Green Mountain Wild Man Valley - Kapitel 7
As soon as I finished speaking, I froze, because I saw a human head on a tree branch, moving slightly, as if its mouth was moving, about to say something!
Date: 2008-03-15 21:11:00
As soon as I finished speaking, I froze, because I saw a human head on a tree branch, moving slightly, as if its mouth was moving, about to say something!
I swung my sword at the head of the nearest person, but it was like puncturing a tattered leather bag. With a muffled thud, it split in two. It turned out to be just a leather sack filled with withered grass. The exterior did resemble a real face, and like the human skin nailed to the wall, it even smelled of gunpowder.
These are probably just dried-up human heads, swaying in the wind!
I mustered my courage and looked at the other black lumps again, but none of them moved.
There could never be ghosts in this world. I stared at the moving head, wanting to see what tricks it was up to, when Old Gu grabbed my clothes and said, "Quick! This is a living person, go and see!"
I'm not afraid of ghosts, and when I heard that Lao Gu said the same thing, I quickly rushed over.
As I got closer, I realized that this person was completely different from the other dead heads hanging on the branches. This person was lying prone among the branches, with long black hair hanging down to cover his face, and he was lying there in pain, trying to turn over.
The moment I saw this person's clothes, I felt a chill run down my spine. I recognized those clothes!
Old Gu's leg hurt, and he couldn't keep up. He could only shout from behind, "Be careful, Huang Ning! Check if he has gills behind his ears. Don't run into a fugitive!"
I didn't even have time to pay attention to him. I hurriedly turned the person over, brushed aside the hair covering her face, and saw that it was indeed Zhang Liheng, the girl I had only known for two days. However, her face was deathly pale and she was on the verge of death.
Zhang Liheng, panting, whispered to me, "Old Gu was wrong, there really was a crashed plane. Huang Ning, be careful, save me!"
Date: 2008-03-17 14:09:00
Zhang Liheng, panting, whispered to me, "Old Gu was wrong, there really was a crashed plane. Huang Ning, be careful, save me!"
The first thing Zhang Liheng said after we met was to warn me to be careful of Lao Gu.
It seems that when Lao Gu and I were analyzing the problem together, the young girl clearly heard what we were saying. The fact that she is reminding me in such a low voice now shows that she is also an insider who knows a lot of inside information.
I turned my head and saw Lao Gu struggling to crawl towards us. I quickly whispered, "How are you? Never mind that, where are you injured? And do you have any weapons on you?"
Zhang Liheng struggled to pull a pistol from her person and handed it to me: "We're running low on bullets, you can take this."
I squeezed the gun in my palm; it should be a Type 77 pistol. I didn't know if it was loaded. This gun was easy to accidentally fire if you cocked it with one hand. The good thing was that it was small and lightweight. I carefully hid it and looked at Zhang Liheng with a puzzled expression. This little girl even has a pistol; she's not simple.
Despite his leg injury, Lao Gu forced himself to walk over. I helped Zhang Liheng up and checked where she was injured.
Fortunately, I didn't find any obvious wounds or bleeding on Zhang Liheng's body. Zhang Liheng said, "It's okay, I just slipped and fell. This tree saved me. Help me up, I'll be fine after resting for a while!"
Looking up, I became increasingly suspicious of the tree. Its roots were inside the mountain and extended outwards. Could there be a large crack at the top of the rocky mountain? Wasn't Zhang Liheng with Zheng Jian's men? How could she have fallen here alone?
Old Gu walked up and stared at Zhang Liheng in disbelief, his eyes filled with suspicion.
Chapter 18 of "The Empty House in the Abyss (The Salvage Worker's Adventure)"
Chapter 18 of "The Empty House in the Abyss (The Salvage Worker's Adventure)"
Author: Ghost Grinning
Date: 2008-03-17 14:29:00
When I heard Zhang Liheng say that she was alright, I breathed a sigh of relief and stood up, keeping a little distance from Lao Gu. Zhang Liheng sat on the ground, panting and rubbing her ankles vigorously.
Looking at the strange tree, I was puzzled. What kind of tree was it? How could it be so strong as to survive inside the mountain? Moreover, when Lao Gu and I came in with the current, we felt two different kinds of pressure. There was no different feeling when we rushed down the waterfall or jumped into the tree. It was very strange. There was no barrier or sealed facility. How did they manage to do that?
Besides these, why is there a whole, tanned human skin nailed to the stone wall inside the mountain? And why is there a human head hanging on this tree branch, with withered grass already stuffed inside? All of this cannot be recent. Whether it's fugitives or airplanes, what is the connection between them and these frightening things?
These questions are not ones I can understand right now. The most pressing issue is still the living people!
Of the three of us alive, besides me, what else are Zhang Liheng and Lao Gu hiding? Which one is an ally I can trust?
Look at Lao Gu, I just saved his life. Even if he has some intention to harm me, at least he needs me, an unharmed person, to help him right now. And look at Zhang Liheng, she is obviously wary of Lao Gu, but not of me. She even gave me her handgun. She doesn't seem to want to harm me. However, I was a little careless. I forgot to search her body to see if she had any other weapons.
Date: 2008-03-17 21:49:00
In just one day and one night, so much happened, and I didn't know where to begin. I looked at Zhang Liheng, who was rubbing her feet with her head down. She didn't seem to have any other weapons on her, so I squatted down with Lao Gu and waited for her to catch her breath, hoping she would say something.
After a long pause, Zhang Liheng slowly said, "It's not urgent to go out now. We don't know what the environment outside is like. It's questionable whether we can even get back alive. Although I don't know much, I don't have anything to keep secret..."
What Zhang Liheng said was a little different from what Lao Gu said. Although they didn't happen at the same time, they seemed to be connected in many ways.
Zhang Liheng was originally a member of a military region where the plane crash occurred. This military region matched the license plate number of a certain military region in the northern coastal region that Lao Gu mentioned, but it was not a department of the Fujian Navy, as it was located in several provinces.
Moreover, Zhang Liheng had received orders six months ago to go on a business trip to the Zhejiang Provincial Fisheries Department to do fieldwork. The job was very simple: to copy and summarize the data reported by subordinate reservoirs, fisheries administration, meteorology, hydrology and other departments in Zhejiang Province as usual, pick out some special and unusual situations and hand them over to the military region, and then conduct on-site investigations of some specific matters according to instructions. This fieldwork was done every year, so Zhang Liheng didn't pay any attention to it.
Zhang Liheng was unaware that her military region had sent people to the Xin'anjiang Reservoir to search for fugitives a month earlier.
After receiving a request from the military region to assist in salvaging the crashed aircraft, Lao Gu reported it to the Zhejiang Provincial Fisheries Department as usual. Zhang Liheng initially thought it was an accident after seeing the information, but it wasn't until Lu Tongchun led Fujian naval personnel to the Xin'anjiang Reservoir that she realized something was wrong. How could she, as a field staff member, not know that her own military region had requested assistance from the Fujian naval frogman unit to salvage the crashed aircraft across provinces? So she asked the Fisheries Department to come to the reservoir on a business trip and joined this joint operation.
Date: 2008-03-17 21:50:00
Lu Tongchun was stationed at the headquarters, responsible for coordinating local transportation, security, and logistics; Zheng Jian was an officer from the Fujian Navy's internal security unit, and he brought the most naval officers and soldiers with him to this joint operation, so he was in charge; Lao Gu was a local cadre who was familiar with the reservoir environment; and so this team, set up in the open, was formed to search for the crashed plane.
However, in the shadows, Zhang Liheng slowly sensed a powerful undercurrent surging behind her. It was because her own military region's plane had crashed, and she hadn't seen a single person from her unit. Moreover, after Lao Gu and Deng Jianguo went to the depths of the reservoir to survey the terrain, Deng Jianguo and Captain Luo had been whispering to each other for a long time, claiming that the salvage force was too weak and insisting that Ding Gen and I come to help.
I tilted my head, pondering Zhang Liheng's words. I'd heard quite a few truths and lies these past two days, and there were some loopholes I couldn't recall right away. But based on my relationship with Instructor Deng, I always paid attention to what he said. I remembered that Instructor Deng said the higher-ups had assigned him only raw recruits with guns, but Lao Gu and Zhang Liheng both mentioned, intentionally or unintentionally, that Zheng Jian's troops were internal security personnel from the Fujian Navy? How could raw recruits go to the internal security department?
Date: 2008-03-17 22:20:00
I kept this question to myself and listened to Zhang Liheng continue.
Last night, around midnight, Zhang Liheng was seasick and didn't sleep very soundly. So when the bottom of the boat bumped into something, she woke up immediately. When she came out to look, she saw Zheng Jian leading people off the boat. Zhang Liheng was very curious and asked Zheng Jian what he was doing.
Zheng Jian was relatively polite to Zhang Liheng, saying that he was acting on orders from his superiors and could not disclose the details.
Zhang Liheng repeatedly inquired until she revealed that she was not an official from the Fisheries Bureau but a field agent from the military region. Only then did Zheng Jian say that the search equipment he was carrying had reacted, indicating that the black box of the crashed plane was nearby and that they had to act immediately. In the rush, Zhang Liheng packed her things and followed Zheng Jian off the ship.
A short while later, two small boats came from the side, carrying Zheng Jian and his soldiers, totaling more than a dozen people. The group boarded the boats in two batches and set off, but instead of heading straight ahead, they took a detour and went to the waters far behind the rocky mountain. Zheng Jian didn't say a word along the way, while his men were all heavily armed and on high alert.
In the darkness, Zhang Liheng didn't know how long she had been walking. She only vaguely remembered that the small boat had passed through some narrow waterways, with maze-like hills on both sides. When the boat stopped, she looked at her watch and it was almost dawn.
Chapter 19 of "The Empty House in the Abyss (The Salvage Worker's Adventure)"
Chapter 19 of "The Empty House in the Abyss (The Salvage Worker's Adventure)"
Author: Ghost Grinning
Date: 2008-03-17 22:45:00
What happened next puzzled Zhang Liheng. Zheng Jian didn't plan to lead his men into the water to retrieve the items. Instead, he urged the soldiers to climb up the mountain. He didn't know what was attracting him from the top. Zheng Jian and his men carried many backpacks full of supplies and struggled to climb the mountain. However, Zhang Liheng noticed that Zheng Jian and his men didn't have any tracking devices exposed. It seemed as if they knew they were going to climb this rocky mountain all along.
Why not take the front route when we're climbing this rocky mountain early in the morning? Why go around in such a big circle, going through some kind of waterway? Zhang Liheng followed along, full of suspicion and very worried about the trip.
It was dark, the road was slippery, and it had rained. This rocky mountain was not easy to climb at all. Not only was there no vegetation, but it was also full of cracks of all sizes. It didn't look very high, but it was difficult to climb. Zheng Jian gave Zhang Liheng a strong flashlight for illumination, and that's how they finally made it to the halfway point.
During the short break, something unexpected happened, and Zhang Liheng still looked somewhat frightened when she recounted it.
The place where Zhang Liheng sat down to rest was under a protruding rock, deep inside the rock. In a moment of carelessness, Zhang Liheng did not carefully shine a strong flashlight on it. This small oversight almost cost her her life.
At first, it was just a soft dripping sound. Zhang Liheng thought it was rain that had fallen overnight, slowly dripping from the rocks. She shifted her position and prepared to stand up and follow Zheng Jian and his group.
With a casual flick of the flashlight, Zhang Liheng noticed a crevice deep within the rocks, with wind blowing out from it, suggesting that there was a cave beneath the large rock.
There were many such cracks along the way on the rocky mountain. Zhang Liheng wasn't particularly curious, but she wondered why the mountain looked like it was made up of giant rocks. How come it didn't collapse when it was flooded and turned into a reservoir?
Date: 2008-03-17 23:51:00
The moment the flashlight beam shone back onto the ground, Zhang Liheng sensed something was wrong. There seemed to be two things stuck in the crack between the rocks, angled towards her, but their color definitely wasn't rock. Zhang Liheng quickly swung the flashlight back to take a closer look. What were these two things? They looked like... a big nail?
The nail caps are round and thick, one pointing outwards and the other leaning down, also pointing outwards, with the sharp nail bodies pressed together and wedged into the gap.
This thing that looks like a nail could never be a nail, because it's too long, almost half a meter. If there were such a big nail in the world, there would be no use for it. Zhang Liheng was even more suspicious of what she was seeing, because it was pointed at the bottom and had a round shape on top. Her first impression was that it was a nail.
Zheng Jian called to Zhang Liheng from ahead to hurry up and not fall behind. Zhang Liheng agreed and then decided to ignore it, taking one last look before leaving.
Sometimes, curiosity isn't necessarily a good thing. Zhang Liheng took another look and felt something was wrong. There was some white stuff on the nail cap, and she didn't know what it was. The dripping sound at the beginning was the sound of water flowing out from the nail cap.
Zhang Liheng moved closer, almost squeezing her whole body into the gap, before she could see clearly what the two nails were. She was immediately terrified and her hands and feet went cold.
Date: 2008-03-18 13:13:00
Zhang Liheng moved closer, almost squeezing her whole body into the gap, before she could see clearly what the two nails were. She was immediately terrified and her hands and feet went cold.
As Zhang Liheng got closer to the nail, she finally saw what it was.
I hadn't seen anything scary all night, but suddenly I found myself lying face down in front of someone—a dead person!
The nail was indeed a person, but a child, who had been dead for who knows how many years. The head was large, the body small, the skin dry and dehydrated, tightly wrinkled and bluish-purple. Both arms had been amputated, the legs were straightened, and the area below the shoulders was hard and crammed into a stick shape. Above the shoulders, the nails... Zhang Liheng's voice became hoarse as she spoke, and judging from her expression, she was too disgusted to continue. I quickly waved my hand: "Okay, stop talking. I can guess what it looks like. Tell me what happened next, how did you get injured?"
Zhang Liheng clutched her chest and exhaled with difficulty, saying, "The child corpse's neck was stuffed into its chest cavity, its head was flattened on its shoulder, its eyes were bulging out and staring at me, and some black fluid was flowing out. I was so frightened by this that I felt like vomiting, my legs went weak, I pressed myself to the ground, and shouted for Zheng Jian to come quickly!"
Zhang Liheng looked like she was about to vomit, and said, "I spoke softly, but there was a loud noise outside, it was a gunshot! It made my ears ring."
I looked at Lao Gu. It turned out that the gunshot I heard on Stone Mountain last night was fired by Zheng Jian's men. I wondered what they had encountered this time. I could only wait with a questioning look for Zhang Liheng to tell us.
Zhang Liheng shook her head and said, "I don't know either, but I heard the soldiers' voices, and it seemed that they had discovered the crashed plane."
Old Gu looked surprised: "I thought it was a fugitive; there was no plane crash at all!"
I frowned, my heart sinking. I came here to salvage the crashed plane, but what I saw had nothing to do with it. The strangely shaped corpses, plus the ones Lao Gu and I had just encountered, were the fourth type. None of them had drowned recently. They all looked like they had been tortured to death, and the time period should be before the liberation. Why are there so many of them all appearing now?
Thinking of the azure lake, I wondered if something had happened underwater, uprooting these remains that should have been laid to rest? Would there be other kinds of corpses later? I'm pretty sure I'll encounter more!
Chapter 20 of "The Empty House in the Abyss (The Salvage Worker's Adventure)"
Chapter 20 of "The Empty House in the Abyss (The Salvage Worker's Adventure)"
Author: Ghost Grinning
Date: 2008-03-18 17:36:00
Zhang Liheng still didn't say how she got injured. Looking at me and Lao Gu, she finally spoke slowly: "Just as I straightened up to see what was going on with the gunshot, this happened to me!"
After the muffled gunshot, silence fell everywhere, broken only by the sound of the cool wind blowing down from the mountaintop. Zhang Liheng straightened up and cautiously drew her pistol. Seeing that her companions who had been climbing with her had all turned off their flashlights, she sensed something was wrong and turned off her own. In the darkness, she tried to make out what had happened by the faint light from the water's surface.
When Zhang Liheng casually turned her head, she noticed that there was more than just one man nail in the crevice of the stone. Behind him, there was a child's corpse slowly pushing its way out. Without hesitation, she raised her pistol and aimed, but the man nail stopped moving. Zhang Liheng thought that someone was hiding behind the child's corpse, so she shouted, "Come out!"
There was no movement. Zhang Liheng gripped her pistol tightly, slowly moved closer, and shone her flashlight inside. She saw that there weren't many of these child corpses, only four that she could make out. They were squeezed together at different heights in the gap, and without exception, all of them were facing outwards. Could these really be nails?
Shining a flashlight on the child's corpse's feet, Zhang Liheng saw that the child's feet were inserted into a crevice, and there was a fairly large space inside the crevice, where a large cabinet was stuck. It was impossible to see it without careful observation, and it was made of an unknown material. It was angular and its color was very similar to that of the mountain rocks.
At this moment, the child's corpse stuck in the cabinet was slowly rotating, as if the cabinet was trying to push the person out. Zhang Liheng felt a chill in her heart. Such a strange thing was obviously not a good thing. Just looking at its size, it was as tall as two coffins. What could be inside it?
The only reassuring thing is that the cabinet was not pushed in from the outside when it was stuck in the gap, but was placed inside from the beginning. It would be impossible for it to get out of the gap. Even Zhang Liheng could only see it with a flashlight. The gap was so small that only an adult could crawl in.
Date: 2008-03-18 18:09:00
Watching the slowly rotating man-made nail, Zhang Liheng dared not hesitate any longer. She withdrew from the gap and began climbing up the mountain. At least Zheng Jian and the others were ahead of her. No matter what trouble they encountered, more people meant more solutions, and it would be easier to deal with difficulties.
After turning off the flashlight, the rocky mountain was very difficult to climb. Zhang Liheng knew that Zheng Jian's men were ahead, but she couldn't see them at all. She didn't dare to shout, so she crouched down among the rocks, not knowing what to do.
After a while, she realized that the gunshot had come from the right front of the boulder. So she quietly moved her feet and crept to the right, bypassing the boulder. There was a slope on the right. When Zhang Liheng jumped over it, her ankle just grazed a sharp stone. She was immediately in pain and broke out in a cold sweat, but she didn't dare to stop. She continued to climb up the slope with a limp.
The slope was full of rocks and gravel. Before she had gone far from the crevice, at most three meters up, Zhang Liheng lost her footing and slid down the slope. There was nothing like dry grass to stop her. Her limping leg made it impossible for her to stop. When she finally did, misfortune struck again: half of her leg got stuck in the crevice.