Finding the trace
The development of the matter to this point has exceeded the expectations of everyone present.
All our plans before departure were actually preparations for possible strange stories, but at this point, the stone forest showed an extreme frankness and indifference, as if it had no interest in any creatures from the outside world, and just kept growing and running as a wonder.
On the contrary, it was the mountain people many years ago, as human beings, whose actions were completely unpredictable to us and there was no pattern to speak of.
Standing in front of the crowded expanse of blue and black, it seemed that the mountain people were the real horrible and indescribable weirdness.
My mood became extremely tense. I squeezed the broken blade in my hand and realized that what we had to restore this time was no longer the rules of a horror story, but more like an absurd murder that happened many years ago.
The other guys were a little speechless at this time. They patted the deputy on the shoulder one by one and asked him to express his condolences.
I calmed myself down and realized that any further speculation would only count if it was confirmed, so I let the guys continue with the search at hand.
He asked for the hammer and found a stone pillar to continue knocking on it.
Sanyi looked at me and said, "Advisor, why are you still knocking on this thing?" He came over and wanted to take over and help.
I shook my head and said, "I just want to find something to do to stimulate my brain," and asked him to search the mountain with me, intending to ponder the stone forest for a while.
I knocked on it for about ten minutes, intermittently, and it looked like a piece of stone pillar was being gnawed by a dog.
It's not that I have any grudge against the stone forest, but I always feel that something has been missed after entering the mountain. I can't figure out the clue for a while and always feel a little awkward.
I thought about it and decided to start from the simple things, so I asked the guys squatting next to me (they arranged to take turns to look after me so that I wouldn't be left alone), weren't there people saying that a lot of food bags were thrown into the stone forest? How come I didn't see any?
The guy was stunned for a moment, as if he had just recovered from the huge amount of chaotic information. He immediately looked around subconsciously, a little puzzled. "Yeah, where are the food bags?"
Looking around again, the whole person suddenly stood up alertly.
"No," the guy said, "Why is it so quiet?"
I was a little confused about what this meant, because at this time, the guys who were searching the mountain were walking around, searching, whistling at each other to mobilize, plus the occasional cough from someone choking on the dust, and the whistling sound of the wind driven by the helicopter rotors overhead. In any case, the word "quiet" was not appropriate.
At this time, Sanyi in the distance also paused, quickly glanced around, and immediately walked towards me.
"Advisor, something is wrong."
I was a little confused by what they said, but the next second, I suddenly reacted.
Yes, there is one less strong sound source.
During the time we were in the stone forest, the cantilevered drilling machine was still working, trying to find the missing white quicksand in the valley. The two places were only a ten-minute walk away, and on such a flat surface, sound transmission was very smooth and lossless.
But it seemed that at some point, the continuous buzzing and vibrating sound stopped without a trace.
But the drilling rig is such a big thing, and there are guys guarding it, what could possibly go wrong?
Fortunately, the two places were not far away, so we could see each other from a distance. We walked a few dozen meters quickly and saw a large machine with a cyan coating still in place. The guy in charge of guarding it stood in the shadow cast by the cantilever, and there seemed to be nothing unusual.
Just as I was wondering, one of the guys hissed, "Is this old equipment a little faded? Or has it always been like this?"
San Yi whistled long and hard, his face looked a little grim, "No one answered, the intercom channel over there is full of white noise. I'm afraid something has happened." He took a closer look and said with certainty, "The drilling rig has been used for three to five years. The paint was peeling a little, but it was definitely not so mottled. Why does it feel like it has aged all of a sudden?"
"I see the machine is still moving. It should be running and not stopped, right?" I asked. But I indeed didn't hear any drilling sound at this location, and a bad feeling spread throughout my body.
"Sentry!" I shouted. The helicopter was surprised. "Advisor, we photographed a figure up there!"
We were all shocked. What figure was that? How come we didn't see him even with so many eyes present?
There was no need to urge him now. Several photos came to the phone immediately. I didn't know what was interfering, but the pixels kept popping up one by one.
Blurred is the valley from a bird's-eye view.
The channel quickly said, "It's in the drainage ditches we just dug. In order to remove the possible impact of quicksand, we deliberately made it narrow at the top and wide at the bottom. Consultants, you can't see the bottom of the canal from the same level."
After a long sentence, the photo finally jumped and became clear. I rubbed my eyes in disbelief. In a drainage ditch near the drilling rig, there was a small, extremely blurry figure curled up there.
The figure was extremely strange, and looked like a hungry ghost in myths and legends, with dry limbs like branches, and yellow hair all over his body. The skin that was occasionally exposed was covered with yellow spots, which was extremely creepy. More importantly, the figure lowered his head abnormally, and seemed to be holding something in his arms and chewing it.
Because most of it was blocked, I could only vaguely see that the thing being bitten seemed to be a sphere with a row of neat white blocks on it.
In the next photo, the guy on guard duty also obviously noticed the mass and was surprised, so he zoomed in and focused on it.
When I saw it, my mind buzzed. That was not a sphere at all, but a human head with a painful and ferocious expression!
San Yi also shouted, "This face... This face belongs to Da Jiang who is driving the drilling rig. He should be in the operating room!" He was angry and anxious and cursed, "What are you doing, the guard? Didn't you notice that something happened right above your head?"
Before he finished speaking, something flashed in our peripheral vision. We all looked up and saw a short figure suddenly jump out of the narrow cabin of the drilling rig in the distance, holding tightly onto a bloody arm and jumping out.
Then two, three, and no one knew how many people were crammed into the small space of the operating room. Several figures jumped down, each holding or biting their remaining limbs.
The guys around him all had red eyes and picked up the rackets without saying a word and started beating them, but those figures were extremely agile and their movements could not be seen clearly. They jumped into the drainage ditch nearby.
Those ghosts seemed to have quite high IQs, and they even made extremely sharp squeaking sounds, as if they were mocking them.
I was furious, "Sentry!" The helicopter suddenly fired a high-intensity high beam. Through the ditch and the ground, I could only hear those ghosts screaming in surprise. The gunfire from above began steadily, and a ball of blood exploded after every gunshot.
The voices were chaotic for a while, but then disappeared immediately.
Someone shouted in the channel: "These things can dig holes! They ran away!" The tone changed from shock and anger to regret and self-blame.
I suppressed my emotions, knowing that I couldn't blame them. Just now, everyone's attention was focused on the stone forest, and the sentries were on full alert for fear of accidents. No one expected that the valley wasteland, which had always been peaceful, would have an accident. This was completely an accident.
Everyone was now holding up their rackets, forming teams of three with their backs to each other and moving forward in formation.
After walking for five or six minutes, the sentries above were on high alert and kept sending news. They said that the ghosts had not been seen again, and only the body of a companion who had not been dragged away in time was thrown in the canal. It seemed that he had bled too much and died of serious injuries.
But those things looked very strange, like mandrills, and it was hard to tell whether they were some kind of deformed carnivorous monkeys or something else.
I was walking at the end, San Yi and his deputy were protecting me, and the whole atmosphere became very tense and depressing for a while.
It was at this moment that I suddenly smelled a very strange yet familiar, creepy smell.
“Ka——”
Along with the smell, there was a slight cracking sound coming from nowhere.
My scalp exploded, and without thinking, I shouted, "Don't leave yet!"
Almost at the same time, the guy walking in front suddenly felt empty under his feet. The ground became extremely crisp, revealing a huge collapse. The guy was caught off guard and fell down.
The person next to him reached out to grab him, but his hands were empty. Instead, he fell backwards due to inertia and almost fell to the ground.
Looking more closely, I saw that the guy who was dragged had his head down and was covered in blood. It was clear that only half of his body was left, and the part that had sunk into the ground had completely disappeared.
I suddenly closed my eyes, my heart ached, and I heard a suppressed roar of extreme pain.
The incident happened suddenly, and everyone froze. After a while, a brave fellow slowly lowered his center of gravity, knelt on the ground and knocked, then raised his head with a pale face and said: "The valley below has become hollow."
"Don't move, don't move." Sanyi said softly, took a deep breath, took out a rope from his equipment, tied it around his waist, and asked us to hold on.
In the current situation, everyone is like standing on a huge thin ice surface, and they might collapse and fall if they are not careful.
Fortunately, this group of people were well-trained after all. Even though they had no experience going out, they calmed down quickly. Without any command, they all crawled down carefully, trying to increase their contact area with the ground.
San Yi slowly crawled forward with his limbs bent and threw out the rope.
I held my breath for fear of disturbing him. I gripped the other end of the rope around his waist, and soon my palms broke out in sweat.
The guy who rescued the man earlier said in pain, "Be careful, there is something under the ground. From the noise just now, he...he was dragged under by force."
Sanyi gestured to indicate that he understood and said nothing more.
The helicopter overhead hummed and began to descend, flying back and forth, with guns mounted to prevent anything under the ground from coming out to attack.
During this process, a thin layer of salt frost formed on the ground, visible to the naked eye, as if it was damp.
Then there was a sound of water coming from far away, as if the groundwater began to rise and swayed up.
The guys were crawling on the ground and coming towards us little by little. My deputy and I kept retreating, and we felt that some kind of empty space under the ground was spreading and approaching, and even we could vaguely feel that there was something loose under our feet.
Fortunately, the thing under the ground was on guard and did not find an opportunity to attack again. Only some ripples and the sound of water waves passed by from time to time, making all of us nervous.
After a while, a few more holes appeared silently where the guys had crawled.
This time, groundwater overflowed, and it was even harder to see what was underground in the darkness.
It took us a long time to gather together again. Only then did we have time to breathe a sigh of relief, and we found that there was only a huge collapse where the drilling rig had been located, and the water had filled the surface to form a small pond-like surface.
At the same time, the fellow who had been standing under the cantilever fell on his back and floated on the water.
At this time we could see clearly that although this person had been standing still, his abdomen was covered in blood and had long been hollowed out by those ghost things.
Looking at ourselves, we are constantly retreating in the ever-changing situation. Now we have unknowingly retreated to the front of the stone forest. If we take two more steps back, there will be no space left for movement.
The area around the stone forest has become a small isolated island.
But the problem is that the surface of the stone pillar is full of sharp edges. If the ground around it continues to get thinner and closer, and compresses to the end, under normal circumstances, people will not be able to climb up the stone pillar with bare hands.
In order to avoid dangerous stagnant water and underground monsters, the only option left for ordinary people is to try to hold on to the stone pillars and climb up. During this process, they will inevitably get cut and their skin will be torn, and eventually they will fall back to the ground in despair due to blood loss or exhaustion.
I asked my guys to check and count the equipment they had, and then I looked at the helicopter hovering overhead and lowering the suspended ladder. I suddenly felt extremely fortunate and terrified.
"Let us go to the top of the pillar."
I said, "Have the helicopter lift us up one by one and place us on top of the stone pillar. These blades are facing outwards, and we will definitely get hurt if we are dragged and scratched vertically, but the horizontal plane is still safe."
There is just a sequence of speeds. When someone goes up, others need to wait and be alert. The later you go at night, the more dangerous it will be.
"You guys go first." The deputy whispered, looking at the holes on the ground, "I'll be on guard against those things coming out again."
I patted him on the shoulder. “I’m afraid they won’t be here anytime soon. Just now…just now that guy was dragged away. It was their revenge.”
The deputy froze and looked at me blankly.
"Didn't we kill someone in the ditch?"
I said, touching the raised hairs on my arms, and deeply felt the strong desire for revenge of those ghosts, "So they would rather take the risk to make us pay on the spot."
As if it could understand what I said, there came a series of giggling sounds from under the water not far away, similar to the shrill laughter of a child.
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