Volume 1: Ghostly Lamentations Chapter 13: Bullet Ant's Venom?

  The dawn came a bit late this morning, probably due to the mountains. It was 9 o'clock before the sun lazily emerged.

  The warm sunlight slightly alleviated the chill in everyone's hearts, and the travel group sat silently in the stone house's great hall, their faces revealing unmistakable fatigue and panic. The Zhu girl cowered in the arms of the similarly shivering fatty Joe, Miss Yin had tears streaming down her face as she tightly grasped Cai Guozhong's hand, refusing to let go. Tour guide Shi wore a look of despair, thinking that even if they managed to survive this trip, he would definitely lose his job, which was already giving him a headache. On the other hand, Li Yun sat there with a relatively calm expression, her courage not one bit weaker than that of the men present.

  "That's how it is." Chen Long said after a long moment of contemplation.

  "What should we do?"

  Chen Long looked at him strangely: "You first tell everyone what that sentence before dawn means? What is the curse of Cleveland?"

  Yuan Tian looked around at the people who also had unusual expressions, and slowly opened his mouth to say: "I saw that scene, and after careful observation, I found that both of their heads were gone, and their corpses were chopped up and mixed together, right?"

  A few women's coughs interrupted Yuan Tian's words, Chen Long frowned: "You can go back to your room if you don't want to listen, Yuan Tian, continue."

  "Uh-huh." Yuan Tian nodded, "In the United States in the 1930s, there was a murderer who would kill two people at the same time every time he acted, then chop up their bodies and mix them together, only taking away their heads. These murder cases have not been solved to this day, but the famous police chief Eliot Ness was in charge of investigating the case. According to analysis, the murderer may live in a house in a quiet neighborhood, he must have a car, but it's very likely that he doesn't have a wife and children - or is a homosexual. What I call the Cleveland curse is just saying that the killer imitated the killer in this case, and I think everyone also felt that there was something wrong with this house, otherwise so many of us wouldn't have fallen asleep at the same time. And based on what Jiang Feng said earlier about the strange things, I think even if there are no ghosts in this house, it's still very problematic."

  "Shall we leave this room?" said Fat Joe, who had been silent until now.

  Chen Long gave him a cold look: "You make it sound easy, the driver is dead, where are we going to live if we leave this room? Are we supposed to live in the wilderness?"

  Fat Joe didn't know where he got the courage, and with some crazy anger, shouted: "I care where I go? As long as I don't stay in this ghost place, what's wrong with living in the wild? That damn murderer is one of you!"

  Yuan Hua glared at him and sneered, "Don't you have any suspicions yourself? Don't pretend to be so wronged. We're all facing a complicated situation. If you want to go live in the wilderness and increase your troubles with venomous snakes and insects, we won't stop you."

  Yuan Tian rubbed his sore eyes and reached out to stop Yuan Hua, who was about to make another sarcastic comment: "Alright, brother, I think Mr. Qiao is also worried about his own safety and emotions, so he's a bit out of control. Ah, I suddenly remembered something - it's about Master Jiang's all-over pain last night."

  "Do you have any leads?" Chen Long was shocked, his tone somewhat solemn, "What exactly is it that can torture someone to that extent?"

  "I'm not sure either." Yuan Tian's smile was tinged with helplessness, "Personally, I think the most likely thing is the venom of bullet ants."

  "What does it mean?" Chen Long asked calmly, and everyone else also listened intently.

  "The bullet ant is found in the rainforests of the Amazon basin and looks similar to its ancestor, the yellowjacket. For millions of years, it has remained unchanged. Like its ancestors, the bullet ant's sting is the most painful among all insects. If you're unlucky enough to get stung, you'll have to endure 24 hours of intense pain. In the Amazonian indigenous coming-of-age ceremony, this type of ant is woven into sleeves for young boys to wear. The boys participating in the ceremony must tolerate this intense pain as a symbol of becoming a true man. I think it's possible that someone dried out the bullet ants and extracted their venom, then dipped needles in it, which would explain why Master Jiang reacted so severely after being pricked by such a small needle." Yuan Tian said with an odd expression, "But this is really hard to believe, how could the toxins from South American creatures appear here?"

  Chen Long also looked surprised: "Indeed unbelievable, so apart from this ant, do you know what other biological venom has the same effect? Especially in our country."

  "Huh?" Yuan Tian was somewhat surprised, "Why are you asking these questions? Master Jiang and the others are all dead, even if we knew what happened to them, it's too late to change anything! Moreover, this knowledge is quite obscure, I'm not very familiar with it either, I'd have to go look up some materials before I can answer, but here in the wilderness, I really can't answer."

  Chen Long bowed his head and pondered for a moment, then said sincerely: "Yuan Tian, I hope you can share some of your knowledge about poison with everyone now. Especially whether there's any unusual smell or visible phenomena that we should be aware of, so we won't easily get poisoned, right? Master Zhou and Master Jiang were both killed because they were poisoned."

  "Alright! Give me some time to sort out the memories in my head, and I'll tell you all about it this afternoon." Yuan Tian accepted this proposal very happily.

  The people in the house were all a bit cautious because there was a murderer among them, so no one wanted to get too close to anyone else.

  Chen Long weighed the pros and cons in his heart, finally sighed helplessly, and said to everyone: "Do you believe that there are ghosts in this world?"

  If it were asked by Chen Long before yesterday, everyone would have ridiculed him, but now that he asks, no one knows how to answer.

  "We're assuming that, okay!" Chen Long continued to say. "The disappearance of this village itself is a strange thing, so I hope everyone will not interrupt my words with some materialistic dogma for the time being, those things can't save our lives temporarily. We have to consider all the things that should be considered, including ghostly affairs. Let's assume that some unexplainable phenomena are caused by ghosts, then everyone's deep sleep last night can get a good explanation, I think it's impossible that we were all drugged by the murderer, right? If so, couldn't the murderer just kill us directly?"

  Slowly, Chen Long lit a cigarette and started smoking by himself: "But the death of the two drivers and the situation after their death were completely arranged by the murderer on purpose. In other words, the ghost deliberately helped the murderer commit the crime. Without considering whether the murderer and the ghost have any relationship for now, it can be confirmed that one of us is in great danger. When we buried the driver's minced meat, everyone should have understood. At present, although staying in the stone house is dangerous, we can monitor each other, and the murderer will have fewer opportunities to make a move. If everyone lives outdoors separately, I think it would be even more dangerous."

  At this point, Chen Long paused for a moment, looked at everyone, and found that although there was still a little fear on each person's face, they all nodded slightly, knowing that they still agreed with his point of view: "This afternoon, Yuan Tian will give everyone a lesson. Everyone should be prepared. At night, three people will take turns keeping watch, and the girls are no exception. As for me, I will stay up all night in the hall. If you don't trust me, each time the three of us will supervise me together."

  The tour guide looked at Chen Long with a mixture of surprise and concern: "How can that be? Can you handle it? Or should I stay up all night instead? After all, I'm the tour guide this time, and you're all my guests."

  Chen Long waved his hand to indicate that everything was fine, and smiled: "There's no problem, let's just leave it like this. Let's start our unfinished journey tomorrow! I took a look at the project you wrote, and found that all the places we're going are around the mountain valley. Maybe when we check those places, we can find a way out? And I suspect that the killer wants to kill us because he doesn't want us to take this trip. How can we fulfill his wishes? Maybe when we discover something unusual, we'll also discover the killer?"

  Everyone's eyes lit up when they heard this, and they all thought it was a good idea. Maybe by doing it this way, they could really escape and catch the murderer!

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