Arrival, town, burns
I didn't care much to find out what my new guide ordered for lunch.
In about half a day, we passed the toll booth, arrived at the airport, and changed to an earlier flight.
While waiting for the flight, I had a general discussion with Yan Mo and told him and the broker to leave their company and hurry to set up checkpoints to stop people.
Nian Ziqing was a little puzzled: "You want to go alone with me for this part of the journey? Don't you understand what our relationship is now?"
I ignored him and just looked at the broker with some apology.
"Master's wife, I won't say any more polite words. The checkpoints are not only to stop Zhang's men who come to the party, but also to stop ordinary people who may mistakenly enter. Although Yan Mo and his men are decisive, they are inevitably a bit stubborn and self-reliant. They may not be very friendly to ordinary people and may easily act inappropriately."
The broker nodded without any hesitation: "Communication between the inside and outside is my responsibility."
As for Yan Mo, there was no need for a young man like me to tell him how to calm down possible troublemakers and questioning. I silently went through the current information and then felt relieved to drag Nian Ziqing onto the plane.
I will not go into details about the journey, but in short, after several transfers, we finally took an empty urban and rural bus.
Time waits for no one, so I called the remaining guys and made an appointment with Fang Ao, Xiao Liu and others to meet at the terminal of this route.
At that time, they will bring a group of people and equipment, and then take me on a self-driving tour to the secret town where the gathering is taking place to take a look at the situation, so as to avoid rushing in and getting into trouble.
Because there were only two of us passengers, the driver, who was almost running an empty trip, was reluctant to turn on the interior lights in broad daylight, and just drove slowly in the half-cloudy and half-sunny sky.
Maybe because the ventilation was not very good, there was a very strong odor in the car, which made Nian Ziqing and I a little bit depressed, but we were fine along the way.
After shaking for an unknown amount of time, the vehicle finally came to a stop.
I was curled up in my seat, drowsy, when I heard the sound of the car door opening. Before I opened my eyes, the first thing I felt was cold.
I subconsciously wrapped my clothes tightly around me. I was still a little awake and managed to open my eyelids with difficulty.
I didn’t know if we had reached the terminal. I saw the driver sitting there, holding a thermos cup in his hand, with the door open and not in a hurry for us to get off.
As for Nian Ziqing, he hadn't woken up yet. He leaned back in his chair and seemed to be having a nightmare. His whole body was tense and his eyes were closed.
I hadn't forgotten what our original purpose of this trip was, so I didn't rush to call him and looked out the nearest window first.
But the car window glass was very dirty and grey, and I couldn't see clearly at all. I could only vaguely see large patches of almost blinding grey-white reflections outside. I felt like my eyes were going to go blind after looking at it for a while.
When I heard Nian Ziqing say that the gathering point was at the foot of the snow-capped mountains, I hadn't really felt it yet and was a little surprised.
There is still some distance from the destination. Looking out the car window, can we see the snow line in the distance? I just don't know what kind of cold-resistant tree is mixed in with the gray.
Only then did I wake up the young man and let him concentrate so that he could get off the car and meet me.
But after this push, Nian Ziqing didn't move at all, his eyes still closed.
I became suspicious and patted his cheek hard, then I felt a weight on my arm. He was pulling my hand in a very covert way.
Seeing him still in that sleeping state, I found it a little strange.
This is far from the haunted place, why are people causing trouble first?
However, my developed intuition prevented me from exposing him. I just kept a look to see if he might do anything else.
I saw his lips moving very slightly and silently, and then he hooked his fingers hidden in his sleeves, as if making a three, and then made another gesture.
I looked in the direction he pointed, and saw only dirty car window glass.
What did he want me to look at? The snow-capped mountains in the distance?
We have arrived at the station, you can get off and look around however you want. What's the point of pretending to be asleep and staying here?
I felt curious and took a closer look, but apart from the almost invisible reflection, there was only a blur of grayish-white color on the frosted glass.
Wait, just believe him for now.
That's the elimination method. There's nothing wrong with the snowy mountains outside the glass... So, is there something wrong with the glass itself? Is there something wrong with the reflection on the glass?
Or... he's not referring to the glass, but the bus with glass installed?
My eyelids twitched, and I asked myself, were there any scenes or clues that even I was so slow to notice the oddity, but a young man could tell that there was a problem so early on?
——It seems so.
My hair stood on end, and I thought, this is bad. I'm afraid we have been tricked.
Nian Ziqing is a man who talks big but does nothing. There is only one pit that he has definitely seen, and he knows every stage before and after that has not yet happened.
That's the tour group.
In this situation, there are three people in total, including the driver, tour guide and passengers, which is enough.
No wonder he pretended to be asleep and refused to get off the car. He probably woke up halfway and then realized what was going on.
But this method of delaying is too weak. I cursed in my heart, if you keep delaying, won’t the driver kick you out?
...Strange? Why didn't the driver rush us?
I seemed to sense something and looked back, and saw that the driver was still sitting there, his hand holding the thermos cup trembling slightly.
I looked back and forth at the two silent and motionless people. There was an eerie silence on the bus, which made me feel a little eerie.
No, when we got on the bus, the driver looked like this when we took a quick glance at him.
An idea suddenly occurred to him, and he shouted angrily:
"...Old Zhao?!"
The driver shuddered, turned half of his body to look at me, and his face suddenly turned pale.
To my surprise, after the disguise was removed, he was not so obese or bald, but the huge burn on his chin was still there, and it was more vivid than what I heard from the female tour guide.
Yes, the only way I can describe that burn is "vivid".
"Alive" is a state of life, and "fresh" is an instinctive taste.
It wasn't just that burn. His neck, cheeks, and arms all had these strange burns. The bright red color seemed to be clinging to his body and ready to drip down at any moment.
I felt nauseous and had some acid reflux.
The driver, Lao Zhao, stared at me. I don't know what he was thinking about, but slowly his expression became distorted.
Even a fool could tell that something was wrong with him. I took a step back and looked at his wound carefully: "This is the only one that is not disguised... Where did it come from?"
The driver, Lao Zhao, grinned, revealing a row of pale teeth.
I saw those bright red burns still squirming, as if thinking about something, and he roared and pounced on me.
At the same time, the young man on the seat suddenly jumped up, gritted his teeth and rushed over, colliding with Lao Zhao. He was born top-heavy, but his strength was unexpectedly strong. Lao Zhao was caught off guard and swayed violently, and both of them lost their balance and fell out.
"Don't touch him!" Nian Ziqing cursed, "He is the damn tour guide now! If we touch him, there will be no one to lead the way and none of us will be able to leave!"
Old Zhao roared again, and was hit on the nose by Nian Ziqing. His face turned red immediately. He opened his mouth and bit Nian Ziqing's throat.
While the two were arguing, I hid in front of the open car door next to me and took a look. My heart suddenly turned cold.
"...Hey, are you still fighting?"
I said loudly, feeling my face numb, "Lao Zhao, I have no problem with you trying to silence me. But I suggest you all take a look at what's outside the car first."
The two of them looked over unconsciously, and after a moment, all the fierce looks turned into dullness.
Outside the car, in the wide field of vision, there is indeed a small town behind the dusty bus stop sign.
But covering the entire town was a light grayish-white color, like fog.
I felt the cold again and couldn't help rubbing my arms.
Just like Nian Ziqing did before, I also pointed to the window, reminding you two to turn your eyes and look at another key point.
"...What? Fog? Reflection?" Nian Ziqing asked reflexively.
I shook my head and smiled bitterly: "Touch it, the glass has become a little soft."
It is said that when a person is about to freeze to death, their body temperature perception will be unbalanced. When the victims of the snowstorm were found, they often took off all their clothes and died with a smile on their faces.
Because at that time, the victims often have the illusion that they are very hot.
"It feels like I'm dying from the heat, Lao Zhao, you feel it, right?"
I said, "And I feel drowsy and have no energy."
Nian Ziqing was surprised: "Are you talking about what we did just now?"
"If you keep going on like this, you'll probably end up falling asleep before you know it." I continued to stare at the driver, Lao Zhao. "Don't worry about what Nian Ziqing says about tour guides. I only have two questions for you."
"First, have you ever fallen asleep in a car before?"
"Second, how often do your burns appear? Are they increasing in number?"
The driver, Lao Zhao's face changed several times and he slowly let go of Nian Ziqing.
That's it.
"I guess you don't know how you got on the bus, because you have always been the driver on standby, and you have never experienced the panic and confusion when those tourists suddenly appeared on the bus in the valley."
"Besides, after those bastards find themselves on the bus, they will probably be very excited soon and will just regard it as a miracle of being chosen. So you won't care too much about it and take it to heart."
"Those burns are small at first, right? At first they just feel very hot, as if they came out of a hallucination, but slowly they will expand very vividly and become more numerous, like flower buds.
No matter what methods you use to relieve the heat and fever, it doesn't work, and it seems to be getting worse. However, after all, it is only a divine concubine, not a moving mouse, so the symptoms are diluted countless times. "
I paused, used a little force, and pressed on the car window.
"I shouldn't care about your life or death...but now, it seems that the car has also been frozen and has been 'burned'."
As I said these words that sounded extremely absurd, I even felt like I was talking in my sleep.
The so-called moving rat has the meaning of sun and moon. Nian Ziqing did say that people who were exposed to the sun by the moving rat might turn into a pool of ghosts.
But we hadn't even entered the fog and were still some distance away from the town at the foot of the snow-capped mountains, but we had already been burned by the moving rats. I still couldn't imagine such an intuitive and counterintuitive physiological reaction.
Nian Ziqing couldn't accept it either, and asked in astonishment: "What are you talking about? What burns?"
I pointed at the grayish-white things outside the window and expressed my own horrifying guess: "Those... could be snow foam, or they could be high-temperature steam."
Whether it is extremely cold or extremely hot, the result is the same, the mouse will be "burned" to death by the light and heat of the moving mouse.
Once in contact, our entire epidermis will turn red and then peel off and melt away, which perfectly matches the distortion result that Nian Ziqing described.
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