Chapter 165

I couldn't help but retreat two more steps, carrying the already unconscious Shirley Yang on my back, and Pangzi and I stood in a pincer formation, carefully observing the person opposite. On the plank road behind us lay a large tangle of thick vines overturned by that recent waterspout, all twisted together and fallen from the cliff, luckily hanging on the stone slabs of the plank road.

Since the plank road is almost embedded into the stone wall of the reverse slope, the distance from the center of the waterspout is considerable, so the damage is not too severe; however, being covered by various things swept up from the pool bottom and the mountain, it looks completely disheveled, everywhere are broken water plants and vines.

In the great funnel of the Insect Valley, there are many plants that have grown for thousands and thousands of years in the extremely shady places of the cliff, and this time they were all greatly affected and suffered. The plant mass that fell extremely close to our hiding place resembled a thick section of plant branch and vine, as thick as a water bucket, entirely water-green, with many short, thick, diamond-shaped prickles on it; aside from being very large, it is no different from ordinary plants.

Only this thick vine had a large section broken open, revealing a large mouth, inside which half of a woman's naked body was exposed, her appearance not bad, but she lowered her head, closed her eyes, and remained motionless. Her skin was like congealed fat, yet also green and penetrating.

Since the plant is green, the woman hidden inside is also green, so I had not noticed until the moment we were about to move and leave, when Pangzi accidentally discovered—behind us, silently, something was poking a woman.

Pangzi and I exchanged a glance, originally intending to grab our weapons and attack, but now seeing clearly, no one knows what that woman's origin is—is she human? Is she a monster? Seeing her motionless, she seems merely a corpse, but whose corpse would be hidden in such a thick plant vine? Moreover, we are not far away, yet that green corpse has no foul smell, on the contrary, there is a hint of plant fragrance.

Carrying the wounded, my movement is not very convenient, so I gave Pangzi a look, signaling him to go check. Pangzi raised his submachine gun and walked forward, asking bluntly: "Miss, are you dead or alive?"

The woman revealed from the green thick vine had no reaction; Pangzi turned his head and said to me: "Looks like just a zongzi! Better not bother her, we'll take the high road, each go our own way."

I thought it unlikely, so I said to him from behind: "How could it be a zongzi! Look, that woman's body is slightly rising and falling, as if still breathing, as if asleep?"

Pangzi poked that woman with the muzzle of his MIAI gun, and immediately startled, he jumped back, nearly knocking me off the cliff. I hurriedly grabbed the rock beside me with my hand and asked him what happened.

Pangzi pointed at the green woman, stammering: "Lao Hu, Lao Hu, she... she's smiling at me!"

Hearing him say that poking the woman with the MIAI gun made her laugh, I also felt a chill. Could there really be monsters in this deep mountain and old forest? But then a thought struck me: could it be that thing? If so, then Shirley Yang would indeed be fated to die.

So I first put Shirley Yang down from my back, letting her lie flat on the stone slab; Pangzi and I together walked again to the vicinity of that old vine. I carefully observed the woman: she had no hair or eyebrows, but her five senses were complete, her jaw pointed, neck slender, breasts high and prominent—no matter how you look, she is a good-looking woman; of course, except for her skin color, which is green to an alarming degree.

Looking further down, this woman has no legs, or rather, she is wrapped in this spore-like old vine, her legs already fused with the plant 【garbled text】.

Pangzi had just been frightened badly by this woman, and now he came to his senses, saying to me: "This is probably not a person, and certainly not a zongzi. Lao Hu, do you still remember that thing we heard when we were kids?"

I nodded: "Exactly! 'Ask and no answer, touch and then laugh'—I never thought such a thing really existed in the world. In our military district, there is an old commander who personally saw it—during the Red Army's Long March, when the troops were trapped in the Daliang Mountains, Liu Bocheng once went alone to ally with the Yi leader Xiao Yedan; at that time, part of the Red Army got separated from the main force, and they saw such things in the Yi Mountains."

This green, lush, beautiful woman is a rou er, a rare and precious plant that exists only in the extremely shady places of ancient cliffs and deep ravines. All plants possessing earth qi essence grow to resemble humans, but even a thousand-year-old ginseng only has the five senses, while this rou er is so lifelike it's truly undeserving of its name, almost becoming a spirit, and it's hard to estimate how many years this humanoid wood essence has grown.

I said to Pangzi: "I heard that those Red Army soldiers back then thought it was a mountain ghost, and chopped it with big knives, resulting in much juice flowing from the wound, with a strange fragrance assaulting the nose; so they boiled and ate it... they called it 'emerald sweet potato,' and the Yi people told them it was rou er. I estimate this is also something like rou er."

Pangzi said: "Oh dear! If this really is rou er, it's worth more than ginseng! What should we do—dig it up and carry it back, or just finish it here?"

I said to him: "Now you're carrying a big bundle of burial goods, I'm carrying Shirley Yang, where would we find room for anything else! It's said this thing has miraculous effects for detoxification and lightening the body, only unknown if it can draw out the corpse poison from thousand-year-old corpses. And look, this old vine is also broken, it has lost its source of nutrients, and will wither by tomorrow. I think we shouldn't stand on ceremony—let's eat it!"

Pangzi was hungry to the point his front belly touched his back, and he couldn't wait for me to say that. He raised his entrenching shovel, and with one chop cut off an arm of the rou er, split it in two, and handed me half, saying: "The corpse of the Xian King without a head is wrapped in that rotten meat and will catch up to us anytime, no time to boil it like the revolutionary martyrs did, so let's just eat it raw!"

I took that half of the human-arm-shaped rou er, and saw clear juice flowing from the cut surface; smelling it, it was indeed fresh and invigorating; I licked a bit of juice with my tongue—at first I sensed a tiny bit of sweetness, but soon my mouth filled with rich sweetness. The taste was very special; I opened my mouth and took a big bite, crunching with a 'ka-cha ka-cha' sound, sweet, crisp, refreshing—I don't know if it's because I was starving or because this rou er essence just tastes superb, but I really got a bit addicted to eating it.

Pangzi beside me, in just two or three bites, had already gnawed that half of the rou er arm clean, wiped his mouth, raised his entrenching shovel again to cut the remaining parts. After being chopped several times with the shovel, the rou er's body seemed to still tremble slightly, as if in unbearable pain, and then it stopped moving altogether.

When we entered the limestone cave from the Temple of the Mountain God, we had brought about three days' worth of food, but by the time we entered the tomb's yin palace, Pangzi had eaten almost all of it. We fled for our lives, expending great energy, all of us starving enough to fight with hunger, finally found something edible, and immediately wolfed it down.

I randomly chewed a few bites, and felt my whole body cool, the hunger fire in my belly suddenly diminished; Shirley Yang remained unconscious, I took a large piece of rou er, cut several openings with the paratrooper knife, pinched her nose and poured it down her throat; on Shirley Yang's snow-white face, a layer of corpse energy lingered, but after drinking some of the cool juice of the rou er, that layer of corpse energy actually showed obvious retreat—I was overjoyed, this life was saved.

I also chopped some rou er into pieces, mixed it with glutinous rice to wrap the wound, called Pangzi, told him to discard a few useless items from his pack, and pack the remaining rou er into sealed bags, all to be carried along—this place is not suitable for lingering, we must leave immediately.

Pangzi picked out some bulky gold and silverware to throw on the ground, stuffed the remaining half of the rou er into the sealed bag, I casually took the Xian King's head and put it into my carrying bag—if we are again chased into a dead end, we'll have to use it to escape, we can't sacrifice our lives just for this "grave dust pearl" to preserve the fat body.

In this way, we delayed another seven or eight minutes, but at least we ate something and recovered some strength. I looked toward the deep pool at the valley bottom—a mass of dark green, seemingly no disturbance, but my intuition told me this is merely the calm before the storm; if we don't completely resolve that corpse cave, there will be no end. So I shouldered Shirley Yang, and Pangzi and I climbed up the plank road, continuing our escape journey.

Pangzi said while walking: "This trip to Yunnan is truly a life-risking affair, but we did get a few valuable things—when we go back, it'll be enough to make them envious for years."

I said to Pangzi: "Your pack contains the jade box we found in the rear hall of the Heavenly Palace—though we don't know what secret it holds, it must be an important matter; also that bronze mirror suppressing the bronze coffin, which also has great origins, possibly an antique from the Shang-Zhou period—these things are not ordinary, you'd better keep your mouth shut tight, absolutely no leaks, before I figure out their secrets, not even Da Jin Ya can know."

Speaking of the burial goods we rummaged from the "Xian King's Tomb," I unconsciously touched my carrying bag, recalling that besides the Xian King's head, there are many black rings I dug out from his hand—those should also be some of the most valued objects by the Xian King, even second only to the "grave dust pearl," but what exactly are they used for?

My confused thoughts were interrupted by a huge rumbling from the valley bottom, a series of ear-piercing scratching sounds of claws scraping the wall, intermittent and transmitted along the stone wall upward, the sound growing louder, the speed of ascent extremely fast—I knew something was wrong; now the distance to the end of the plank road is still a long stretch, running up would surely be too late; I hurriedly looked around, wanting to find a terrain for shelter and cover, but discovered our position outside is actually not far from the gourd-hole mouth on the cliff—although coming down from the hole mouth was not easy, using the flying tiger claws to go up is also not difficult.

The corpse cave at the pool bottom is already very near; seeing the time urgent, besides entering the gourd hole first, there is nowhere else to retreat, so I took out Shirley Yang's flying tiger claws, hooked them onto the rock wall, I again used the climbing rope and the so-called "quick release" safety buckle, to securely bind Shirley Yang on my back and myself, pulling the steel chain of the flying tiger claws, stepping on the protrusions where I could stand on the reverse slope cliff, step by step I climbed up to the gourd mouth.

Upon entering the gourd hole, I found the water level had dropped significantly, scattered everywhere were some white, bloated corpses—those are the faces terrifying zombie persons, presumably they couldn't bear the thin air at the hole mouth, all retreated to deeper parts, the hole mouth is still temporarily safe.

I immediately put Shirley Yang down, used the quick release to fix the climbing rope, lowered it to receive Pangzi, who has acrophobia—without assistance, he couldn't climb down.

But looking down, I suddenly felt a chill all over—this is the first time I've seen that corpse cave relatively clearly: a dark, murky mass of rotting flesh, almost able to cover half the pool mouth, probably because it's just a corpse of a乌头, not like the legends say with complete five senses like a human head, but only has several huge black holes on it, presumably formerly the nose, mouth, eyes, etc., especially one large and one small opposing black holes, which should be the two eye sockets of the mushroom spirit—at this moment it clings to the cliff wall, constantly wriggling upward, the stench of decay can be smelled even high up; the black气 spreading from it seems to have obscured the clear sky.

That ever-expanding "corpse cave effect" is absolutely not comparable to ordinary things—it almost has no weak points, fundamentally impossible to resist; once touched, one will be sucked into that "gap" of neither life nor death—I hurriedly called Pangzi to come up quickly; Pangzi also knew the danger, scrambling up with flustered hands and feet.

Just when Pangzi was still two meters from the hole entrance, suddenly I heard a mournful cry from the air—I felt my vision darken, a huge "owl" from midair swooped toward Pangzi. I shouted "Not good!"—this "owl" is a feathered beast, the most vengeful among wild animals; that night in the dense forest we used submachine guns to shoot down one, I never expected this one would not care about daylight, lurking in the dark shade of the valley, waiting to ambush us.

I was holding the rope in my hand, wanting to turn back and grab the gun—already too late; Pangzi was suspended in midair, still able to grab the rope and climb up would be a miracle, let alone having any strength to strike back.

Speaking is slow, events are fast—the "owl" had already carried a gust of wind, from midair swooping toward Pangzi's eyes—luckily Comrade Wang Kai Xuan is also someone who has endured harsh struggle trials, at the moment of life and death, he could still remember to suck in his belly, lower his head to avoid the owl's hook-like claws—Pangzi's head avoided it, but the backpack on his back was firmly grasped.

The "owl" is the aerial killer of the jungle, its claws are sharp beyond compare, even sharper than steel knives—the canvas waterproof backpack was instantly torn from top to bottom, opening a huge gap; inside, part of the items, including the jade box, ancient mirror, etc., all tumbled and fell from midair.