Chapter 36: Unthinkable

  These past few days, I've been spending the nights alone in the camp, and every day has been a nerve-wracking experience without sleep. Now that I'm tied up, I no longer have to worry about encountering any dangers, and I fell asleep soon after lying down.

  “……”

  I unknowingly walked into a very large stone room and found that the room was packed with many people wearing white coats, coming and going in a very busy manner.

  In the center of the stone room was a table similar to an operating table, and several white coats were bowed their heads there to complete some work.

  I quietly walked over and found that on the simple operating table, a baby was lying flat, wailing loudly, with two small feet kicking around non-stop.

  At this time, one of the white coats unexpectedly pulled out a snake from somewhere and laughed loudly as he put it on the baby's body. The snake bit the baby's leg mercilessly, and then heard the baby let out an extremely heart-wrenching cry.

  "Let him go, let my son go, you beasts!" A majestic male voice shouted, I turned around to look, and found that on one side of the stone room's wall, there were many human-shaped recesses, and in each of those recesses, many iron chains were binding people covered in blood.

  One of them was desperately struggling to free himself, pulling his already hoarse voice, begging those in white coats to spare the child, the scene was extremely terrifying and tragic...

  I let out an "ah" and immediately woke up from the dream, sprang up in a flash, and at this moment I saw Liangzi with a different expression on his face, lifting his foot to continue kicking me.

  "What's wrong with you, kid? Are you possessed or something?" Liangzi asked in puzzlement.

  I was drenched in sweat and went to look around, but the stone room had disappeared. I was still in the camp, and the sky was already bright. Our other team members were either sitting or standing, but they had obviously been awake for a long time. At this moment, they all looked at me with an inexplicable expression, as if looking at a mental patient.

  I was stunned for a long time before I came to my senses, and it turned out that I had made a strange dream. Although I'm awake now, the dream was so vivid that I'm still a little frightened.

  This is simply too strange, people often say: the day has its thoughts and the night has its dreams, but everything in this dream of mine is something I've never experienced or thought of before, what does it mean?

  "What's wrong with you? Why are you sweating so much?" a soft female voice came over.

  I looked in the direction of the voice and saw Zhou Huan staring at me with a confused expression, weakly mixed with a few parts of concern.

  I finally woke up thoroughly and realized that what happened earlier was indeed a dream. Now the sky is already bright, and we are still tied up in the center of the camp.

  "It's nothing, I just had a nightmare." I quickly explained to Zhou Huan.

  "Anyway, it's fine. It seems we need to continue on our way, be more careful." Zhou Huan said this and then turned around to observe their surroundings.

  I followed her gaze and found that Zhang Zhuang's team was busy packing their luggage, seemingly preparing to continue advancing.

  After a while, the floral shirt came over with a toothpick in his mouth, sneering at us and saying: "Hey, looks like you all slept well, great, great. Later when we rush on the road, I'll put in extra effort. Those who fall behind, I don't have the mood to wait for them. As for bullets, I still have a lot."

  After finishing speaking, he took out a handgun and waved it at the crowd, then turned around and left.

  I saw Zhou Huan whisper something to Hei Lian's captain, and soon several of Zhang Zhuang's men came over, driving us away as we started on our journey.

  This time, they didn't follow the riverbank as before, but instead headed straight up the mountain slope in front of us. I didn't understand why they took this route, but now that I'm a captive, I can only follow closely behind with my head bowed.

  Although the mountain doesn't look very high, it's still very strenuous to climb. Our team is tied together with ropes and our arms can't swing normally, so it's very difficult to walk.

  From time to time, someone would fall down, and immediately afterwards, Zhang Zhuang's men would rush up with punches and kicks. At this moment, I had a scene like in TV dramas where the little devils treat Chinese civilians, and I couldn't help but shout: Let go of my fellow villagers, I am the Eighth Route Army you are looking for...

  After climbing for a whole morning, we finally reached the top of this mountain. Looking up, far away from several other mountains, there is a very high and magnificent peak standing in front of us.

  Obviously, the mountain is much higher than where we are now. It's still sunny here, but the upper half of the mountain peak can't be seen at all, completely blocked by thick dark clouds.

  I don't know why, but the mountain peak in front of me looked very familiar. I thought about it for half a day and still couldn't remember where I had seen it before. At this time, I heard Liangzi say next to me: "No... way..."

  His voice sounds particularly unbelievable, so I asked him what's wrong with you?

  "Didn't you see?" Liangzi said.

  "What's wrong with you? Can't you just be straightforward and say what you see?"

  "Got it." Liang Zishen looked at me deeply, his expression serious as he continued: "Are you really that dense or are you just pretending to be stupid? The mountain in front of us, isn't it the one from that painting 'Xian Shan Fu Hu Tu'?"

  After he finished speaking, I quickly raised my head to look and after carefully looking at it, I also took a deep breath. Oh my god! This mountain really looks exactly the same as the one in that painting.

  I was lost in thought, when I felt someone lightly touch me. Turning around, I found it was Zhou Huan. She didn't say anything, just used her eyes to glance forward, indicating for me to take a look.

  I followed her gaze and found that not far from us, two men in camouflage uniforms were holding our painting with both hands, staring intently at the painting.

  Now I understand a bit, I said why so many people are willing to pay a high price for this ordinary painting, now it seems that the painting is probably a map or something.

  Everyone just took a short rest, and then they were driven to walk down the mountain again. I don't need to think about it to understand that their goal must be that mountain peak shrouded in dark clouds, which is also the place in the painting.

  The road down the mountain is not very good, but it's easier than climbing up. Although sometimes people still can't stand and fall, after all, physical consumption will be less.

  As I walked down about halfway, I suddenly felt that something was off in the valley below. Although I couldn't quite put my finger on it, I had a distinct feeling that the area at the foot of the mountain was different from the forest we were currently in, and seemed to be much paler in color.

  It was almost dusk when we finally arrived at the foot of the mountain, and the ground had become flat, making it much easier to walk.

  After everyone walked through a dense forest, the scene in front of me immediately stunned me.

  Now I really don't know how to describe it, although there are still some dense trees in front of me, but the difference is that all the leaves have disappeared, and all the trees are covered with dense, cigarette-sized black caterpillars.

  These insects, like spiders, hung themselves from tree branches with a single silk thread. I think anyone who sees them would feel itchy all over their body. I estimate that the area covered by these insects could be as large as a football field. As a gentle mountain breeze blew by, all of the insects swayed back and forth in unison, leaving me staring with my mouth agape, completely stunned on the spot.

  Liangzi walked up to me and exclaimed loudly in surprise: "What the...? Is this a bug conference or something?"

  This is the first time I think Liangzi's nonsense makes sense, there are countless bugs everywhere, and now they're all gathered in this one place, it's really too strange.

  At that time, the team was driven to continue moving forward again. We were all walking forward with our backs against the side of the bug mountain. At this moment, I felt that these bugs were indeed very special. Each bug was completely black and did not make any movement when there was no wind, as if it had died.

  As I walked along the side of Bug Mountain, when approaching the center, I felt a little strange again. Faintly, as if I saw something in the middle of the bug forest, although it was a bit unclear, guessing that it should be a house-shaped building.

  As I was observing carefully, the whole team stopped moving, and then I found that Zhang Zhuang and Hua Chenshan took out a pair of binoculars each and looked towards the center of Bug Mountain.

  After watching for a while, seeing the floral shirt made me feel at ease with the binoculars. He turned around and said something to Zhang Zhuang, I was shocked to find that his face had a greedy smile on it.

  Liangzi also saw the situation and said to me, "What's going on? Is this flower shirt scaring you stupid or something? Haha, you're laughing like an idiot!"

  I didn't respond, continuing to stare at their movements. At this time, I saw the floral shirt make a few gestures with his hand behind him, and then the guy who was carrying the flamethrower came out. The floral shirt said a few words to him and then dodged to one side.

  That guy with the flamethrower on his back seemed to take a few deep breaths, lifted his legs and walked towards the tree forest full of insects. I don't know what he's going to do either, my eyes wide open just followed him to see.

  He came to the front of the worm tree, turned on the switch of the flame thrower and sprayed it at the dense worms. For a time, the worms that were sprayed fell to the ground with a "crackling" sound, and a burst of black smoke floated up. The scene was simply disgusting to the extreme.

  Liangzi said to me with a very different tone: "What's going on? Are these people having a change of heart and wanting to get rid of the four evils for the sake of the common people?"

  "Who the hell knows, let's see and say." I directly replied with a sentence.

  He went to see that guy, one hand covering his nose and the other holding the flame thrower's firing rod, constantly moving up and down and left and right to burn those insects, as if it was extremely enjoyable.

  Just when everyone was getting excited, a gust of mountain wind blew over, and all the insects started swaying in the wind because they were hung from a silk thread on the tree. The amplitude of the slow swing gradually became larger and larger, finally almost parallel to the ground.

  My god, this scene is really not something that anyone can see, I was staring at it with my mouth agape in awe, when I discovered those insects started to twist their bodies and suddenly a stream of green liquid shot out from their mouths, all spraying onto that guy's body.