I fell to the ground and saw the giant snake attacking. I pushed off the ground and started to back away.

"Bang bang bang!"

Just then, a burst of gunfire suddenly rang out from behind us, echoing through the cave.

Despite the bullets, the giant snake's movements were not affected in the slightest, but it was attracted by the sound and stopped looking into the distance.

Nie Guangzhi seized the opportunity, dragged his injured leg to my side, and started running backwards, dragging my body along with him.

"hiss!"

The giant snake noticed our movements, looked away, and opened its mouth wide once more.

Immediately afterwards, Song Laosan appeared in my sight. He took two steps in front of me and threw a piece of explosive in his hand into the snake's mouth.

The burning fuse drew a trail of fireflies in the air as the explosives landed in the snake's mouth, causing an explosion before it could even close its mouth.

"boom!"

The shockwave swept towards us like a bloody storm. The giant snake had half its head blown off, and its body crashed to the ground, collapsing many stalagmites. Stalactites on the ceiling also began to fall down with a crackling sound.

"Ding-dong!"

Old Song swung his long knife, knocking off two stalactites, and then held the knife to Nie Guangzhi's neck: "Who are you?"

I had just been saved by Nie Guangzhi. Seeing Song Laosan's actions, I nudged his wrist and said, "We're on the same side."

Song Laosan looked puzzled: "Our own people? Weren't they here to kill you? How did they become our own people so quickly?"

"In this godforsaken place, we don't even know if we can get out alive, so let's not waste our energy on internal conflicts."

When I saw Song Laosan appear, I was still somewhat excited: "How did you end up here? Did you see the others?"

"No!"

Old Song shook his head and said, "During my fall, I grabbed a vine. There was someone on the other side who was strangled by the vine and hanged. I took his backpack and climbed up the vine into a cave, intending to find a way out, but I ended up in this place! The mountain behind is full of cat-ear caves, winding and twisting, like a maze. I was thinking of seeing if I could find a way out, but I heard some noise from your side, so I decided to come and take a look."

Although Song Laosan said he didn't see anyone else, since he was alive, it meant that the others were likely not fatally injured either. Thinking of this, I mustered my strength and said, "The most urgent thing is to find a way to get out of here! How many supplies do you have?"

Song Laosan gestured to the backpack in his hand: "These people are far worse equipped than you. There are only two bottles of mineral water, a first aid kit, and three bundles of explosives inside."

I pointed to the large snake in front of us: "Let's cut some flesh off its body and take it with us as provisions. While we still have the strength, we need to speed up our exploration."

After listening to my words, Song Laosan shone his flashlight on the abyss with six stone pillars and the collapsed area twenty meters high. He got up and walked towards the giant snake, asking me, "Xiao Duan, do you think this underground space was intentional or an accident?"

I rubbed my leg, which had been hit by the stone, to make sure no bones were broken, before enduring the pain to get up: "Why do you ask that?"

Old Song shared his thoughts: "Based on our previous conclusions, there was nothing in the cave we were in, yet we fell into this underground space because of the explosion! And these six pillars are connected to the space below! Is it possible that the floor of the space we were in before was actually the door leading to this place?"

"The possibility you're talking about is extremely slim."

After thinking about it for a moment, I felt that Song Laosan's argument was somewhat untenable: "According to your method, this 'door' can only be used once! Moreover, the space below is obviously naturally formed. If they wanted to access this space, why didn't they just build a passage directly instead of going through all that trouble to dig out a small space on top of this one?"

"What if that's a backup passage?"

Nie Guangzhi chimed in from the side, "Is it possible that there is a passage leading here, but the people who built the passage were worried that it would be affected by external factors, so they left a backup passage! That way, when the main entrance is blocked, they can choose to chisel open the backup passage and enter this space."

Hearing Nie Guangzhi's layman's analysis, I suddenly felt as if a word had woken me up from a dream: "The entrance to that space above is located on a cliff, making it extremely inconvenient to enter and exit. If it were a backup passage, it would make sense! However, no traces of human activity were found in this space. What were those people up there doing, creating a passage here?"

This problem stumped all three of us. We looked at each other, none of us able to come up with a solution.

In order to find out the situation of this place as soon as possible, we gathered around the giant snake's corpse, wanting to cut off some meat to take away as reserve food.

Song Laosan was the first to walk to the giant snake's corpse, and then his expression changed: "Xiao Duan, something's strange! This thing, it's not a snake at all!"

I rolled my eyes: "What nonsense are you talking about? There's such a big snake right in front of us, what else could it be but a snake?"

"It's really not a snake! This thing doesn't have scales!"

As Song Laosan spoke, he shone his flashlight on the snake's body and made a cut directly on it.

The snake's skin was very tough. Even with great effort, Song Laosan could only scratch its surface, and no blood even flowed out.

As I looked at the snake's exposed skin, my expression changed.

Old Song continued to make two more cuts on the wound, and said in a deep voice, "The main view in the scientific community is that snakes evolved from lizard groups represented by monitor lizards and venomous lizards, and their entire evolutionary history is marked by scales! But this thing's body surface only has skin!"

I reached out and touched the giant snake. It was icy cold, rough to the touch, and had a slippery, slimy substance.

Nie Guangzhi was also dumbfounded: "I've lived in the mountains since I was a child, and I started catching small snakes as pets when I was six or seven years old. How could this thing not be a snake? Have we discovered some prehistoric species?"

Without hesitation, Song Laosan denied it, saying, "Impossible! Primitive snakes are also known as blind snakes; they can only eat insects underground. How could they grow to such a size?!"

"Could it be a Gu poison?"

I suddenly remembered the monkey-like Gu that I encountered in the forest of Ping'an Village, which had paper pasted on their bodies: "When I was in that space above, I saw that these large snakes were sealed in reliefs. Is it possible that they were Gu creatures created by the shamans of an ancient tribe and specially sealed here?"