Chapter 244: Footprints from the Corpse

This would be a very ordinary thing normally—when traveling in the Gobi, before entering an oasis, we usually didn't take off our upper-body clothes, we only wrapped our lower half in a sleeping bag to keep warm, so that we could get up quickly in case of an emergency. Seeing A Ning lying like that in her sleeping bag, I had seen it countless times during this journey, it was very familiar, but then I remembered that she was already dead, and it felt quite desolate.

But when I fell asleep, the body was clearly completely wrapped in the sleeping bag. Who turned her out? Could it be Panzi? Why would he turn her out?

I stood up and went over to the body for a look, and noticed something seemed off. The body had definitely been moved; the hands were curled unnaturally for some reason, and the whole corpse looked a bit strange.

I subconsciously looked around. The sky was gloomy. The swamp was different from the canyon—the trees around were sparse, and there was nothing to cast light. The flame from the fuel can was small, and everything around was pitch black, nothing could be seen.

I turned and woke Panzi. Panzi wasn't in deep sleep, so a tap woke him up. I asked him if he had done it.

Panzi was baffled. He came over to look, then shook his head, and instead looked at me with suspicion. Seeing his expression, it didn't seem like he was faking it, so I was even more puzzled.

Then I thought of Fatty. Could Fatty have taken a fancy to A Ning's belongings? Would that bastard not even spare things from his own people? But in my impression, although Fatty was greedy, he would be unlikely to do something like that.

Panzi splashed some swamp water on his face to wash it, then walked over to A Ning's body, turned on the miner's lamp, and shined it down to see what was going on.

The expression of death was still frozen on A Ning's face, which was a bit frightening now. The corpse was wet from the rain. Panzi crouched down and tidied the hair off her face a bit. Then we saw the wound where A Ning had been bitten—it had turned blackish purple and started to rot. The skin on her body also showed mottled dark purple patches. The high temperature here had begun to corrupt this beautiful corpse.

As we shined the light, we noticed several streaks of mud on the clothes of the corpse. Panzi touched them—they seemed to have stuck on not long ago. Following the mud traces with the light, we suddenly discovered beside the corpse several small, footprint-like mud prints.

Panzi glanced at me, then followed those mud prints with the light. He found that the footprints came all the way from the swamp. Because of the rain, they were already very faint, only the ones right next to the corpse were still quite clear.

There's something in the swamp! Our nerves tightened, our throats constricted. We exchanged a glance, and I turned to wake Fatty and the others. Panzi stood up, grabbed his gun, followed the footprints to the edge of the swamp, crouched down, and shone the light into the water.

Fatty was hard to wake. Poker-face opened his eyes at the slightest touch—I wasn't sure if he had been asleep. I explained the situation, and he frowned.

The two of us walked over to Panzi. The water was murky and nothing could be seen clearly. Panzi showed the mud footprints to Poker-face and said, "Damn, it seems like something crawled up while we were sleeping. Looks like we can never fall asleep from now on."

After shining the light on the footprints, Poker-face's expression changed. He took the miner's lamp, quickly scanned the area around the corpse, then blocked us from getting any closer to the body.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"There's only one row of footprints. That thing hasn't left yet," he said softly.