Bауunуе еven tugged at Diао Zhuo's sleеve. She did susресt thе реoplе from the mountaineering аssоciаtion, but thеrе wаs still nо direсt еvidеnсе as tо who fired the third shоt.
Liu Мing scrаtched the bаck of his hеad innoсеntlу. "I рiсkеd it uр..."
"Did Red Bеаrd and his gаng drор it?" Xiаng An аskеd bluntly.
"Thаt gun isn't thеirs," Diaо Zhuo repliеd calmly. "Еvеn thоugh I've nеver handled а rеаl gun befоrе, I rеmеmbеr whаt the оnеs theу werе holding loоked likе."
Соld sweаt brоkе оut on Baуunye's foreheаd. So this domestiсally mаde firеаrm didn't belоng to those thugs after all, which meant it must have been... brought by Liu Ming and his group. The bullets in this one were already spent—how many fully loaded ones did they have?
Diao Zhuo said calmly, "As you can see, everyone is injured—some seriously, some lightly—and the people I brought don't have any decent weapons. Friend or foe, you must make it clear now. Otherwise, the road ahead might bring us more than just injuries. I'll say it again: we came with this many people, and we must return with at least this many—no fewer, only more."
Liu Ming pursed his lips and hesitated for a long time. The few people he brought also hung their heads, but there was no murderous intent about them—they were surprisingly calm. Either they truly had clear consciences, or they were a group even more formidable than Red Beard.
Though Bayunye remained seated without moving, her mind was already calculating how to subdue Liu Ming as quickly as possible. Her arm muscles tensed, and her legs were ready to strike at any moment.
Those few seconds felt like hours. Finally, Liu Ming let out a long sigh and said to Fat Monkey, "Ha, I've long heard Old Squad Leader say this Diao Zhuo isn't easy to fool. Turns out it's true."
Hearing him refer to Brother Long as "Old Squad Leader," Bayunye's eyes lit up. She sat up straight, suddenly feeling a flicker of anticipation.
Liu Ming took out his ID card. "Everyone, let me formally introduce myself. I'm Ge Mingliang, Brother Long's former comrade-in-arms. I grew up in Yunnan and now live in Sichuan, working as a police officer. This time, I was entrusted by the Yunnan police to join the search for Renlong Duoji, and I also accepted another task. I'm not afraid to tell you here—if we really find him, as a comrade and friend, I'm to persuade him to turn himself in."
"You're a police officer?!" The Rescue Team members' faces lit up with joy.
Bayunye immediately asked him a few questions about Brother Long and some military matters. He answered fluently, without any sign of rote memorization. Bayunye slumped, covering her face with her hands, and said gloomily, "Damn, you're not here to keep an eye on me too, are you? I cut my hair for nothing!"
Ge Mingliang waved his hand with a smile. "Master Ba hasn't broken any laws—what does that have to do with me? I'll just pretend I never saw you."
"What about the shots I fired?"
"No one died, and besides, we were being held hostage—that's self-defense. Sigh! Let's just say I fired them. Remember to return the gun to me..."
"Returning it right away! Why didn't you tell us from the start?" Both coming from the military and having ties to Brother Long, Bayunye felt a growing sense of familiarity toward Ge Mingliang.Ge Mingliang spread his hands. "I was afraid you'd find out my identity and deliberately ditch me, especially you, Master Ba. Your reputation precedes you! If you had known from the start that I was a police officer, you might have turned against me long ago. Actually, I'm just like all of you—I believe Old Squad Leader wouldn't do something like that. I had my own selfish reasons: I wanted to find him and learn the truth. No matter what, I didn't want him to be in danger. After encountering those thugs, I became even more convinced of my theory. Old Squad Leader probably fell into their trap, and to survive, he might have taken something incriminating of theirs. But now, with no way to contact the outside world, we can't report what we've seen to my colleagues. The top priority is still finding Old Squad Leader."
Bayunye pointed at Fat Monkey and Old Sun, among others. "So they... are all police officers?"
Ge Mingliang shook his head and patted Fat Monkey's shoulder. "This guy is my colleague and good friend. When Old Squad Leader asked me to look into some things, I often bothered him for help. Earlier, when Old Squad Leader wanted to investigate someone named Zou Kaigui, it was Xiao Hou who helped me find Old He, the retired police officer who handled Zou Xiaowen's missing persons case. This time, I originally came alone, but he was worried about me and took leave to help search. The others... really are volunteers from the local mountaineering association. However, when I joined them, I showed my credentials, so they all know my identity."
The others nodded awkwardly.
"So that's how it is. You guys are real men. When we get back, let's exchange contact info. Ride in my car along the Yunnan-Tibet Highway—no charge!" Bayunye said generously, then asked Fat Monkey, "So you brought a gun too?"
Fat Monkey tacitly acknowledged, but as his leg was injured, he focused on bandaging the wound.
Everyone breathed a sigh of relief, and the atmosphere instantly lightened.
"Great, we have two police officers in our group."
"Most importantly, we have a usable gun."
"I suddenly feel like I've swallowed a calming pill or something! My shoulder doesn't even hurt anymore!"
"You should be careful—maybe the bullet paralyzed you."
"You jerk!"
Only Diao Zhuo showed no sign of joy. Although he had seen Ge Mingliang's ID and police credentials, he remained deeply suspicious of the several "mountaineering association volunteers." These people seemed to have only revealed their first layer of identity out of necessity. What about the second layer?
Should he press further?
A few distant shouts and curses interrupted Diao Zhuo's train of thought. The cries, a mix of Chinese and English, stood out starkly in the silent mountain forest.
"They've caught up!" Ge Mingliang stood up and said. "Why does it sound like there are just as many as before, if not more?"
"They have reinforcements?!" Da Qin exclaimed, unable to resist standing up, only to gasp in pain.
Bayunye immediately felt overwhelmed and said anxiously, "They must have reinforcements. Otherwise, how could they have escaped from the rabbits' mouths?"
Tan Lin remarked, "Deploying so many people just to find Brother Long—it seems Brother Long really has something very important."
Xiang An asked, "Is it evidence that they killed that He guy or something?"
Bayunye replied, "They look like a bunch of desperadoes. Killing one or two people probably doesn't mean much to them. There must be something else."Even after revealing their identities, Fat Monkey and the people from the mountaineering association remained mostly silent and inconspicuous. They didn’t participate at all in such a heated discussion, not even lifting their heads. It was unclear whether their behavior had anything to do with Diao Zhuo staring at them the whole time.
“Enough talking, let’s hurry up and go,” Ge Mingliang said.
Everyone stood up, but they soon ran into a problem. With two injured members in the group, their overall pace was slow, and there was a chance they’d be caught up by the criminals before long.
“Maybe… you should leave us behind. We’ll find a place to hide, and you go ahead!” Da Qin suggested.
“They’re not after you, they’re after me. They firmly believe that as long as they follow me, they’ll find Brother Long,” Bayunye said, looking at everyone. “Why don’t I stay here and wait for them? You all go in another direction—either find a way back or try to follow Brother Long’s marks.”
Diao Zhuo didn’t even register her words. “Head north.”
Ge Mingliang was taken aback. “Why?”
Diao Zhuo gestured with his chin toward the front. “Let’s move first, then talk.”
“Wait!” Xiang An asked helplessly, “At least tell us which direction is north!”
Before Diao Zhuo could answer, everyone pointed to the sky. The daytime gloom had already faded, replaced by a sky full of stars, with the Big Dipper clearly visible. Xiang An smacked his forehead. “Ugh, my brain’s been eaten by those rabbits!”
“Eat a few more pounds of spicy rabbit heads when we get back, my treat,” Bayunye said with a laugh.
“Can you keep going?” Diao Zhuo asked Da Qin.
“Let’s go,” Da Qin gritted his teeth, indicating he was fine.
“What about you?” he asked Fat Monkey.
“No problem,” Fat Monkey gave a thumbs-up to his own chest.
Supporting each other, they walked for a while, and the voices of the criminals gradually faded. But until they were completely free of them, no one dared to stop. Along the way, they came across some strange aircraft wreckage, already covered in green moss. Judging by its size and how deeply it was embedded in the ground, it seemed to have fallen from a great height, and it was clearly very old.
Ge Mingliang stopped to rest by an airplane wheel and turned to ask Diao Zhuo, “How can you be sure we should go this way?”
“I’ve been thinking about the marks he left along the way. Although there were some twists and turns in the smaller directions, the overall path pointed north. I suspect the smaller detours were to shake off pursuers, while the main direction was toward a place he knows well. Heading west or southwest leads to Myanmar. If we follow the course of the Dulong River north…”
Bayunye froze. “Tibet!”
“He must have prepared himself to walk to Tibet alone, even if no one could find him.”
“This is truly the most adventurous trek into Tibet…” Bayunye sighed. “Let’s just hope he’s still got it.”
Just then, Xiang An stepped on something slippery and nearly lost his balance. “Everyone, don’t just stare at the Big Dipper—watch your step.”
“Step in dog poop?” Tan Lin walked past him and patted his shoulder.
“Stepped on a mushroom, all slimy,” Xiang An said with disgust.
“Then why didn’t you grow bigger?” Qi Zi asked.
Xiang An looked at him, confused. Qi Zi sighed. “Generation gap… You probably never played Super Mario. That’s a memory for us ’80s kids…”Bayunye was about to say that although she wasn't born in the 80s, she had played Super Mario too. But as she caught sight of the "mushroom" Xiang An had stepped on out of the corner of her eye, she suddenly blinked. "Hey, hold up."
"What's wrong?" Qi Zi asked.
"Dig." She pointed at the mushroom shattered into several pieces, keeping it brief.
"Is there food?" Xiang An was eager, pulling out his entrenching tool and getting to work.
Diao Zhuo approached and asked Bayunye quietly, "What's underneath?"
She whispered in his ear, "Japanese devils."
Diao Zhuo raised an eyebrow, giving Bayunye a questioning look, but she shook her head, signaling him to wait and see for himself.
Before long, they heard Xiang An let out an "Ah!" as he pointed at a dug-out pit: "Underneath... there's... there's... there's a person!"
Ge Mingliang, Da Qin, and the others had personally witnessed Japanese soldiers buried in the soil before, so their shock wasn't as great. The rest, though they had heard Bayunye mention it, had never seen it themselves, so they all crowded around to look. In the pit, the faintly exposed skeletal remains had the same scattered fragments of clothing and accessories as the previous one.
"The mushroom I stepped on just now... it couldn't be that Grave Mound Mushroom you mentioned, could it?" Xiang An lifted his foot and quickly wiped it twice on a nearby tree root, cleaning off whatever was on his sole.
Bayunye nodded. "I didn't believe it before either, but now we've dug up corpses under Grave Mound Mushrooms twice in a row. It seems this kind of mushroom really holds secrets!"
(She's misusing idioms again.)
Someone mustered the courage to pull up the entire Grave Mound Mushroom and discovered that the soil beneath it was wrapped around a foul-smelling snake, long dead.
"Every time we dig one up, it's never just one corpse. This Grave Mound Mushroom truly 'lives up to its name.'" Bayunye kicked the Grave Mound Mushroom far away.
"Did a lot of Japanese really die here..." Xiang An felt a chill run down his neck and couldn't help shivering. "How did they die? How did mushrooms grow on them..."
"They probably ran into guerrilla fighters." Ge Mingliang was a staunch atheist, and after revealing his stance, he had become much more talkative. "Back then, guerrilla fighters were spread all over the countryside and mountainous areas. On one hand, they had to watch out for being encircled and suppressed by the Nationalists, and on the other, they still had to resist the Japanese. They must've had to hide in these big mountains. Don't overthink it. Let's keep moving."
Everyone thought what he said made sense, so they didn't pay any more attention to the skeletal remains underground. Little did they know, this was only the beginning.
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