or killing them long enough for her to shift one small step at a time. The blood all over her hands — she couldn’t tell if it was hers or theirs.

“Watch out!” Someone shoved her aside. Whoosh! A bullet grazed past her neck — someone had missed a rabbit and nearly put her in the ground within one centimeter. She couldn’t see who had just saved her, but the person was dressed like someone from the mountaineering club.

“Ah—” Xiang’an tripped and fell, just as Yellow Hair had, instantly buried under rabbits. The others couldn’t spare a thought for anything else and charged in force toward him, enduring bites and tears with every step.

“Get him up!”

“Xiang’an! Don’t give up! Keep moving! Don’t let them pin you down!”

“We’re coming!”

Ba Yunye stabbed at the rabbits piled on Xiang’an with her knife; Diao Zhuo grabbed a rabbit by the ears with one hand and used a thick branch he had found to smash rabbit skulls with the other. Da Qin, Tan Lin, and Qi Zi’s hands were bleeding from rabbit bites, but they kept up a relentless assault with stones, entrenching tools, and trekking poles. Liu Ming’s group arrived in their wake, and together they finally hauled Xiang’an upright.

Xiang’an was temporarily out of immediate danger of being gnawed to a skeleton, but the battle was far from over; in the unseen depths of the dark forest, who knew how many more flesh-eating rabbits were waiting for them.

In the midst of this chaos, every member of both the rescue team and the mountaineering club was injured, blood running freely from torn skin, wound after wound without gap; the criminals were being bitten into a state of pure misery as well. Having endured the leech downpour, the cliff, the crazed figures, and the king cobra, none of them had ever in their worst nightmares imagined dying at the hands of rabbits. It could not help but make you wonder: were these the same rabbits — or their ancestors — that had wiped out tens of thousands of Japanese soldiers all those years ago?