Chapter 250: The Statue's Orientation

Panzi swallowed and said, "I didn't notice... but it definitely wasn't this side."

Fatty said, "Damn it, there's something ghostly here. Did it turn around on its own? Or did we trigger some mechanism?"

I said, "Impossible. When we walked closer just now, I saw it clearly—it was obviously stone. And it's a single piece, so it's unlikely there's a trap mechanism."

Panzi stared at the stone carving and said, "We didn't look carefully earlier. Maybe the statue has two faces."

"Two faces my ass. When I left, I looked back several times. There was definitely no face like that on the back of the statue," Fatty said. "And there's something off about this face."

Indeed, compared to the front, the face on this side of the statue seemed very strange. Still expressionless, but the expression exuded a kind of gloom and malice, enough to make your heart race.

"Damn it, it must have turned around on its own. Is this thing alive?" Panzi said. "We've run into a stone spirit."

I said, "We weren't walking in a straight line. Maybe it's a matter of perspective. Let's not scare ourselves."

Fatty cursed, "Bullshit perspective. There's definitely something wrong. You're just fooling yourself by thinking that."

I felt a bit awkward. Fatty asked, "Want to go back and check?"

Panzi shook his head, then suddenly pulled out his gun, chambered a round, aimed at the giant face, and was about to fire. Startled, we barely had time to react. Fatty immediately pushed the gun up. A bullet whizzed past and hit the dragon brain incense tree beside the statue, shaking the whole tree. We all immediately looked at the statue, thinking to ourselves that was way too reckless—if it was alive, they'd have provoked it.

Fatty had already prepared for battle, his hand reaching for his waist. Several of us stared at the stone carving, ready for any movement.

But the statue didn't react at all. Its eerie face remained cold and expressionless, unchanged, as if it were just a normal stone statue. After waiting a while, Panzi unloaded the gun and said to us, "See? No problem. It's stone. Maybe we really did see it wrong. The path here twists and turns. Let's hurry up and stop dawdling."

I also sighed in relief, saying we were just scaring ourselves. Being in a place like this made me so nervous I couldn't even make correct judgments.

Fatty frowned, still unconvinced. "When I was supporting the frontier, I worked on lathes. My eyesight is sharp. How could I have seen it wrong?"

"A lathe is a lathe. This is a forest with complex reference points. It's not strange to misjudge," I said.

Panzi urged us to hurry, but Fatty stubbornly refused. He took the gun from Panzi, put down his own gear, and said to us, "Don't move. I'll go take a look. Just two minutes." Then he walked toward the statue.

We knew Fatty's temper and had no choice but to let him go. I sat down to rest, and Panzi muttered, "Trouble."

We watched as Fatty slung the gun over his back and carefully walked back. Halfway there, he suddenly stopped and took a step back, as if he saw something.

Panzi was very impatient and yelled at him, "What the hell are you doing? Hurry up!"

Before he even finished speaking, Fatty suddenly turned and sprinted back, shouting at us, "It's alive! Run!" At the same time, we saw the "face" of the human-faced monster bird in the distance actually change. Its eyes slanted upward and the corners of its mouth curled up impossibly, shifting from that expressionless look to an extremely sinister grin.