Chapter 459: Utterly Alone

It was the icy stream water that woke me. When I came to, I was already lying between two rocks covered in moss, with a small cliff behind me. A stream formed by rainwater flowed down from the cliff and splashed directly onto my face.

The water was very cold; my hands and feet were almost completely numb. Waking up in this state wasn't my first time—I knew everything would improve within a few minutes, but I couldn't just do nothing. I tried hard to move my limbs, and gradually my body responded. After struggling a few times, I finally stood up. It was already daylight, and a layer of mist filled the surroundings. Where was this? I got up and rubbed my body vigorously to speed up my blood circulation. Slowly I warmed up, and my thoughts became clearer. I immediately sensed something was off—the vegetation here was completely different from what it was before I was knocked out.

Damn it, that bastard from yesterday—I felt too drained to even shout out the anger in my heart. "Too bad, you're not as important as you think. On the road to the underworld, guess who I really am!" I almost instantly recalled his last words, and I thought to myself, what did that mean? If he was someone I didn't know at all, he wouldn't have said something like that. Could it be that I actually knew him?

My mind was a mess. I suddenly realized that at the time, I should have ripped off his mask immediately—I could have cut it off with a knife.

I remembered someone once telling me that using a human skin mask to disguise yourself as another person wasn't a perfect solution. First, the person you're disguising as has to have some basic resemblance to you. Third Uncle and I—or Xie Lianhuan and I—are blood-related, with similar facial structures, so it's possible to make a very convincing disguise. Otherwise, you can't impersonate someone with an entirely different face shape.

I couldn't figure out who he was, and the pain and cold all over my body kept me from thinking deeply. Judging by his skill, he wasn't exceptionally strong, but he was definitely much more capable than me.

I looked around. I must be in a mountain stream that had been dry for a long time. The ground was covered with fist-sized pebbles, and wild grass grew between them. Because of the humid mountain climate, all the rocks were coated with a thick layer of moss. The small stream flowing down from the cliff seeped into the gravel; I could hear the sound of water but couldn't see it.

I looked at the trees around me—their trunks were also covered in thick moss. The humidity here was completely different from where I got knocked out.

Was I taken far away? My head still ached and I felt dizzy in waves, but my body was indeed much better than before. That was thanks to the various beatings I'd endured lately. Beating, as long as it doesn't knock you out or kill you, always helps in some way. I found a bigger rock to sit on, and touched my face with some worry.

Actually, I wasn't trying to feel my face—I wanted to feel my mask. I knew that man had intended to kill me, but since Fatty was nearby at the time, he couldn't make too much noise, otherwise I wouldn't have woken up at all. But even if I wasn't dead, the injuries on my face were beyond my ability to treat.

My emotions were strange. I didn't know whether I wanted this mask to be broken or not. In short, both thoughts existed. The only benefit of the mask was that it allowed me to bring many people here, but afterward, it seemed to bring me nothing but trouble.

When I reached out and touched it, I realized how serious it was—the moment I felt the spot where I was hit, I sensed excruciating pain. The skin underneath must be completely bruised. But the surface of the mask showed no damage at all.

It seemed escaping this kind of life wasn't so easy. The mask must have been designed with every possible factor in mind.

The mask covered my face, so I couldn't treat the wound, but it didn't feel too serious when I touched it. Without stream water, I couldn't look in a mirror anyway, so I gave up and started figuring out where I was.

I moved along the cliff, and gradually it lowered. I found a spot where I could climb up, and discovered that above was a very steep slope. Strangely, there were almost no trees on the slope, only some small shrubs. It was a debris flow slope, likely formed by a mudslide in recent years.

I must have rolled down this slope. I stretched my limbs and was surprised that my body hadn't fallen apart from the roll. But as I moved, I felt an uncomfortable pain all over—not like ordinary bruises; I knew it was bone pain. Since my body hadn't fully recovered and was still cold, once the various injuries flared up later, I might not even be able to walk.

I leaned against a tree and looked around, roughly imagining what happened last night. The place where I was yesterday must be above this slope. After that bastard knocked me out, he must have pushed me down the slope so I rolled to the foot of the small cliff. I couldn't tell if he intended to kill me, but obviously he didn't want Fatty to find me again.

The spot where Fatty and I interrogated him yesterday didn't have such a steep slope nearby. It seemed he dragged me a certain distance. The chance of me finding Fatty again was probably very low.

I lifted my leg and started trudging up the slope, walking and resting. After more than an hour, I noticed the plants started to look familiar, but the top of the slope was still a long way off. I really couldn't go on. Looking down, I hadn't actually made much progress. The slope was too steep—really hard to walk on.

The last section was nearly a ninety-degree incline, and I climbed it almost on all fours. Luckily it was only a few meters. When I got over it, I found a gentler slope above, and the trees suddenly became tall, with vines twining and tangling with the shrubs, leaving almost no room to move.

The sunlight grew stronger. I leaned against a tree, bathed in sunlight, and felt all the pain amplified beyond words. Some places hurt indescribably, and after walking so long, I had almost no strength left.

Please don't be a fracture, I prayed silently. A fracture in a place like this would mean death. If only I had a few broken ribs, that would be better.

Thinking about it, I suddenly felt like laughing. Recalling all the experiences from earlier years, this kind of miserable situation wasn't the first time. Now that I was in this sorry state again, my calmness far outweighed my panic. I felt like a fly that had been hit countless times by a flyswatter but hadn't died. In the end, I suddenly realized that the problem wasn't why I hadn't died, but why I was still staying under that swatter after being beaten like this.

But at least I didn't want to die here, I thought. God has crippled me so many times; surely He didn't mean for me to end it here.

After a short nap, I gritted my teeth and stood up again, nearly kneeling on the ground as I searched for the tiny traces left by broken branches in the bushes. I searched bit by bit, all the way until the evening sun set, and then I seemed to catch the scent of the place where Fatty and I interrogated that guy earlier.

We had come at night, so there were no special landmarks for me to remember. Now I had no recollection at all, and of course I didn't see Fatty.

I didn't stop. I continued recalling, trying to find the campsite of the foreign team. There would be campfire remains and trash; if I found those, I could determine the positions of other places.

However, something must have gone wrong. No matter how carefully I searched based on memory, no matter how meticulously I looked for broken branches, I found nothing.