Pit (4)

If anyone can relate to my feelings, it would not be surprising that the most vivid thought in my mind at this moment was to walk up to the camp pit and jump in.

In just a few minutes, with the official start of the curfew, the camp quickly returned to its normal quiet.

The chef who came out to smoke was kept by us. His face was originally full of excitement and novelty of hanging out with the brothers from the next team in the middle of the night, but he was surrounded by a dozen of us and didn't say a word. His smile became more and more stiff, and finally turned into a vague panic.

I covered my face and pressed the hot towel I had just "seized" against my nose.

The nosebleed recovered quickly, and there was a burst of hot air beside me. It turned out to be a makeshift barbecue grill.

I believe that if someone passed by and was able to notice our abnormality with a clear mind, they would definitely feel a strong sense of black humor.

Because a group of mud monsters with evil and weird faces were robbing the kitchen, and they took out the cooking utensils in one of the tents one by one and arranged them in a circle like a plate.

The cook had a sad face and could not understand what was going on. He thought that someone in the camp had finally given up and gone crazy, and wanted to have a good meal and rebel against Manager Yan Er.

I am really curious about how he sees us now, and what kind of self-justification has blinded his will, so that even though he is so confused and shocked, he has not yet realized that we are aliens.

What I want to know more is that if we don’t return the things, what will the other people in the camp think of us when they wake up and see such an unusual scene.

This idea is actually quite crazy and irresponsible, because the monster in the mud may need to work hard to hide itself and then replace something, or complete the instructions given by the "mother" of the pit at a certain moment.

Being exposed like this may only accelerate our alienation and distortion in an instant, and eventually evaporate our rationality.

Considering the large number of bodies found in the mud, the hidden meaning behind them becomes a glaring death notice.

But at this moment, as the barbecue sizzled and the heat and aroma of the food spread, none of us mentioned these concerns and we all ate the hot food attentively and silently.

The chef's face turned pale and his legs were completely weak, but he didn't dare to be negligent and just continued to prepare midnight snacks for us. The doubt on his face changed from suspicion of us to confusion about himself.

I opened a bottle of mineral water, took a sip, looked at the time, and found that another half an hour had passed in the blink of an eye.

Only at this moment did the time of the night advance by leaps and bounds, passing extremely quickly and yet completely frozen, as if the scene at dusk when everyone was confidently packing their equipment to go down to the field was still before our eyes.

But the nightmare brought by the long and numb three hours in the fields has not yet dissipated, and the brevity of the night has already been placed before us, turning into fear of the next night to come.

There was no respite that night, and I saw stress and despair in the eyes of all my colleagues.

Looking at the shopkeeper Yan Er and the wild cat who still looked a little neurotic, the horrible associations and insights that suddenly occurred to me were suppressed.

There's no way I could say this directly.

I cannot afford the consequences of unleashing a chain of dark suspicion, and I don't want to make everyone think so quickly about my attitude and stance towards other people in the camp as the Mud Spook.

At least for now, I would rather order everyone to do some ridiculous things that are of no benefit than to let the situation deteriorate to the point where any of the guys would be the first to propose to sneak into the camp to replace something.

In any case, the first self-awareness of the "mud monster" cannot appear so quickly among our group of "people".

As I was thinking this, my nose felt hot again. I was caught off guard and felt a winding heat sliding down my chin to the skewer of meat I was holding. I immediately felt nauseous.

The guy who was invited by the chef not long ago and had a strange expression on his face had been concentrating on eating. At this moment, he suddenly raised his head and looked straight at me.

He showed his somewhat white teeth and said, "Advisor, you are ill. Let's go see the team doctor." His voice and expression were indescribable. That stiff and inhuman smile was almost demonic. "This is our own camp. There is no need to be polite, right?"

The strange tone of this sentence made the chef closest to him almost shrink back and step back.

When the cook stepped back, everyone in the team moved and looked at him suddenly.

I was no exception. As I saw the fear and suspicion on the cook's face, I immediately felt a strong impulse with twisted emotions filling my chest, making me unable to control myself and stare at him.

I knew that if at this moment he woke up from a nightmare like the shopkeeper Yan Er did, but failed to conceal it and chose to expose it, I and the others would do everything we could to make him "identify" again that we were the same kind and an ordinary member of the camp.

This method even includes making him shut up forever.

In the folk tales of the countryside, there is often a story about five kinds of fairies stopping people at night to ask for titles. It is said that when a monster like the yellow-skinned man is about to become an adult, he will stop the villagers on the road and ask them what they think of him.

If the other party answers that he is a human, the yellow-skinned man will gain human identity. As the price of transforming the demon into a human, the person who is sealed will be forced to pay for all his life span and fate.

If the answer is not human, the request for the title will be rejected and the yellow fox will be severely damaged and turned into an evil creature that is neither human nor inhuman. From then on, it will take revenge on this person with resentment.

Now, whether we like it or not, we have become these weird things that mingle among the crowd, craving for identity recognition and silently demanding to be banned.

Despair, a trace of despair surged up in my uncontrollable malice.

"Meow……"

At this moment, strangely, I felt the illusory heaviness that always existed on the back of my feet, as if a cat was calling.

I was interrupted by the cat's cry. My rapidly declining mood paused for a moment, and I subconsciously looked down.

But nothing.

I don't know if there are things that humans can't see, or if you become a mud ghost and then you can't see anything, but the auditory hallucination was so clear.

I couldn't help but say, "Shh, did you hear the cat?"

The chef, who was almost about to burst into tears, was stunned for a moment, looking at me with tears in his eyes. He was probably completely unable to figure out what such a strange question meant in this extremely weird situation that was about to explode.

But he did subconsciously try to listen, looked at me blankly, and some color returned to his face: "No."

As he started to speak, he seemed to have found a new anchor point to get close to me in his subconscious mind. The fear and uncertainty faded a lot and quickly turned into unconscious trust.

He seemed to be completely unaware of what had just happened. He was overwhelmed by the re-established intimacy and couldn't help asking me again:

"Are cats allowed in the camp? Brother, you can. I only dare to sneak out to smoke a cigarette... Hey, a local cat?"

I calmed myself down, and felt that the malice that had enveloped me and others in the past was gradually receding, but the afterglow of that viciousness still lingered, causing my head to suddenly ache.

I hurriedly wiped away the half-dried blood from my nose and said casually, "I guess so."

Soon, after dinner, I asked the chef to cook us a pot of a messy hodgepodge, and each of us had a bowl of it, just like Hu La Tang.

I drank and sweated a little, then I felt better. I asked the chef to go back and have a rest, and told us brothers to take care of the rest of the cleanup ourselves.

After a while, we were left alone. In the restored silence, I heard Fang Ao sigh and swear after being startled.

He was not the only one who suddenly froze like this and woke up from the twisted desire to attack and sense of identity.

Soon, almost every one of us holding our bowls took turns to curse under our breath, and the process went around quickly like a relay, finally stopping at the end with Shopkeeper Yan Er and Gao Liu.

Manager Yan Er had no status in the team due to his personal image, and no one would give him a chance to talk even in such a weird place and at such a weird time; Gao Liu was simply a man of few words and did not have the language reserves. After a slight pause, he raised his eyelids hesitantly and finally looked at the wild cat.

For a moment, in the solemn atmosphere, a ridiculous and unconventional idea suddenly popped up in my mind. I wanted to hear if Wildcat would curse again on behalf of Gao Liu and whether his vocabulary was sufficient.

But the wild cat's reaction made me frown again, feeling something was wrong.

He seemed to unconsciously avoid looking at Gao Liu, and the expression on his face was very stiff and rejecting, as if Gao Liu here was not his only sister, but some kind of fake.

I thought of what he had whispered in my ear before, saying that he saw Gao Liu jump into the pit, and my heart sank.

At the same time, another question made me wonder: If Gao Liu has become a deeper version of "The Mud Monster" 2.0, the result of this nesting doll should only make the wild cat trust her more, beautify and strengthen his cognition, and make it even more difficult for him to distinguish the authenticity of Gao Liu.

So, why did such an illogical thing happen to him?

I subconsciously looked at Gao Liu and exchanged glances with him. Almost at the same time, I heard him say that he wanted a few people to go with him.

Shopkeeper Yan Er was startled in his trance, and sat up straight with some tension to look at the two of us:

"Where are you going? You want to split up your forces at this time?!"

At this time, I saw that he was about to faint, and in the chaos I felt a sense of intimacy, so I patted his shoulder.

"I want to see if the tunnel we came down from is still overhead."

This topic undoubtedly hit upon a taboo that could not be spoken directly within the team, and I saw the expressions of the people around me twisted in pain.

Then Wildcat stood up and said coldly, "Let me stay, Fang Ao will guard me, and he and Gao Liu will go together." His words were full of caution.

Gao Liu looked at him again, lowered his eyes in silence, and immediately said calmly: "I will go alone, and I just need to bring a video to synchronize with everyone."

I looked at these two people, and for some reason, I felt an inexplicable anxiety as if I were trying to mediate a family dispute. I thought to myself, I'm not a real old father, and I don't know how to do this. I wanted to just go up and kick them down one by one.

Especially wild cats, they must have taken the wrong medicine.

I had a headache for a moment, but I couldn't ignore this abnormal emotion. I simply attributed it to a tantrum and a conflict, and said unhappily, "You two sit down, and I'll go with Yan Er and Fang Ao."

Fang Ao was stunned. When he met the eyes of the captain and the deputy captain, cold sweat broke out on him and his recklessness completely disappeared.

I didn't care whether he lived or died. Whether the desperado's interpersonal relationships in the workplace were ruined by me was not something my current conscience and moral sense could consider, so I immediately pulled up Manager Yan Er and left.

At this time, Gao Liu and Yemao calmed down, looked at each other tacitly, and said no.

I was stopped by these two men, and I had no choice but to go. They had a quick chat and reached a consensus. In the end, they decided to let Gao Liu take two or three guys with him, and Fang Ao would supervise and report on the side.

As for video recording, fixed chest cameras are lighter and will not affect their movements, so they were asked to carry them too.

Seeing them arrange everything, I still felt a little worried and wanted to say something.

Gao Liu stood up, looked me in the eyes and said calmly, "Advisor, we are all people who put our heads on our belts. We always admire people who have their own ideas... You should believe in us too."

Coming from the taciturn Gao Liu, these words were surprisingly long and serious.

Silently, several strong guys in the team stood up, walked naturally behind Gao Liu, and silently checked each other's equipment.

When our eyes met, I felt like I was punched in the chest. I suddenly felt a strange feeling in my heart, and even felt a little ashamed.

She looked at me, then at Wildcat, who now had a complicated expression on his face, and smiled for once. This smile was fleeting like mist: "We don't have the tradition of letting rookies die."

I was stunned.

This was the first time someone had called me a rookie so bluntly. But I had to admit that after the command was forcibly taken away, seeing them act efficiently was like a burden being lifted and I was able to breathe a sigh of relief.

I forced a smile, feeling mixed emotions and a kind of indescribable relief.

Soon, Gao Liufang Ao and several other guys appeared at the end of our sight.

Looking up in the night, there was only blackness in the sky, and it was impossible to tell whether it was the dome of the cave or the starless and moonless night.

I was filled with pessimism as to whether I could find another almost mystical entrance and exit to the tunnel above my head.

My finger felt a slight pain, as if it was bitten lightly by something.

I felt strange, as if there was really a cat here, and it was so hungry that it was furious. I took a few skewers of unfinished kebabs from the side, put them on a clean plate in the shadow beside me, and I felt that the hallucination was a bit serious.

At this time, only the wild cat Yan Er and us were left. I looked at the wild cat who seemed to be worried and had some self-doubts.

"Come on, tell me."