A gang of 53

  When we pushed aside the dense foliage and saw the houses in front of us, I knew that we had found the right place.

  It's hard to imagine that in this dense and lush mountain valley, there would be a row of old houses. Judging from the frame structure, it seems to be a kind of stockade of ethnic minorities. The roof is covered with black tiles, and the walls are lined with bamboo strips. Counting them, there are at least five or six houses. I exchanged a glance with Lu Xun, and he beckoned me to retreat back into the woods.

  The two of them quietly retreated a distance and sat down in silence. Things were more perilous than we had anticipated, initially judging it to be a wild man, but when Old Iron went missing, they successively took out tracking surveillance and discovered two sets of footprints, overturning their previous judgment, believing that at least one normal person was manipulating everything, even the wild man was subdued by him. And now, seeing all this, we once again overturned our previous theory, it's not one person, nor is it two people, but...

  A gang.

  A strong aura of conspiracy wafts through the air, this group in the depths of the forest seems to be planning something or hiding some purpose.

  He suddenly stood up, and I instinctively asked: "Where are you going?" He looked at me with his head down and said: "You stay here first, I'll be back later." As he was about to take another step, I reached out and grabbed the corner of his clothes, looking up at him, "Do you want to go alone?"

  His dark and shiny eyes were somewhat dim at this time, his eyebrows furrowed together, "I must go and investigate the situation of Liang Ge and the madman."

  I tilted my head and thought for a moment, then got up with my hands on the ground, patted the grass dust off my body, "Let's go together."

  "Xiao Jiu, actually you don't need to..."

  "Besides," I interrupted him, "you also said that since we entered Hei Zhu Gou, we've been like ants on a rope. Now some of the ants may have gotten into trouble, and you might be next, sharing their fate - I still understand this principle."

  His eyes flashed and he turned around, a remorseful voice came: "Can't you say something nice? What do you mean by 'this one'?"

  I am speechless, his turning point is always different from others.

  Just ten minutes of calm, back to the original place, I and Lu Xun decided to wait and see. After waiting for nearly half an hour, no one came out of that house, feeling very suspicious. Could it be that everyone had moved immediately after discovering the tracker?

  Just as I was thinking, I suddenly caught a glimpse of a figure flashing by on the mountain path behind the house. It was too far away, and even if I narrowed my eyes, I couldn't see clearly. But I heard a low cry from beside me: "It's a madman!" I turned my head in disbelief, "How could that be? You must have seen wrongly."

  "I couldn't be wrong, it's him." Lu Xun said affirmatively.

  But it's impossible, Liang Ge and San Kuai were both captured by each other, even the tracking device was found and destroyed. Could it be that during this time, he escaped from San Kuai? Didn't he have that old illness, needing to sleep for three or four days? I muttered to myself.

  Since that's the case, we can't just wait and observe anymore. We have to find someone and then we'll be able to understand what's going on inside. Lu Xun and I decided to take a risk and sneak from the thicket to the back of those five or six houses. The terrain here is very strange, except for a narrow and long path leading up the mountain, it's almost enclosed. The front of the house is facing our dense forest, and the back is against the mountain.

  So how did the other party bring Liang Ge and them in here? After we crawled through a section of the dense thicket, it immediately became clear that they had opened up a path between the dense thickets, just like us. On the outer periphery, not only did they use branches and leaves to block the way, but they also set up an iron net, probably to prevent people who were caught from escaping through this path.