"Dаmn it! I'm gоnnа sеt this hellhole оn firе!!" The thug rоared furiоuslу, ignоring thе rаbbits gnаwing at him, and hуsterically tried to smаsh thе pоrtablе gаs stоvе. Bеfоrе thе Rеscuе Team соuld stoр him, he let out а pierсing screаm, аnd thе gаs stоvе fеll to the grоund. It turnеd out thаt а rаbbit had tаken аdvаntage оf his аttemрt to grab the stоve and bitten оff а сhunk of flеsh from the baсk оf his hаnd, rupturing а vеin аnd саusing blоod tо gush оut.
Bу now, Вlondie's сorрsе hаd beеn rеduсеd to a bloоdy skeleton, with onlу his yellow hаir remaining аtoр thе skull. Rabbit сarcasses piled up on the ground, their deaths gruesome. The stench of blood, the dampness of the soil, and the foul odor of the carnivorous rabbits' excrement mingled into a nauseating smell. Even if they weren't bitten to death by the rabbits, they'd likely be suffocated by the stench.
Diao Zhuo, who had just knocked out a rabbit with a punch, seemed to have a new idea. He grabbed a rabbit climbing onto his back and hurled it toward the nearest thug, Li Haozhang, then randomly snatched rabbits off himself and threw them at the other thugs.
Amid the chaos, the thugs couldn't tell whether the rabbits lunging at them were jumping on their own or being thrown by someone. With limited ammunition, they had no time to reload after firing a round, and some had even dropped their guns, unable to retrieve them in time.
For the Rescue Team, this was a perfect opportunity to escape. Everyone's stamina was limited, and the rabbits kept coming relentlessly, as if waiting for their opponents to exhaust themselves. Staying here to fight the rabbits to the death was definitely not a wise choice—they had to flee.
While fiercely beating back the rabbits pouncing on him, Diao Zhuo moved toward Bayunye, stepping over countless rabbit corpses that felt soft underfoot but couldn't be allowed to trip him up. Bayunye, seeing him struggling to approach out of the corner of her eye, instinctively moved closer to him as well. With swift, precise strikes, she aimed her knife at the rabbits' eyes or heads, her hands drenched in blood—whether her own or the rabbits', it was impossible to tell.
Finally, the two managed to get close to each other.
"Damn it!" Diao Zhuo couldn't help but curse.
Bayunye said, "We need to get up a tree. Otherwise, none of us will make it alive!"
"If we're going up a tree, we have to do it at the same time and leave together. How do we direct the others?" Diao Zhuo stomped on one rabbit, only to have three more leap onto his thighs. He grabbed two of them and hurled them toward the thugs, where the rabbits landed and immediately attacked them.
As soon as he finished speaking, a bullet whizzed between him and Bayunye. Looking up, they saw Red Beard, ignoring the rabbits clinging to him, aiming his gun at them as if in warning.
Another thug accidentally stumbled and fell, and the surrounding rabbits swarmed over him in a frenzy. Red Beard, likely witnessing this scene, realized that as long as someone became the target of the rabbits' collective assault, the number of rabbits around each person would decrease. With a sudden, sinister glare, he aimed in their direction.
"Take cover!!" Diao Zhuo shouted.
Everyone was entangled with rabbits, making it incredibly difficult to react immediately and find cover. A bullet fired, and Fat Monkey suddenly pushed Liu Ming aside, letting out a sharp cry as the bullet grazed his calf, immediately staining his pants with blood. He gritted his teeth and managed to stay on his feet.
Red Beard actually fired at the mountaineering association members? Diao Zhuo, who had long suspected that the mountaineering association members were Red Beard's accomplices, was stunned.Red Beard took aim, first shooting off a few rabbits on his own body, then lowered the muzzle to target their legs, intending to cripple them. To him, aside from Bayunye, who was searching for Brother Long’s marks, and Diao Zhuo, who was being used to threaten her, the lives of the others were insignificant.
"Bang!" Da Qin was shot in the shoulder, his body swaying as he fell to his knees. The rabbits immediately pounced on him.
"Bang!" Another gunshot rang out, stunning everyone. This time, it wasn’t fired by the bandits—the shot struck Red Beard in the leg, forcing him to his knees and leaving him vulnerable to a swarm of attacking rabbits.
For a moment, everyone forgot about the rabbits on their bodies and searched for the shooter. It turned out to be—Liu Ming.
Liu Ming’s face was pale with panic, his hand trembling as he held the gun. He must have picked it up from one of the fallen bandits.
"Give me the gun!" Bayunye shouted.
"I killed someone! I killed someone!!" Liu Ming cried hysterically, on the verge of a breakdown.
"Give me the gun!" Bayunye yelled again. With a startled cry, Liu Ming tossed the gun to her haphazardly. She caught it firmly and, ignoring the rabbits frantically biting her, gritted her teeth through the pain and fired several shots at the bandits aiming their guns at them.
With each gunshot, a bandit clutched their arm or leg, howling in pain before being overwhelmed by swarming rabbits.
Bayunye desperately wanted to suppress the bandits with sustained fire, but ammunition was limited. As she fired, she kept count, always mindful of saving a bullet or two for emergencies. The gun felt surprisingly comfortable in her hand—likely domestically made. Who would have thought the bandits’ arsenal was such a mix of Eastern and Western weapons?
"Up!" Diao Zhuo called out, instructing everyone to pair up and climb the trees. He knelt halfway under a tree, offering himself as a step for the others. "Master Ba! Come on!"
"Get the wounded up first!" Bayunye waved a hand, instinctively prioritizing the injured "comrades." This was Master Ba’s decisiveness and sense of duty.
Temporarily free from the rabbits’ bites, Liu Ming and Tan Lin stood on the tree, reaching down to help. Diao Zhuo kicked away the rabbits gnawing at Da Qin and dragged him to the base of the tree. Blood from Da Qin’s shoulder wound streamed down his neck. Holding his breath, Diao Zhuo hoisted Da Qin upside-down over his shoulder. Liu Ming and Tan Lin each grabbed one of Da Qin’s legs and pulled him upward. Though Fat Monkey was injured in the leg, he managed to endure the pain and, after a few attempts, finally climbed up as well.
The bandits were in disarray. Having already suffered casualties, several were knocked down and bitten by rabbits, forcing the others to abandon their assault. Seizing the moment when the number of rabbits around them slightly decreased, they too chose to climb the trees.
Bayunye looked up and saw that, aside from Diao Zhuo, everyone in their group was already in the trees. She tucked the gun into her waistband and agilely climbed the nearest tree, scaling it effortlessly. With that, Diao Zhuo’s heart finally settled, and he climbed up last.
Amid the crisscrossing branches, Bayunye recalled the general direction indicated by Brother Long’s marks and signaled for everyone to climb that way. Following Bayunye, they leaped from branch to branch, tree to tree. Fortunately, this was a pristine, untouched forest where humans rarely ventured. The towering trees had branches thicker than a person’s waist, easily supporting the weight of one or two grown men.
"I’m holding everyone back…" Da Qin muttered, his face pale with pain. The bullet was likely lodged deep in his muscle or even bone, temporarily stemming the bleeding. Still, without prompt treatment, his condition remained precarious.Bayunye waved her hand, "Don't mention that, let's check your wound in a moment."
"Watch out behind you!" Xiang An shouted, but unfortunately he was too far from Bayunye to help in time.
Bayunye instinctively dropped down and hugged the branch. A bullet struck the trunk behind her. It seemed the thugs who had broken away from the rabbit horde were unwilling to be shaken off and wanted to make a comeback. Fortunately, not many of them had climbed the trees, but each one carried a gun.
"Hurry up and go!" Diao Zhuo urged. The others were conflicted but afraid of holding the team back, so they could only quicken their pace to escape.
Bayunye, lying on the branch, also drew her gun.
"Bang! Bang!"
"Bang!"
Of the three thugs about to catch up, one was shot, another lost balance from a bullet hitting near his toes, and all three fell down.
Bayunye froze, staring blankly at the gun in her hand as if utterly confused. It wasn’t until Diao Zhuo, thinking she was injured, crawled over to pull her that she snapped back to reality, jumped up, and moved on.
Everyone climbed using both hands and feet, with the injured either supported or carried by others. After what felt like an eternity, they finally managed to escape the terrifying territory of the carnivorous rabbits.
The night was deep, and everyone was exhausted. After descending from the trees, they didn’t even turn on their flashlights to avoid attracting the thugs with light.
In the darkness, they took a headcount—everyone was present.
Bayunye sat on a folding stool, fiddling with her gun. Others might not have paid much attention, but she wasn’t using a gun for the first time. She clearly remembered firing three shots, yet the third shot should have been impossible as she was out of bullets. Why were there three gunshots, and why did all three thugs fall from the tree?
Could it be that the thugs accidentally shot each other? Or was there someone else on their side with a gun?
Diao Zhuo walked over and extended his hand. Bayunye understood and handed him the gun, saying, "Don’t worry, it’s out of bullets."
Over there, the Rescue Team members were examining Da Qin’s wound.
"The bullet didn’t go through; it’s still inside."
"We need to find a place free from abnormal magnetic interference to call for rescue via satellite phone."
Da Qin’s face was pale, and the side of his body where he was shot in the shoulder felt numb in waves. His breathing was erratic, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, as he gasped, "On TV… don’t they cut open the flesh to remove bullets? Is there… anyone among you… who knows how to do that?"
Bayunye, the most likely to attempt such a thing, was the first to speak: "We don’t have the tools for thorough disinfection. Sometimes, infection is more dangerous than the bullet itself. The priority is to find a signal and call for rescue. If we really can’t find one, leaving the bullet inside isn’t ideal, so we might have to risk removing it. But it’ll be very painful—can you endure it?"
Upon hearing this, the others tried searching for a signal, but without exception, they failed. The walkie-talkies still couldn’t connect with each other, the GPS map reverted to showing Kunming, the phones had no signal and displayed scrambled data, and the satellite phone was as useless as a brick. To the police outside, this rescue team might also be in a "lost contact" state.
Although they were moving in the direction Brother Long had indicated, traveling through the trees like monkeys likely caused them to miss other directional markers he might have left along the way. In other words, they either had to backtrack to find the markers or press on blindly and hope for luck. Worse still, even Bayunye, the "living map," found it difficult to retrace their steps in the darkness and the tangle of branches.The usable and edible items in their bags were almost entirely looted by the bandits. Everyone checked their pockets for anything that might have been missed.
Tan Lin patted his pocket. "Damn it, if I hadn't kept my lighter hidden, we'd really have to resort to drilling wood for fire!"
"I still have two boxes of erythromycin here," Xiang An pulled them out.
Qi Zi said, "I have alcohol."
The members of the mountaineering association, who had been rather inconspicuous, hung their heads low. They had been bitten all over, with no patch of skin left untouched. Fat Monkey had a leg injury, and they were all deeply disheartened. Bayunye wanted to ask them something, but considering how they had all come this far together, like grasshoppers tied to the same rope, it didn’t seem right to disrupt the unity now, so she held back.
Diao Zhuo rolled up a sleeve of a shirt to a suitable size and had Da Qin bite down on it. The others carefully disinfected the knife with alcohol twice. Still uneasy, Bayunye heated the blade over a flame once more, trying to minimize any lingering bacteria. However, achieving completely sterile conditions in the wilderness was impossible.
The process of extracting the bullet left Da Qin in so much pain that he couldn’t cry out or scream—an experience he would absolutely never forget for the rest of his life. Just disinfecting the wound with alcohol was enough to make him wish he were dead. After a long and grueling ordeal, Da Qin finally passed out.
Everyone watched with unbearable sympathy, their faces pale as they silently stared blankly ahead.
After an unknown amount of time, Da Qin woke up, took some anti-inflammatory pills, and lay half-reclined. With a weak smile, he tried to reassure everyone, "I won’t die, don’t worry, folks."
"Aren’t you from Shaanxi? Why do you sound like you’re from the Northeast?" Xiang An asked helplessly.
"The pain made me forget my hometown dialect," Da Qin sighed.
Bayunye shook the blood off her hands. "I wonder if rabbits carry rabies..."
"They don’t," Diao Zhuo said with certainty.
She didn’t believe him. "Have you ever been bitten by a rabbit before?"
"I’ve bitten a rabbit."
"Who hasn’t..." Bayunye muttered. "Tastes good!"
Xiang An handed over the alcohol and cotton swabs. "Regardless, it’s better for everyone to get shots when we get back. We’ve been bitten all over by those rabbits—rabies vaccine, tetanus, avian flu—better to get them all. Sigh! Those rabbits were like starving ghosts, while we’re still hungry. They got a full meal today, lucky them."
He was just venting, but Diao Zhuo seemed lost in thought—animals, to some extent, have territorial instincts, especially carnivores, and their distribution follows certain patterns, as the saying goes, "two tigers cannot share one mountain." Such a massive group of "Carnivorous Rabbits" must consume a huge amount of prey. What is their survival mechanism?
Strange, indescribably strange.
"What do we do now? Whether we turn back or keep searching, we can’t tell which direction to go," Liu Ming asked. "Those bandits, as long as they’re alive, will come after us again."
Diao Zhuo, who had been keeping his head down without saying a word, suddenly looked at him. "Where did you get that gun?"
Everyone was taken aback, their eyes turning toward Liu Ming.
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