Наlf аn hour latеr, еvеrуоne returned tо gаther, and thе result was оbviоus—nо оnе hаd been аble to find Brother Long, nоt еven а single strаnd оf his hаir.
"Wе chесkеd, аnd this рlaсe isn't like that fоrеst we рassed through уesterdаy with all thоsе сhаоtiс illusiоns. Everу trеe hеrе is bеhaving nоrmallу," Gе Mingliang sаid, brushing thе dirt off his hаnds.
If only onе person hаd sееn Brоther Long, it cоuld hаvе beеn dismissеd аs а hаlluсinatiоn frоm being оverlу tense. Вut when а whоlе grouр sаw him, аnd Dа Qin was even "tаpped" by him, it requirеd everyоne to сarеfullу investigаte the cause. Bayunye felt that the probability of Brother Long deliberately hiding or playing a joke on them was extremely low. The only possibility was that there were still some unknown anomalies in this area.
"Where's Diao Zhuo?" Bayunye snapped out of her thoughts after pondering for a long while. She looked around but couldn't find this person, who always had a strong presence in her eyes, and felt momentarily confused.
"Did he go too far and hasn't returned yet?" Qi Zi didn't pay much attention. "Let's wait a little longer."
Xiang An said with some anticipation, "Did he discover Brother Long's 'true form'?"
Everyone chattered away, none of them thinking Diao Zhuo's late return was due to any mishap. In everyone's minds, he was the least likely person to run into trouble. Bayunye took out a whistle and blew it a few times, calling for Diao Zhuo to hurry back.
"Ah Shui isn't here either," Fat Monkey whispered to Ge Mingliang.
"Let's wait a bit longer," Ge Mingliang wasn't worried, seemingly placing great trust in Diao Zhuo's personal abilities.
Another ten minutes passed, and Diao Zhuo and Ah Shui were still nowhere to be seen. The sky grew overcast, and soon, fine raindrops began to fall from the sky. The world and the forest seemed veiled in a translucent gray gauze.
Bayunye grew restless and stood up abruptly. "All of you stay here. I'll go look for him."
"I should go with you!" Ge Mingliang also stood up.
Bayunye nodded and was about to turn around when she saw a familiar figure standing behind a tree in the distance, staring straight in her direction—Brother Long! She gasped. Learning from the others' earlier experiences, she didn't immediately run toward him but instead raised her hand and waved.
The distant "Brother Long" didn't respond. He stood motionless, staring fixedly in their direction, his face devoid of any trace of human vitality.
Unable to hold back, Bayunye ran forward a few steps. Suddenly, the "Brother Long" turned around, walked quickly, and disappeared behind a few thick tree trunks.
"Did you all see that?" Bayunye asked.
"We all saw it," everyone replied.
Bayunye pondered for a moment but still couldn't make sense of it. "Forget it, finding Diao Zhuo is more important." As she spoke, she motioned for Ge Mingliang to follow her, ready to set off. Just then, a steady, unhurried sound of footsteps came from behind. Everyone turned to see Diao Zhuo and Ah Shui walking leisurely toward them, seemingly still discussing something in low voices.
Ah Shui glanced up and saw Bayunye running toward Diao Zhuo. He quietly stepped aside, returning to his role as someone with low presence.
"Where have you been! I thought you'd been lured away by a beautiful fox spirit and decided to abandon us!" Bayunye ran up to Diao Zhuo and gave him a punch.
"Are there fox spirits here?" Diao Zhuo asked earnestly, then looked regretful. "Why didn't you say so earlier?"Bayunye shot him a glare, then couldn't hold back a laugh. "As the team leader, you're really not setting a good example—arriving last and making everyone worry about having to search for you. That's a major taboo! Comrade Diao Zhuo, I hope you'll be more careful in the future."
Tan Lin let out a mischievous chuckle and posed a question rivaling the classic "If your mom and I fell into the water at the same time"—"So, if our Captain Diao really went missing here, Master Ba, who would you prioritize finding, Brother Long or Diao Zhuo?"
Bayunye was taken aback for a moment, then after a quick thought, crossed her arms and said, "First, I'd find that vixen."
The group stopped teasing them and began discussing the repeated sightings of "Brother Long," each offering their own theories, creating a lively, noisy discussion.
Ge Mingliang glanced again at the erratic GPS signal. "Could it be some kind of phantom caused by the abnormal magnetic field here? But this time, it's not trees or grass—it's Old Squad Leader? Even if we stretch the imagination, as long as he once appeared here and left some kind of imprint, it might be possible, like... a mirage!"
Xiang An shuddered, rubbing his arms. "This is the first time I've seen a mirage of a person. Coming here has really been an eye-opener."
With yet another strange occurrence, a cloud of suspicion lingered in Diao Zhuo's mind—the phantom forest, the carnivorous rabbits, the intermittently appearing Brother Long... Something always felt off, but he couldn't pinpoint it. It was like a tangled mess of threads; if he could just grasp one, he could unravel the whole thing.
But he hadn't yet seized the crucial thread.
While everyone was debating, Bayunye gently nudged Diao Zhuo's side with her elbow. "What took you so long?"
"I stubbornly wandered around a few more times," Diao Zhuo evaded, unwilling to elaborate.
Bayunye didn't dwell on it, nor did she have the chance to, because the group heard voices again—heavily accented English, likely from those thugs. Their relentless persistence only emphasized the importance of whatever leverage Brother Long held.
Since Brother Long had left no further marks, the group decided to rely on luck and continue searching in the direction where "Brother Long" had turned and fled earlier, hoping to find an area with normal signal reception.
Passing through a dense stretch of mountain forest, they came across another crashed fighter jet. The impact from its high-altitude fall had driven it deep into the ground, with its wings shattered and scattered. The exposed fuselage was so rusted it seemed it would crumble at a touch, its original paint and markings indistinguishable. Ferns and vines thrived amidst the broken steel, turning the entire wreck into an oddly shaped, oversized flowerpot.
The rain grew heavier, pattering loudly against their raincoats. The jungle was damp and cold, and the decaying scent of the leaf litter rose once more. After walking only a short while, a vast, flat expanse of mountainous terrain appeared before them. Lush sulfur azaleas bloomed vibrantly in the gray, misty rain, each petal glistening with crystalline raindrops. Yet, no one was moved by this beautiful sight, because behind the sulfur azaleas lay dense clusters of... Grave Mound Mushrooms.
Unlike the Grave Mound Mushrooms they had seen before, these were much smaller, huddled tightly together. In the densest areas, several mushrooms even pressed against each other, deforming into crooked, uneven mounds that eerily resembled ancient, untended graves in the wild—a sight both unsettling and repulsive.Everyone exchanged glances for a moment before cautiously moving forward. They soon discovered that on the branches and trunks above and behind the Grave Mound Mushrooms hung several dried-up skeletons. Some remains and scattered limbs were exposed above the soil or around the rocks. Those at lower levels were covered in gray-green moss, while those higher up had turned dark brown, almost blending in with the tangled branches. Without careful observation, it was hard to distinguish between branches and bones. Some of the more intact skeletons showed signs of struggle—some seemed to have tried climbing the trees, others clung desperately to the trunks, while others appeared as if they were trying to burrow into the ground. Due to the passage of time, the clothing and fabrics on the bones had long since disappeared under wind and rain. A rough estimate suggested that just the skulls hanging from those trees numbered in the hundreds, and who knew how many more dead lay buried beneath the ground. The sight was as terrifying as a living hell.
Were these people, like the two skeletons earlier, Japanese soldiers from the invasion of China? Did they die one after another, or all at once? Why hadn’t the remains of others served as a warning to those who came later?
As if to match the current atmosphere, the sky grew even gloomier. The sunlight was completely obscured by thick leaden clouds, which pressed heavily over the mountaintop. In the distance, a few muffled rumbles of thunder echoed.
"We... should find another way around," Bayunye said with a sense of foreboding. Though she prided herself on being well-traveled and unafraid of unexpected incidents or emergencies on the road, some things demanded reverence and distance—it was better to steer clear. To say something she shouldn’t, ever since encountering "Brother Long," she had felt this place was eerie and fraught with hidden dangers, even more difficult to deal with than Red Beard and his gang.
Her suggestion was met with unanimous agreement. After digging up the two Japanese corpses from beneath the Grave Mound Mushrooms earlier, no one wanted to tempt fate any further. Just as everyone was about to turn back and find another way, Xiang An, who habitually checked his phone screen, suddenly called out to the group—"Wait, there’s... a signal here!"
"Really?!" Everyone’s eyes lit up as they eagerly pulled out their navigation devices and phones, delighted to discover that there was indeed a signal here, though it was very weak and intermittent. Diao Zhuo watched as the small "E" symbol for 2G signal on his phone screen flickered in and out, his brow slightly relaxing.
"How’s the GPS?" he asked Ge Mingliang.
"It’s still loading, but at least it’s showing our general area now," Ge Mingliang replied with a sigh of relief, trying to mark their coordinates. The handheld GPS carried by the Rescue Team was also slowly mapping the area, though the unstable signal made the process sluggish. Diao Zhuo paced in place for a moment, glancing at Da Qin, whose face was growing increasingly pale. "We need to determine our location as quickly as possible and call for medical rescue."
"The signal here isn’t reliable. The magnetic interference is probably still strong," Ge Mingliang sighed after multiple failed attempts to call using the Beidou satellite phone.
Diao Zhuo kept his eyes on the GPS, but the screen remained stuck on a blank map of the Gongshan region. He glanced at the dense clusters of Grave Mound Mushrooms and the eerily positioned skeletons, then looked at the others desperately searching for a signal. Something about this felt deeply wrong.
While magnetic fields could vary with altitude and terrain, they shouldn’t be entirely unpredictable. Why would the interference disappear precisely in a place where they shouldn’t linger? Diao Zhuo didn’t believe this was "a gift from nature." Even a few cow dung patties falling from the sky to start a fire would have been more believable.Sure enough, as Xiang An took a few steps toward the area densely covered with Grave Mound Mushrooms, he shouted that the signal had strengthened. Everyone rushed over, holding up their phones, Beidou satellite phones, and GPS devices, all exclaiming that the signal had indeed improved.
The closer they got to the dense cluster of Grave Mound Mushrooms, the stronger the signal became?
This was highly abnormal, as if something was deliberately preventing them from being frightened away by the piles of remains, forcing them to stay.
While Diao Zhuo was pondering this, Xiang An had already run into the midst of the Grave Mound Mushrooms, his face lighting up with joy. "I got through! I got through!"
A clear call signal came from the Beidou satellite phone in his hand.
From where they had first discovered the Grave Mound Mushrooms to where Xiang An now stood was only about 100 meters, yet the signal had gone from weak to strong enough to make a call.
Diao Zhuo’s mind raced—a swamp? Impossible; at this altitude and climate, a swamp couldn’t exist. Giant carnivorous plants? Impossible; such things were only special effects in movies. Wild beasts? That seemed unrelated to signal strength.
What was it?
Seeing Xiang An lost in excitement, Diao Zhuo shouted an order: "Xiang An! Come back!"
"I got through! Someone’s there!" Xiang An momentarily forgot where he was, pressing the satellite phone tightly to his ear. "Hello! We’re from Beidou Rescue! We’re deep in the Gongshan Mountains! Someone’s been shot! We’ve also encountered armed foreigners! We’re in a very dangerous situation! Please send help immediately…"
Bayunye had also moved forward about a dozen meters in search of a signal, delighted to find her phone signal growing stronger. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed something broken dangling amidst the stark white Grave Mound Mushrooms. She took a few more steps forward, her eyes widening slightly, and pointed ahead, turning back to shout, "That’s Brother Long’s bracelet!!"
Once again, Diao Zhuo realized—while the dense Grave Mound Mushrooms exuded an aura of terror, they also seemed to possess a strange, compelling allure that drew people in.
"Stay where you are!" Diao Zhuo stopped her, and as he tried to recall all the Rescue Team members and mountaineering association volunteers, he noticed the sound of chaotic footsteps approaching from behind.
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