Chapter 245: The Snake's Scheme

We stepped back a few paces. On the other side, Poker-face was holding a miner's lamp to illuminate the corpse while signaling me to go wake Fatty up immediately.

After going through a life-and-death struggle earlier, followed by the sudden death of A Ning, my nerves were already stretched to their limit. Now, after barely a few minutes of calm, they were tense again, making me feel extremely frustrated. Yet I wasn't afraid; I retreated to Fatty's side, first felt for the dagger on him, and then slapped him a few times.

But Fatty was sleeping too deeply; I slapped him a few times, and he only furrowed his brow slightly but couldn't wake up. When I hit him, I felt that his face was covered in sweat.

I felt something was off—how could someone sleep like this? Could he be sick? But when I touched Fatty's forehead, it wasn't hot. I thought to myself, could he be dreaming? Just as I was about to pinch him hard, I suddenly saw that beside where Fatty was lying, there were also those tiny mud prints. And they were even more numerous and messy than the ones by A Ning.

I thought to myself, this is bad, and quickly stood up and stepped back, calling out to Panzi.

"What's wrong?" Panzi turned back. I pointed at the muddy marks and showed him. "There are some here too!" Panzi kept his aim on A Ning's corpse while retreating to my side. He looked down and cursed, then moved his gun barrel over. Poker-face, who was on the other side, turned and saw it too, and retreated over.

The three of us looked at the corpse, then at Fatty. I thought to myself, this situation is getting complicated. The corpse was one thing, but I couldn't think too much. Panzi glanced at Poker-face, and the two exchanged a gesture, clearly some kind of signal. Panzi raised his gun and retreated to the edge of the rock we were standing on, away from the corpse and Fatty, so he could watch both directions at once. Poker-face handed me the lamp, telling me to shine it on Fatty, and took the dagger from my hand. Then, hunching over, he approached Fatty in a strained posture.

This was a half-crouch position—legs bent, body leaning forward but not fully squatting—to maintain maximum agility in case of an incident. He approached Fatty and, without turning his head, gestured for me to move the light and shine it on the footprints beside Fatty.

The atmosphere was terrible. I cursed under my breath, wondering when this would ever end. I moved the light, and at that moment, two or three unidentified objects shot out from under Fatty's shoulder at incredible speed, quickly crossing the range lit by the lamp.

The speed was so fast that my eyes blurred in an instant. But my hand instinctively swung in the direction those things had come from. Unfortunately, I didn't catch anything with the light. I only heard a series of splashes as something jumped into the swamp. At the same time, there was suddenly movement from A Ning's corpse—the same series of sounds of something entering the water, like disturbing a group of frogs by a field ridge.

Poker-face had an astonishing reaction time, but even he was helpless against such speed. He quickly turned around, didn't even take a step in pursuit before giving up. He urgently waved for me to come over and shine the light into the water.

I rushed over, raised the miner's lamp, and shone it onto the water. I immediately saw ripples and several water trails quickly moving away, diving into the swamp.

"What was that? Water rats?" I asked, as that was my first instinct. Back in the nineties, when urban development wasn't so advanced, I'd seen plenty of those rats.

Poker-face shook his head, his expression dark. "Snakes! That kind of cockscomb snake."

I clicked my tongue, looking at the series of marks left on the ground. Suddenly I realized he was right—those were snake tracks. No wonder they looked like footprints but weren't. An ominous thought surged in my mind. Legend has it that this kind of snake is extremely vengeful and acts bizarrely. Now they had indeed come for us.

I then noticed that Fatty still hadn't woken up, and my heart skipped a beat. Could Fatty have been bitten? I immediately went over to check on him. Not knowing if all the snakes had left, I approached cautiously and gave him a push. Unexpectedly, he woke up with that push and sat up immediately, his face pale but still groggy. He looked at us, then at the sky, a bit confused. Seeing us watching him as if facing a great enemy, he finally said after a long pause, "What the hell are you all doing? Lord Fatty sells his skills, not his body. Staring at me won't help."

Seeing him like this, he seemed fine, and we breathed a sigh of relief. But I was still uneasy, so I asked Fatty to turn around and checked him—he indeed hadn't been bitten. Fatty didn't understand why I was making him take off his clothes and asked what was going on. I explained what had just happened.

Fatty was skeptical, but we had no time to explain further. We got up and walked over to A Ning's corpse. I shone the lamp over the nearby swamp—it was completely black, nothing visible. The stones around the corpse were covered with the marks left by the snakes when they left.

"Damn, this is weird. Could it be that these snakes opened the sleeping bag?" Panzi muttered to himself while using his gun to pat the corpse up and down, checking if there were any snakes still inside.

No snakes came out, but I felt extremely uneasy—a nightmare-like panic spreading in my heart. While we were sleeping, several cockscomb snakes had crawled up from the swamp, slipped under Fatty and A Ning, and somehow opened A Ning's sleeping bag. This was too bizarre. What did they want? I stared at the pitch-black swamp, feeling that something ominous was bound to happen.

Everyone else felt the same. Poker-face crouched down and examined A Ning's corpse. He didn't find anything unusual, so he gestured for us to turn on all our miner's lamps—he wanted to carefully check the underwater surroundings.

We did as Poker-face said. Fatty also came over to help. We turned on the miner's lamps and aimed them in four directions, scanning the water. We had only swept a few times when suddenly Fatty behind us let out a cry of surprise.

We thought the snakes had appeared again and immediately turned around. Following his light, we saw about twenty meters away in the swamp a human figure, as if it had emerged from the swamp mud.

The light from one miner's lamp couldn't illuminate it clearly, so immediately all the lamps focused there. We saw a person covered in mud, standing in waist-deep water, staring straight at us like a water ghost.

"Damn it, what the hell is that?" Fatty shouted.

Poker-face looked closely and exclaimed, "Oh my god, it's Chen Wenjin!" With that, he rushed into the swamp and ran toward that person.