Living
Our eyes met, and the man under the mine car looked at me awkwardly.
This is a very unfamiliar face, but the familiar scene still made me blurt out: "Wang Ping?" I was immediately confused and wondered what was going on. Why didn't he die or die?
Being stared at by me like this, even if he couldn't hear my evil rants, the scene in front of him was probably still very gloomy. Wang Ping was so scared that his face turned pale and he made a funny gurgling sound in his throat.
What's funny is that he looked like he was going to faint at any moment, but he trembled for a long time, and finally he firmly closed his eyes, turned his head and pressed his face to the ground, leaving only the back of his head to us. It looked like he was going to pretend nothing happened again, trying to get away with it.
He acted like an ostrich. Pingping and I exchanged glances in tacit understanding, and I said sinisterly, "A living person."
“It’s quite big.”
"He saw us."
Before he could finish his three sentences, Wang Ping was already shaking like a man with epilepsy, his shoulders trembling as if he was about to cry.
Seeing that he was still holding on, I felt a little amused and said, "Come out, we didn't hide anything in our conversation just now, you should have heard it. How much did you understand?"
Wang Ping then hesitated and moved for a while, then slowly crawled out from under the mine cart.
Separated by many mine carts, he was almost sticking to the door frame of the wooden door, not quite sure whether to retreat or not, and looked at us nervously.
"Come over here. Although there has been no movement in the mine cart, what if those transparent things suddenly come out hungry to visit you?"
Seeing that he was still worried about confronting us, I didn't rush him. I yawned and looked around: "Pingping, I'm going to find an open space to sleep for a while. You should take a break too. Don't die before you do anything."
I am sincerely suggesting this. My body is too weak. I just had a discussion without much exertion, but I felt black and white in front of my eyes, and I almost couldn't stand. I think Pingping's condition is not much better than mine.
The two of them didn't waste any time talking. They found a corner, wiped their faces with their sleeves, and leaned against the stone wall of the mine.
As the dripping water continued, I wanted to stay away from Xu Ping as usual to avoid affecting her, but she fell asleep almost on my shoulder.
Seeing that she was sleeping soundly, I didn't dare to move. After a while, I heard some rustling. When I looked up, it turned out to be Wang Ping approaching me cautiously from the mine car.
It should be noted here that there were quite a few mine carts thrown at the entrances and exits by the mountain people in a hurry, and not all mine carts had the yellow rash men and those transparent water bodies.
Wang Ping seemed to have found a pile of plastic film from a mine car that did not show any abnormalities, and dragged it in his hand.
I was stunned and wanted to ask him what he was doing, but then I saw that he looked embarrassed, pointed at the screen, and handed me the pile of plastic film.
"..." I was a little surprised, nodded my thanks, and took the thick plastic film, carefully wrapping the screen as a waterproof jacket. This thing seemed to have good thermal insulation performance. Wang Ping lent a hand, and I wrapped the screen almost like a dumpling. I felt her cold little hands finally slowly warm up.
Wang Ping looked much better when I looked at him again. He was still a little scared, but still tried hard to smile at me.
Now that I had time to look at him, I noticed that although he was wearing the same protective suit and helmet as the mountain people, his face and hands were very white, without stubble, and his fingernails were trimmed very neatly and short.
More importantly, he had a small tag on his chest that I didn't expect at all.
"Wang Ping, Health Center of Wuhao Town, Yanping City"
"Department: Billing Office Number: 029"
Foghorn Town Health Center?
My body suddenly went numb, and I shouted in my heart, "Fuck it! That hospital that was abandoned twelve years ago? That hospital where Taizi was admitted and where the nurses were?
Originally, Shilin's matter was urgent, and I had temporarily put aside matters related to the abandoned hospital. However, I didn't expect that after going around in circles, I would come across an unexpected clue here.
This was like a bolt from the blue. My sleepiness disappeared immediately and I opened my eyes wide to look at the person in front of me.
Wang Ping was startled by my reaction. He quickly looked down and found that my attention was all on his license badge. He immediately realized what was going on and took the badge off and stuffed it into my hand.
"Yes, I'm a doctor. Don't be afraid, little one. I'm a good person."
Having said that, seeing that he was forcing a smile and looked like he wanted to run away, I didn't know who he was afraid of.
Can't scare him away.
I calmed myself down and tried to look more normal, but countless questions popped up in my mind and I couldn't fall asleep.
It's so strange. The hospital had been closed for a long time, so how come there were still medical staff in the hospital? And why did they come all the way to this damn place and mingle with these mountain people?
And according to our previous inference, this is not a point in time in the past, but the same time as the boss, San Yi and others. That's why I was picked up and appeared here. So what's going on with these mountain people and Wang Ping?
I was a little confused. I was thinking, one moment I had to save the prophet, and the next moment I found out I had to kill him. It was hard enough, how could there be a new situation? A time paradox? Not really.
Wang Ping had no idea of the turmoil in my mind and was still talking to a deaf person.
I saw him reaching into his collar and rummaging around in his protective suit for a long time, and he actually pulled out a well-hidden plastic bag and quickly stuffed it into my hand. "Want some? Are you hungry?" He then took two steps further away, as if he was afraid that I wouldn't eat and would pounce on him and bite me.
I took it subconsciously, and my mind was confused again, and I found that the thing was actually a bag of gray potato chips.
It can be seen that the dust on it has been wiped off. But probably because it has been dusty for too long, the dust has penetrated into the packaging bag, causing some slight staining, which is why there is this indelible gray stain.
I turned it over and saw the shelf life was already a bit blurry. It turned out that it had expired at least ten years ago.
A thought flashed through my mind, and I remembered that when I was on the surface, I had seen many food packaging bags spit out by the stagnant water.
With this idea in mind, I searched carefully and found traces of writing on the corner of the packaging bag. It was a line of small characters that were even blurrier than the expiration date. It was written in ballpoint pen and with pinyin attached. It basically told the children who found the food not to be afraid or hide, and to come out to the Zhang family for help and wait for placement.
There is no doubt about it, this is what the Zhang family left behind in the stone forest.
As evidenced by the experience this bag of potato chips has gone through, this is indeed the present moment, not twelve years ago.
I breathed a sigh of relief, then unwrapped the potato chips and poured some into my hands.
Probably because this side of the mine has always been unusually dry, even though the potato chips smell a bit strange, it's still manageable.
But this pseudo-human body had no organs for eating or digesting food, so I could only look at it to satisfy my craving, and then I poured all the potato chips back and returned them to Wang Ping.
Wang Ping shrank back and didn't dare to ask why.
I was reminded and pressed his abdomen with my backhand. I felt body temperature and there was no air underneath.
This guy is really a living person.
I've started to get used to it. After all, we are just two powerless kids. No matter what, it's always a good thing that Wang Ping, a strong adult, is a living person who shows kindness.
As I relaxed, the sleepiness I had been forcibly suppressing came back. My eyelids kept sliding down, and I managed to ask:
"How long have you been here? As for the others...how long has your relative Wang Yongfu been here?"
I didn't hear what Wang Ping answered. He had already fallen into a sound sleep.
I slept soundly and darkly. I don't know how much time has passed, but it should not be daytime yet. The surroundings are still extremely quiet.
I felt some slight bumps, as if someone was carrying me on his back. At the same time, the cold water on my body wet the other person's clothes, making him shiver with cold.
I opened my eyes in a daze and found that we had already stepped through the wooden door.
The light outside the mine turned out to be a large car light.
I was still a little weak, and my brain wasn't fully awake yet, so I just had a vague idea:
"We're still underground here, where do the car lights come from?"
Then there were more and smaller lights, which lit up all around like fireflies, like broken cold fireworks. The scattered cold light illuminated the moldy wooden path. We were walking on the path now, and occasionally there would be a harsh sound from the loose planks.
Compared to the dry mine, it is much more damp and cold here, but the space is still large. There is a messy tent on the uneven ground. The person carrying me seems to be heading there.
I'm a lot more sober.
The tents were so quiet, and as far as the naked eye could see, they were also covered in dust, with almost no signs of anyone using them.
Looking at the car lights that confused me again, a tilted car body with a cantilever made me sigh. The familiar blue coating became dim and mottled, and it was clearly the drilling rig that sank to the bottom of the water during the day.
That’s right, doesn’t sinking mean sinking into the ground?
Looking up, there really seemed to be a big hole in the pitch-black sky. It was estimated that the drilling vehicle had drilled through the layer where the mandrills were with great force, and finally sank to the bottom and stayed there.
This result seemed unexpected, yet reasonable, and there was no element of supernatural power involved.
But I still felt a chill, because as we got closer, I could clearly see the overturned cab, and the transparent hatch was indeed covered with bloody fingerprints, from light to dark all the way down, and damp water vapor lingered around the hatch.
It was one thing to hear San Yi talk about it, but it was another to see it with my own eyes. Knowing that someone had been drowned in the stagnant water and suffocated to death, and then dismembered and taken away by mandrills, it would be a lie to say that I was not touched and scared.
Xu Ping had been brought out first, and was leaning against an old tent. She looked like she had been awake for a long time, but she didn't know what was going on and didn't act rashly. When she looked up and saw us, and then saw the tragic situation on the drilling vehicle, her pupils shrank.
I patted Wang Ping, who was still walking with his head down, and wanted to ask him to stop and ask him what was going on.
But Xu Ping opposite me immediately shook his head at me and put his hands together in a sleeping gesture.
Only then did I realize that Wang Ping, who was carrying me on his back, had a strange breathing. His eyes seemed to be tightly closed and he seemed to be wandering around unconsciously.
Sleepwalking?
Through the thick protective suit, Wang Ping was thinner than I thought, and his bones were scratching me so much that I felt uncomfortable.
I tried to struggle, slipped off his back and jumped off.
He just stood there for a while without any reaction. After a while, he awkwardly put something down from his back, still keeping his eyes closed, and turned to walk back to the mine.
The moldy wooden path seemed like a natural border. Wang Ping walked along it with one foot deep and one foot shallow, but he did not walk outside, hearing the occasional creaking sound.
As his footsteps gradually faded away, I helped Pingping up and removed the plastic film that was used to keep her warm. We both became alert and after discussing it, we decided to take a look at the situation of the tent first.
Logically speaking, it had not been long since the mountain people evacuated the mine. If they had not returned to the ground, this would have been their temporary residence.
Since they can come down, does that mean there is some other passage that can bypass the group of mandrills above?
I held Xu Ping's hand, and my palm began to sweat. Suddenly, a glimmer of hope flashed through my mind:
If the accumulated water does not exist for the time being, and I find the passage that the mountain people use to enter and exit, will I have a chance to bring Pingping out?
As long as she can be taken away and the goddess's dilemma of immortality can be resolved, perhaps there will be a better solution to the whole situation.
Xu Ping gently squeezed my hand. I was filled with joy and thought to myself that I would tell you the good news later. I followed her into the depths of the tent.
The tents were stacked so densely that there was almost no place to stand between two tents. Only because we two children were very thin did we not encounter much hindrance, but we still basically squeezed through by leaning sideways.
As we walked, our pace became slower and slower.
In the silence, the crowded tents seemed to be bulging, as if they were filled with things, but there was a faint and indescribable odor emanating from them.
We were just walking outside the tent and we felt a little dizzy. Occasionally we heard some small explosions, like a Coke can exploding, and then there was silence again.
This doesn't look like a place where people can stop and live.
My originally excited mood gradually died down, and when I walked further in, I found that there was a large platform surrounded by tents.
The arc-shaped platform was filled with all kinds of household garbage and white sand. Things like potato chip packaging bags were thrown everywhere.
The subtle popping sound we heard came from this. It should be the methane produced by excessive fermentation of garbage.
There are no mountain people here, only a weird landfill.
I suddenly felt a little ridiculous and frustrated, and at the same time, a greater confusion emerged. Where did the mountain people go? Was it just an accident that Wang Ping brought us here because he was sleepwalking?
While I was wondering, I saw that there seemed to be something in the white mud.
Xu Ping wanted to flip it over, but I shook my head and said solemnly, "Let me do it. I roughly know what it is."
In a waterless state, when the accumulated water does not spit out, since the domestic garbage and white mud are all here, and the drilling rig has also sunk to the bottom, what remains are mostly those huge numbers of pale broken limbs.
Just at this moment, a creaking sound was heard and Wang Ping came back.
"I also felt something was wrong halfway through, so I jumped down on my own." Xu Ping said softly, "Ranran, look. Doesn't he look like he's still carrying something?"
Not only was Wang Ping carrying it on his back, he was also walking forward, his hands resting on his back, his steps completely dragging.
This time, without our interruption, Wang Ping seemed to be able to complete a complete series of movements.
He walked between the tents and towards the platform where we were, but because the tents were bulging, it was difficult for him to move forward.
Perhaps to make it easier to move forward, he paused and slowly placed his hand on the back zipper of the bulky one-piece protective suit.
I don't know why, but such an ordinary action made me nervous, realizing that something extremely ominous was about to happen.
Under the jumpsuit was an ordinary human body, very thin and a little skinny.
That was indeed a real living person.
But besides that, I saw some very strange patches of color on his skin. Those patches seemed to be squeezing him, making him a little hunched and contracted, and at the same time, some yellow-brown spots appeared.
Among those spots, there were some sparsely distributed yellow hairs, fluttering in the air like living things.
The next second, those things that I thought were hairs suddenly moved, split open bright red cuts, and started making sharp noises.
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