Volume 1 Chapter 21 Stranded in the Deep Mountains

  Good times are short-lived, like a white horse passing through a gap, and before one has savored the sweetness thoroughly, unexpected things happen again.

  "Tomorrow, no matter what, we have to go back to work. We can't always be stuck in this comfortable state. If it weren't for the fact that you and the boss are cousins, we would have been fired long ago for taking a half-month break without reason, especially since we're both in important positions." At night, after sending off Rui Xin, Hong Jun returned to the dormitory, and Xu Ming's first sentence was this. This made Hong Jun think of his own work, yeah, he couldn't rest any longer, the boss had already been too kind, he couldn't not give the boss face, one more day with Rui Xin, and then he should go back to work.

  "Is anyone in the room? Can you help me open the door?" Hong Jun was drinking water when a weak voice came from outside the dormitory door.

  Upon hearing this voice, Hong Jun immediately spat out a mouthful of tea onto Fat Chen's body.

  "It's a small snake." Several people said in unison. Fat Chen didn't even bother to wipe the tea water off his body, and with a swaying motion of his stout figure, he ran over to open the door. Although his running looked like a slow walk to others.

  The door opened, and several people jumped in unison. Outside the door stood a small snake with high cheekbones, a messy beard, and a dusty face that looked exhausted and panicked. It had been half a month since they last saw him, and he was now thin as a skeleton.

  "What's wrong?" Several people rushed forward and helped the stumbling little snake into the door.

  "I'm starving, is there anything to eat?" The little snake's eyes turned green as it slithered around, searching everywhere, and finally spotted the half cup of tea that Hong Jun had left on the table. It grabbed it like a thief and gulped it down.

  Lin Jie was also there, looking at the wretched Xiao She. Although she didn't know him, she had guessed that this was the person everyone had been searching for over the past half month. She pursed her lips and quickly brought out some leftover food from the kitchen, handing it to Xiao She. Xiao She looked at her in confusion, and Fat Chen smiled and patted his shoulder, indicating that the girl had some sort of relationship with him.

  The little snake didn't know if he had caught on to Fat Chen's hint, but after glancing at Lin Jie, his gaze was completely fixed on the leftover rice that Lin Jie was holding, and his eyes couldn't move anymore. If it weren't for the unfamiliar girl holding it, he would have pounced on it.

  Lin Jie looked at him staring at the food with wolf-like eyes, and smiled. She gently pushed the food in front of Xiao She: "Here, eat quickly, looks like you're starving."

  The little snake didn't care about anything else and took over the already cooled mantou, gobbling it up...

  "What's going on? He suddenly disappeared and his phone is unreachable." Seeing Xiaoshe ate seven-tenths full, Pang Chen finally couldn't bear it anymore, snatched his chopsticks, and asked.

  The little snake, however, paid no attention to them, as he was fully focused on the food in front of him and had no time to bother with the people around him. All that could be seen was him swallowing a mouthful of food, wiping his lips, and then reaching under the tea table to grab half a bottle of white wine, picking up a small teacup, filling it to the brim, and downing it in one gulp, causing the 56-degree Erguotou liquor to flow into his belly. This left Hong Jun and the others staring in shock, as they had never seen Little Snake drink so heavily before, being someone who normally didn't even touch a drop of alcohol.

  "I, I got lost. I was supposed to go back to the dorm after work, but I ended up getting lost and walked into the mountains." After eating his fill, drinking enough, and downing a cup of white wine, Xiao He's emotions finally calmed down, he looked at Hong Jun, then at Xu Ming, Fat Chen, and Lin Jie, and said to everyone.

  "Nonsense, the dormitory and factory are just a few steps away from each other. You've walked this route many times before, you can find your way with your eyes closed. How could you possibly get lost? Besides, we're in a plain area, even if you did get lost, how would you end up in the mountains? We're at least 50 miles away from the mountainous region. Are you saying that getting lost made you circle around the globe and come back?" Fat Chen said with an incredulous expression, mercilessly teasing Xiao She, but was immediately shut down by Lin Jie's vicious pinch on his thigh, accompanied by a sentence "After what we've been through, what else don't you believe?"

  The little snake poured another glass of wine and took a big gulp, scaring Hong Jun to quickly snatch the cup away. The 56-degree liquor would get an ordinary person drunk after just three or four liang, yet Xiao Hua had already downed nearly three liang despite not usually drinking at all.

  "I, you don't know, the things I've encountered these past few days are too strange." The little snake's face was filled with fear.

  Hong Jun patted his shoulder in comfort: "Brother, you're home now, everyone's here. No matter what dangers or strange things you've encountered, they're all over now."

  The little snake looked at everyone, a few people nodded, which made his courage bigger, and the fear on his face disappeared. After tidying up his thoughts, he said: "I don't know how I got lost, and I didn't expect that after walking for almost two years on this less-than-500-meter highway, I would actually get lost. Brother Pang was right, if it were usual times, I could walk on this road with my eyes closed."

  But then that afternoon, I had an accident.

  I still can't recall the exact situation to this day, I just remember that afternoon after work, I was walking aimlessly on the road alone, playing mobile games while walking. At first, I didn't realize anything was wrong, but at some point, the noisy car sounds around me disappeared, and the ground beneath my feet started to become uneven, even tripping over something. So, my eyes left the phone screen, only to find that I wasn't walking on a pedestrian path at all, but rather on a flat mountain slope, and what had tripped me up was a protruding rock.

  My first reaction was that my eyes were playing tricks on me, and I had gotten eye strain from staring at my phone for too long. So, I rubbed my eyes hard, but when I opened them again, all I saw was a slope of mountains and some pine trees in the distance. I walked to the edge of the slope in confusion, only to see a steep cliff stretching down below me. It turned out that I was standing at the summit of a precipitous mountain, surrounded by endless peaks. I had no idea when or how I got into these mountains.

  The little snake's tone became urgent, "Do you know how surprised I was at the time? Fat brother is right, our place is more than 50 miles away from the nearest mountainous area. Even if I got lost, I shouldn't have ended up deep in the mountains. And I checked my phone, from getting off work to finding myself lost in the wilderness, it's only been twenty minutes at most. That means, unknowingly, I used only twenty minutes to walk to a mountainous area that's also more than 50 miles away, and even reached the top of the mountain. Unless I have the skill of teleportation, can you say this is possible?"

  Several people looked at each other, nodded slowly, and realized that they couldn't scare the little snake again. They all shook their heads simultaneously.

  The little snake might have had a bit too much to drink and didn't notice the attitude of several people around him towards this matter. He continued to sweep up the leftover food, saying: "I was so scared that I sat on the ground for a long time without reacting, until the sun set in the west, I slowly came back to my senses from the daze. The thing is too strange, I actually ran alone into an unknown mountain range in a very short period of time. After my brain could think again, I immediately took out my phone and wanted to call you guys, but who knew that after looking at my phone, there was no signal. Not knowing where I was, nor being able to contact others, I sat on the rock, not daring to think or do anything."

  Fat Chen nodded: "Hey, you're quite bold. If it were me, I'd probably faint on the spot and wouldn't wake up for at least three days and nights."

  Lin Jie gave him a glance: "Who's like you? Right, with your chubby appearance, no need to be unconscious for three days, even just an hour, I reckon you can attract all the wild beasts in the mountains."

  Xu Ming carefully looked at Fat Chen for a few moments: "Hmmm, in the end, it's most likely that there will be no corpse left."

  Several people smiled. They chose to tell irrelevant jokes at this time, not to cancel Chen, but to see Xiao She was too tense and had no choice but to liven up the atmosphere. As a result, Xiao She saw that his dormitory brothers all showed an indifferent expression, and he couldn't help but laugh. The tension when he just came back eased a lot.

  He cleared his throat: "Later, it was the voice of the night cat that made me regain my composure. I immediately found a withered branch and fortunately, on that evening, the moon was shining brightly, casting a silver-white glow over the earth, making it exceptionally bright. This slightly reduced my fear; otherwise, being suddenly alone in the wilderness would have scared me to death."

  The little snake went to find wine, but found that Hong Jun had already taken the wine away, so he gave up: "I'll just find a branch and hold it in my hand. When I'm outdoors, who knows what kind of animal or danger I might encounter, especially at night. With a branch in hand, I can defend myself and also use it to explore the road. It can also give me courage."

  It wasn't until the moon was high in the sky that I forced myself to accept the fact that I had become trapped in this vast, mysterious mountain range. My emotions slowly calmed down after that. Later on, I thought to myself, since I've already entered the mountains, everything else is secondary; first and foremost, I need to find a way out. So, I started searching for a path everywhere, but as it turned out, this mountain range was surrounded by an eerie darkness, devoid of any lights or fires. Under the moonlight, I gazed far into the distance, scanning an area of over ten miles in diameter, and there wasn't a single glimmer of light or smoke, nor were there any signs of human life or animal sounds. I was stunned once again - could this really be near the seaside?

  Hong Jun and Xu Ming nodded, Bin Hai City is located on the Shandong Peninsula, economically developed with a large population. The entire area can be said to be crowded with people, not to mention within a radius of ten or more miles. It's hard to find a place as big as a football field without any signs of human activity. If what Xiao She said is true, that there are no signs of human activity within a radius of ten or more miles, then this place absolutely cannot be within the borders of Bin Hai.

  "I've taken a good look at the terrain, and I know that I may be trapped in these deep mountains. For tens of miles around, there is no sign of human life. As the saying goes, 'a horse will die if it keeps looking at the mountain', from where I stand on the mountaintop, I can see for tens of miles, but if I have to climb over each mountain one by one, I estimate that the distance would be at least 50 or 60 miles. And this doesn't even take into account that these deep mountains don't even have any trails or signs of human activity, with dense forests and no roads. If I get lost and walk extra miles, the tens of miles I see from the mountaintop could turn into a hundred miles, and I still wouldn't know if I can find my way out. And if I really do get lost, who knows, maybe I'll never be able to escape. So, even for an experienced mountain person like myself, finding a way out would take at least one or two days."