Diao Zhuo remained perfectly calm, not turning to glance at Liu Ming’s group. His stride stayed loose and unhurried, as though he were simply out for a stroll. He lowered his voice as well. “What makes you say that?”
“Just a feeling…” Ba Yunye couldn’t quite put it into words. She tilted her head and thought for a moment. “They’ve been trailing us the whole time. Could they be plainclothes officers?”
“We haven’t broken the law, and we don’t intend to. Plainclothes officers don’t concern me.” Diao Zhuo dismissed it with an easy smile.
“But didn’t they say they suspected I’d tip Long Ge off and refuse to let me come?”
“Which law says you can’t come?”
Ba Yunye shifted uncomfortably and rubbed the back of her neck. Her freshly cut short hair wasn’t something she was used to yet — the ends kept catching and prickling against her skin.
“Easy. Nothing to worry about.” Diao Zhuo suddenly pulled her into a brief embrace. She startled, and instinctively pushed against him. “What are you doing? Who said I was worried?”
At that moment, sharp-eyed Xiang’an suddenly pointed ahead excitedly at the trunk of a wide, gnarled tree. “Look! A footprint!”
Everyone snapped to attention and crowded forward. Diao Zhuo was there first. He spread both arms wide, and the others understood the signal, pulling up short. Up close, it turned out to be not a bare footprint but a shoe print.
Liu Ming’s group arrived a step behind. He was about to say something, but Pang Hou tugged at his sleeve, and he dutifully closed his mouth and stepped back. The group hung back at the outer edge of the crowd, watching like curious onlookers.
Compared to the wet but otherwise undisturbed carpet of fallen leaves they had been walking through, the soil and undergrowth around this particular tree were thoroughly disordered, and several of the vines had been hacked off at mid-length. The shoe print Xiang’an had spotted was pressed into the tree itself — and given the damp climate and the intermittent drizzle, the mud in the impression had not yet fully dried.
In contrast to Xiang’an’s excitement, Kong Gan was entirely unruffled. This stretch of forest wasn’t so remote that humans never passed through, so finding a footprint was hardly unusual.
“That’s not just mud…” Da Qin — who had stepped in something himself earlier — frowned and said, “Same as me. He stepped in something and tracked it. Stepped right in it!”
Everyone looked more closely. Beneath the better part of the shoe print was a smear — clearly someone had done exactly what Da Qin had done: lifted their foot and wiped the sole clean against the tree trunk. The severed vine nearby had also been used to this same end — it appeared the tree trunk hadn’t been sufficient, so the person had hacked down a vine to finish the job. Based on the size of the shoe print, it was likely a man.
“He’s quite particular about cleanliness…” Xiang’an nudged Da Qin with a shoulder, gesturing at his shoes. “Unlike you — just walked on without bothering to wipe…”
Kong Gan waved a hand. “These things are unavoidable. If you stopped to clean up every time, you’d spend days in here without getting anywhere.”
Diao Zhuo crouched near the severed vine, studying the cut marks. Whoever had hacked at it was either inexperienced or had been in a violent temper — there were slash marks all over it, as though they had hacked wildly rather than with any purpose. He filed this away mentally and scanned the surroundings carefully. The more he looked, the more it seemed the vine hadn’t been cut down only to wipe a shoe sole. There was something in the cuts that suggested venting — a release of frustration. He reached out and tugged at one end of the vine idly. The vine was long and tough, and he couldn’t see where it ended — the tangled mass of vines tugged against one another in response to his pull, slapping against the tree trunks with a series of sharp cracks. His gaze lifted instinctively, and on the trunk — coated in an unidentified brown fungus — he noticed something that didn’t belong.
A bullet hole.
Ba Yunye heard there was a bullet hole and pushed her way forward. “Where?”
Diao Zhuo pointed to the tree with the shoe print, and to another tree further ahead. “The bullet grazed the first tree and lodged in that one.”
Ba Yunye followed his finger, and after considerable effort finally located it. She traced her fingers over the hole and said: “Judging by the caliber, it’s a handgun. The mark is fresh — the wood chips look like they haven’t been there long. Probably within the last few days. It seems the villagers’ reports of gunshots in the forest weren’t hallucinations after all.”
Diao Zhuo instructed: “Spread out and check the other trees.”
Liu Ming’s group didn’t move, appearing to deliberately affect expressions of bewildered ignorance and helplessness. The rescue team fanned out in different directions, combing tree trunks and protruding boulders for more evidence. Liu Ming’s group eventually crouched down and pretended to search along with them, keeping their profile as low as possible — which seemed to be exactly their intention.
Ba Yunye glanced at Diao Zhuo. He returned a steady, reassuring look that said: don’t get ahead of yourself. She pressed her lips together. Although the bullet hole had appeared in the direction Long Ge had indicated when entering the mountain, it couldn’t yet be confirmed whether it had anything to do with him — so all she could do was search alongside the others.
They threaded through the trees, watching their feet and scanning the trunks and branches around them. Eventually they found bullet holes in several more trees and branches. Including the first, there were four in total. Fortunately, there was no blood anywhere nearby. Whoever had fired those four shots had apparently struck no living target. Perhaps this was exactly why the shooter, in frustration, had taken out their fury on the vine.
“Aiming in dense forest like this is difficult. If the target was smart enough to flee in a serpentine pattern, without several additional guns to help there’d be no chance,” Ba Yunye observed. She noticed fresh scraping marks on the moss of several trees — testament to how close a call it must have been. For someone under those circumstances to maintain the presence of mind to evade bullets, she became more and more convinced the one being hunted was Long Ge.
Given the evidence of gunfire in the area, the group planned to set up camp at the site after alerting the police. Evening had arrived, and the sun was nearly below the horizon. Diao Zhuo surveyed the team. Something in all their expressions said they wanted to push on a little longer.
“Split up and check the surrounding area for any other unusual marks or signs. Half an hour. Everyone back before dark.” Diao Zhuo held up the walkie-talkie to indicate anyone should call in immediately if they found something.
Ba Yunye was intent on finding whatever mark Long Ge might have left, and pressed forward a considerable distance. She lost track of how long she had been walking. Only when the walkie-talkie crackled and Diao Zhuo’s voice came through calling everyone back to regroup did she finally sigh and begin retracing her steps. Just then, beneath a layer of fallen leaves, she caught a glimpse of a thin hemp cord — easily missed if you weren’t looking carefully. She broke into a jog and crouched down. The cord was new. She pinched one end and began slowly drawing it up.
That single motion was enough to set everything in motion. There came a sharp snap, and without any warning, an upside-down human face appeared directly in front of her — ashen green in color, its features contorted in a mask of horror. Ba Yunye felt every hair on her body stand instantly on end. She stumbled back instinctively, caught her foot on a tree root, lost her balance, and sat down hard on the ground. Eyes wide, she made herself look again. What she had taken to be only a face was, in fact, an entire body — hanging inverted, its skin a ghastly shade of green from head to toe. The corpse swayed gently. From its open mouth seeped a thick, dark green fluid that ran along the face and hair and dripped steadily downward. The liquid had stained the teeth and gums the same deep green. Where it landed on the ground, it stretched into long mucous-like threads before breaking.
Ba Yunye considered herself someone with extensive experience and iron nerves, but even she couldn’t suppress a sharp cry of alarm at the sight. She collected herself quickly — embarrassed at having screamed — scrambled to her feet, held the branch crosswise in front of her, and forced herself to examine the hanging figure from top to bottom. The corpse had its legs bound and was suspended upside down. Its build was larger than an average person’s. Most strikingly — it was a foreigner.
She grabbed the walkie-talkie and barked: “Everyone to my position! I’ve found something! Three o’clock from base camp!”
Within moments, footsteps converged from every direction. The heart that had been hammering in Ba Yunye’s chest from the fright gradually steadied.
After sunset, darkness fell fast. The light was poor, so she clicked on her flashlight and trained it on the corpse. She studied the rope knots and the loop of rope buried at the base of the tree trunk — and suddenly, a look of delight spread across her face. She turned to Diao Zhuo, who had just sprinted up to her, and said: “It’s Long Ge!!”
The moment everyone heard “Long Ge,” they misunderstood. Even Diao Zhuo wore a look of shock. Several members of the rescue team stared at the corpse in baffled disbelief:
“How could that possibly be Long Ge?!”
“He’s only been missing a few days — how could he have shrunk that much?!”
Liu Ming and Pang Hou exchanged a glance. Pang Hou’s eyes asked the question; Liu Ming gave a small shake of his head. Absolutely not.
“What I mean is—” Ba Yunye said, laughing despite herself, pointing at the rope. “Long Ge set this trap. I recognize the knots. They’re buried under the leaves — anyone who steps on it gets hoisted straight up. Long Ge once showed me how it worked, said he’d used this technique to catch wild boars.”
The anxious knot in Diao Zhuo’s chest loosened. He shifted his attention from the eerily green-tinged corpse and considered: if Long Ge had set a trap, it meant someone was pursuing him — and that he was aware the pursuer meant him harm. Which meant those bullet holes…
Da Qin, with a touch of revulsion, asked Ba Yunye: “Did Long Ge make the corpse green too?”
Ba Yunye shook her head, replaying in her mind how the body had dropped when she disturbed the trap. It still gave her the creeps. “The trap only hoists the target upside down — it doesn’t kill. When I arrived, I couldn’t see anything hanging up there, so I tugged at the bit of rope sticking out below. That’s when this person dropped.”
Everyone looked at Kong Gan. He regarded the green corpse with complete composure — possibly because occurrences like this weren’t so unusual out here.
“Let’s take a look up top,” Qi Zi suggested, pointing up into the tree.
“Be careful!” Kong Gan called out loudly. “There will be snakes up there, for certain!”
Qi Zi, who had been about to climb, paused mid-motion. “How can you tell?”
“Where venomous snakes live, there’s a particular smell — not a pleasant one…” Kong Gan tapped his nose. “I can detect it. But it’s all right — I have a method.”
Kong Gan unstrapped the large bamboo tube from across his chest and, with practiced ease, scattered a ring of snake-repelling powder around the area. He borrowed a trekking pole from Liu Ming’s group and proceeded to beat the ground rhythmically. After a moment, a faint chorus of hissing sounds rose around them, and when people turned to look, they caught only flashes of slender, patterned snake tails disappearing swiftly into the dense foliage.
Some ten minutes later, Kong Gan said: “They should all be gone now — but keep your eyes open when you climb.”
Qi Zi, Da Qin, and Tan Lin scaled the tree one after the other. Liu Ming’s group kept their distance nearby, heads bent, appearing to look for something. Diao Zhuo contacted the officers stationed at the perimeter, informing them to send someone in to retrieve the body. In the meantime, steeling himself against the revulsion, he crouched to examine the corpse more closely. He found several small black puncture marks on the arms and fingers, and pointed them out to Kong Gan, who stated with confidence that these were bites from a snake known locally as “Hua Lazi” — small in size but violent in temperament, with an extremely potent venom that was fatal with a single bite.
“That many bites — not even the finest doctor alive could save them,” Kong Gan said, sighing.
“Does a bite from the Hua Lazi turn you green?” Ba Yunye asked.
Kong Gan shook his head, looking baffled. Ba Yunye felt another wave of unease ripple through her. “Good grief… could it be because foreigners have different genetics from us? Or is something else entirely at work here?”
Xiang’an, never one to miss an opportunity to fan the flames, chimed in: “Do you think maybe he ran into one of the legendary thousand-year-old reanimated corpses that escaped from an ancient Dian Kingdom tomb?”
“High humidity here means a rich microbial environment. Decomposition happens faster. Under these conditions, turning green isn’t impossible. Once the body gets back for an autopsy, everything will become clear.” Diao Zhuo had no patience for supernatural explanations. He pulled on a glove and gently lifted one of the corpse’s hands. The thick calluses at the base of the thumb and across the knuckles told him this person had spent years handling firearms. He glanced at Ba Yunye. Her expression confirmed what he already suspected, and he sank into thought.
A foreigner. Bullet holes. Long Ge. Three things circling in both their minds. The same silent conclusion took shape simultaneously: was it possible that being hunted had driven Long Ge — in an act of desperate self-preservation — to flee into this treacherous, forbidding forest?
Was this foreigner here to avenge He Zhengrun? Or was there another motive entirely?
“What’s this?” Not far away, Liu Ming held up something dark and indistinct.