Chapter 96: Fatal Fall

I was stunned, thinking what was going on, how could a face crack? Was the skin that dry? But before I could look closely, the monster pulling my ankle suddenly exerted force, pulling me off balance. It was very

This shot was far too forced; the immense recoil nearly threw me off the branch, and I gritted my teeth just to keep hold of the gun and myself. The headless corpse was blasted off the bronze tree by the gun's impact, but its hand was still clutching my foot tightly, the whole body dangling beneath my feet, pulling me straight downward.

I couldn't support the weight of two people with one hand. Gritting my teeth, I looked down to find a foothold so I could steady myself and then figure out how to shake the corpse off. Just then, the monster whose face I had cracked earlier hung upside down, grabbed my neck with one claw, and lifted me upward. My neck felt as if it were clamped in a vice; not a single breath of air could get in. My face instantly turned red from suffocation. In desperation, I swung the Pai Zi Liao and bashed its head wildly.

I was putting all my strength into it; if those blows had landed on a human face, it would have been completely pulverized. The monster was also stunned by my strikes, its head thrashing around to dodge. One heavy hit landed right on the crack in its face. It let out a strange cry, abruptly released its claw, jumped to a branch above my head, and frantically clawed at its own face.

Losing support, all the weight fell back on my hands. I lost my grip and dropped more than a meter before managing to hug a protruding bronze branch to stop myself. I looked up and saw the monster's face had completely shattered, turning into small white fragments that began to peel off like milk skin.

Soon all the white fragments had fallen. I caught one; it was stone. Could these all be statues? I looked up again and saw that after the stone face came off, there was actually another face underneath, covered with yellow fur.

I took a closer look at that face and suddenly understood. I shouted down, "Old Itch! I know what these bastards are! They're monkeys, goddamn big monkeys!"

Old Itch was in the darkness below, hard to see clearly. I only heard him reply, "Monkey your grandpa! When did you ever see a monkey with a human face? That would be a demon!"

I yelled, "That's not a human face! It's a mask! These monkeys are wearing stone human-face masks!"

Old Itch had already climbed up from the darkness below, his clothes almost torn to shreds. He shouted at me, "Never mind what they are! Even if they're monkeys, can you beat them?"

I looked down and saw countless dark figures—who knew how many of these masked monkeys were chasing us. I climbed up a few more meters, opened the magazine, and saw that the red shells were all used up. Only a few blue ones were left, probably not buckshot but big steel pellets. Those were decent at long range, but not as devastating as the shotgun-like steel shot. Seeing the monkeys closing in, I quickly gripped the stock with both hands and fired two shots downward.

The steel pellets scattered, losing a lot of power, but the large-area damage still took effect. The nearest monkeys were torn to bloody shreds, and many farther away were hit as well, screeching as they fell from the tree. I couldn't help whistling—this thing was incredibly useful. If I had a five-round burst, I could even wipe them all out.

The monkeys seemed intimidated by the power of the Pai Zi Liao, slowing their advance and turning to chase Liang Shive along with Old Itch. The monkey whose mask I had broken actually started to show fear when it saw us, bared its teeth, and beat a hasty retreat to the side. Old Itch looked at me in surprise and asked, "Holy crap, they really are monkeys. What's going on here?"

I also found it very strange. Who put the masks on these monkeys, and why? The masks had no eyeholes or mouth holes—how did these monkeys survive normally?

Liang Shive had fallen more than ten meters behind us and was now lying there panting. We quickly caught up and saw he was already in a daze. Fortunately, the branches became denser at that spot, so his whole body was wedged in and he didn't fall. His torch had dropped to a spot halfway down his body, stuck between three branches.

Old Itch picked up the torch, and with his other hand he shot the unmasked monkey down. His pistol ammunition was completely exhausted. He was about to throw the gun away, but halfway up he hesitated, shoved it back into his belt, then raised the torch and swung it downward, trying to drive the monkeys back with the flames. The monkeys were indeed somewhat afraid; wherever the torch passed, they shrank back, but as soon as the torch moved away, they pressed forward again, giving us no breathing room.

Old Itch swung the torch for a while, but instead of driving them away, the encirclement only grew tighter. I tugged at Liang Shive, but he was like a lump of mud, unable to move at all. Old Itch yelled, "Forget him! We can't hold out! Pull back!"

I was burning with anger. I really wanted to kick Liang Shive down, but the guy wasn't some vicious bastard, and at that moment I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I lifted him and tried to pull him up, but his ass slipped between two branches instead, making things even worse.

Old Itch scared off a monkey with the torch and cursed at me, "Damn it! What the hell are you doing? This guy isn't on our side. If everything had gone smoothly, he might have already killed you. Don't go playing the humanitarian with prisoners, you idiot!"

I loaded the shells and fired two more shots. The two loud blasts blew five monkeys away, pushing the horde back nearly six meters. Then I switched to the last two shells. Just as I was about to fire them off, Liang Shive suddenly grabbed my hand and said weakly, "These things are afraid of fire… flare gun…"

I suddenly realized what he meant. Old Itch reacted quickly, reached back and drew out the flare gun, aimed, and asked me, "How do I shoot? Firing straight down won't do any good!"

I snatched the flare gun, aimed at the rock face opposite, and fired. The flare shot like lightning to the rock dozens of meters away, then bounced back and hit the bronze tree, rebounding two or three times in a flash before exploding among the monkey horde. The extreme heat sent the monkeys scrambling in panic. Without waiting for the first flare to go out, I fired two more rounds, and suddenly the whole cavity was filled with blinding white light.

The light dazzled Old Itch, nearly making him fall. I turned his head aside and yelled, "Don't look! It's way too close, a hundred times brighter than welding! It'll burn your retinas!"

The three of us closed our eyes simultaneously, but we could still feel the light piercing through our eyelids. The monkeys went wild from the intense light. There was utter chaos below, and the stench of burning flesh and fur drifted up.

I don't know how long it took, but the strong light finally dimmed. I squinted and looked down. The monkeys were gone. My eyes were burning painfully, and everything looked blurry. Old Itch was crying uncontrollably, rubbing his eyes frantically. Liang Shive had fainted completely this time; if I hadn't been holding his collar, he would have fallen long ago.

Seeing the monkeys gone, I breathed a sigh of relief. I didn't know if they were frightened by the heat or the intense light. If they had looked directly at it, nine times out of ten they'd be blinded, unable to recover for at least ten days or half a month. I relaxed, slapped Liang Shive awake, grabbed his arm, straightened him up, and tried to drag him higher. But he was too weak; I could only prop him up. There was no way to get him to leave his position.

Once he was steady, I crouched over to check on Old Itch. He was squinting, cursing and spitting, but at least he could see. He asked me, "Couldn't you have given a heads-up before doing something like that? If you'd blinded me, I'd have fought you to the death."

I snapped back, "You've got some nerve saying that. I saved your life, you know? Besides, you're not blind, are you?" Old Itch looked down and said, "Well, that trick really worked. Did the monkeys run away or did they all burn to death?"

I told him they probably weren't dead—likely just driven off temporarily. They might come back, but since we'd found a way to deal with them, no need to worry. We still had a few flares left, enough for several engagements. Old Itch asked me what they were. I thought about it and cursed him back: "You've been here before, you bastard, and you don't even know what they are? Who am I supposed to ask? And what's with you? Have you really been here or not? You don't know anything!"

Old Itch was speechless. I thought to myself, the masks on these monkeys were exquisitely made, carved to look exactly like real human faces. Could they be related to that realistic statue we saw on the cliff? But why were they attacking us? I once read a novel about an ancient civilization that trained gorillas to guard mines. After the civilization perished, the gorillas still passed down the killing training they had received through generations, so thousands of years later, their descendants were still guarding the mine ruins, slaughtering any explorers who came.

But these were monkeys, obviously not as smart as gorillas, so they probably couldn't do something that complex. I wanted to ask Liang Shive what the deal was with these monkeys, but when I saw his face, I knew it was pointless. He was completely on the verge of collapse. If he didn't get some rest soon, he'd be done for.

We stayed there for more than ten minutes, and no more monkeys poked their heads up from below. Finally we relaxed. Old Itch took out some food and tried to get us to eat, but we both refused. It wasn't a problem of hunger now, but of lack of rest. Even if you fed us straight glucose, I couldn't move another step.

I leaned against a few branches, using my backpack as a pillow, and unknowingly began to doze off. Old Yang and Advisor Liang were groggy and didn't stop me. Just as I was about to fall asleep, a series of crashing sounds came from above, and the entire bronze tree began to shake violently, as if a huge monster was climbing down.

I thought, oh no, we'd barely dealt with the monkeys and now we'd disturbed some big creature. Could a "King Kong" be coming down from above? Before I could figure out where to hide, a black shadow fell like lightning, slamming hard into the gaps between three branches, splattering a foul-smelling liquid all over my face.

The impact was incredibly violent; the whole bronze tree shook, nearly knocking me off. All three of us were scared half to death and didn't react until a long moment later.

Old Yang was the first to calm down. He raised his torch high and called us over to see what had fallen. As we got closer, we saw it was a person, wedged between the bronze branches, his body twisted unnaturally, eyes wide open, face covered in blood, ribs protruding from his body. It was obvious he'd fallen from a great height and died.

Old Yang moved the torch closer to shine on his face, then suddenly shouted, "Damn, it's that bastard Uncle Tai! This old guy was ahead of us all along. No wonder we never saw them!"

Advisor Liang trembled as he moved closer, checked above, then pressed on Uncle Tai's chest. A stream of blood gushed from the corpse's mouth and nose. He sighed and said, "Death from a high fall, internal organs all shattered. How could he fall so carelessly?"

I looked at his feet: bones had pierced through, and his whole body was twisted unnaturally, likely from hitting the bronze branches repeatedly on the way down. Advisor Liang pressed his limbs again, sucked in a breath, and said, "Brother Yang, tell me the truth... how high is it up there? Look at Uncle Tai—all his long bones are broken. A fall like that means at least a hundred meters."

Old Yang looked at us, seeming unsure how to answer. After thinking for a long moment, he said, "I don't know either. I didn't measure it with a ruler. Last time I climbed, it took me about a whole day."

I groaned inwardly. We'd just scrambled up maybe fifty or sixty meters and were already exhausted like this. If it really was that high above, how could we climb it? Even if we made it to the top, we'd have no strength left and might end up like Uncle Tai, smashed into a dozen pieces.

At that thought, both Advisor Liang and I wore pained expressions.

Old Yang had climbed once before and didn't feel the hopelessness of the journey. Seeing us like this, he quickly patted our shoulders, saying even if it was a few hundred meters, if you laid it flat you could run across it in seconds—it was only because it was vertical that we were worried. I told him to go to hell. By that logic, Mount Everest is only 8,848 meters; you could ride a bike up in half an hour. We weren't fighting friction here—we were dealing with gravity, you know? Old Yang waved me off, indicating he didn't want to argue, and then went to undo Uncle Tai's backpack, rummaging through it to see if anything was useful. When he looked, he was overjoyed. In Advisor Liang's team, Uncle Tai and that young guy Pockmarked Er had carried the main equipment. Most of the stuff was still there: pistol and ammunition, flare gun, rope. Best of all, they found a flashlight. Damn, remembering how we'd been terrified of our torches going out in the Thousand Coffin Cave, I actually wanted to kiss that flashlight. High tech was great.

Old Yang replaced the magazine, organized the other items, slung the bag on his back, and said to us, "Those monkeys are definitely still down there. We can't stay here long. Let's rest a bit, then we'll go up right away. You've all climbed Mount Tai, right? 1,300 meters, still did a round trip in one day. No problem—think of it as a sightseeing tour."

Advisor Liang's face brightened slightly. He gave a bitter smile and made a walking gesture with his fingers, saying, "Brother Yang... Mount Tai you walk up—use your feet. But we're going straight up and down here. How can you compare the two? And that mountain has scenic views—cloud seas and strange rocks. What is there to see here?"

Old Yang kicked the bronze trunk and said, "I was just making a damn analogy! This bronze tree might not have Mount Tai's scenery, but at least it's impressive, right? You two just bear with it. Victory is right ahead. Don't lose heart. Get your stuff together, grit your teeth, and we'll push straight to the top. The view will be spectacular."

I tapped my already swelling calves and told him it wasn't that I didn't want to grit my teeth, but I couldn't anymore. If I gritted any harder, my teeth would poke out through my chin. I could still squeeze out a little strength, but Advisor Liang had only half his life left. Rather than rush these few minutes, we might as well rest thoroughly for better results.

Advisor Liang shot me a grateful look. Old Yang sighed and said, "Fine, but we need to move Uncle Tai's body down. It's unsettling having it here."

Seeing Uncle Tai's twisted features and eyes refusing to close in death, I didn't feel much particular emotion, but those bulging eyes were pretty creepy. Not wanting to be fussy about morality, I carefully worked with Old Yang to lift Uncle Tai's body off the branches.

Falling from such a height, he must have hit many protruding bronze branches on the way down. Not being reduced to a bloody pulp on the ground was already lucky. As I lifted the body, I noticed that Advisor Liang hadn't said much. The corpse was unnaturally soft throughout, as if all the bones were shattered. With every movement, large amounts of blood flowed from his broken body, ran along the branches into the bronze tree's patterns, and then followed the grooves in the patterns downward.

Advisor Liang and I both noticed this at the same time. We froze for a moment. Advisor Liang immediately motioned for us to stop, shone his flashlight into the grooves, and then looked at the bronze branches. He said, "Gentlemen, I think I know what this thing is used for."