Pitfall (3)
It is difficult for me to describe how quiet and noisy the camp was at this moment, in the few minutes before lights out, as groups of people passed by.
But as whole areas of light went out, the presence of the street lamps almost jumped out and became extremely clear.
Without looking at others, I knew that all I could think about was drinking a cup of hot water, falling asleep, and taking a nap. This strong desire almost overwhelmed all my emotions at the moment.
It was at this time that I noticed an unusually familiar face among the night watchmen passing by.
"Gao Liu" passed by us indifferently, as if he didn't care about our existence at all.
I shuddered and almost screamed in my heart. Without thinking, I grabbed her wrist.
She immediately stopped in alert, her sharp eyes swiftly sweeping across my body like a knife and instantly fixed on my throat.
I felt a prick between my eyebrows and my hair stood on end.
At the same time, seeing my face, she frowned, pulled her hand back, turned around and almost bumped into the wild cat.
My eyebrows jumped again. I saw the wild cat looking at her, his eyes slowly turning red.
"You're from Team Two." She looked at the wild cat calmly, then said calmly, "Don't wander around at night. Go back to the camp by yourself."
Wildcat stared at her blankly, opened his mouth, his expression completely distorted, and turned to look at Gao Liu who was beside us. "I... I'm your brother."
Gao Liu gave him a puzzled look. Although he was cold, he was almost polite and courteous. "What did you say?"
"--wildcat!"
“Bang!”
Shopkeeper Yan Er struggled to get up from the ground. He didn't know where he got the strength from, but he grabbed the wild cat tightly and yelled at it, his expression extremely devastated.
Watching "Gao Liu" leave with a frown, we were completely silent under the huge shock.
Gao Liu pulled Wildcat back and turned to look at me: "Advisor?"
My throat tightened, and before I could say anything, I saw a tent not far from the camp move again, and a guy stood out to smoke. The moment the curtain was opened, heat and fragrance came from the tent that was almost visible to the naked eye.
The guy was smoking a cigarette, nodding his head while listening to the song, his eyes were immersed in the song and he looked up and saw us. He was caught off guard and got startled, and raised his hand to hide the cigarette butt behind his back.
Seeing that we didn't react, his expression relaxed, and he looked at us carefully a few more times, then visibly relaxed.
"Come on, come on, come on, brother, which team are you from?"
The guy slumped his shoulders unceremoniously, walked towards us in a familiar manner, and put the cigarette butt into his mouth again:
"You scared me. The midnight snack is just ready, help yourself. Are you guys standing here rehearsing exercises? If Yan Erkou sees you, you'll have to perform the cauldron-lifting show for him, right?"
As he was talking, he started to laugh himself, and he put his arm around one of the guys' shoulders. "Come on, do you want some fat otaku happy water?"
The guy whose shoulder he was holding trembled in his throat and subconsciously turned to look at the rest of us:
"…I, we can just eat something, right?"
He had asked this question, but then he said it again to himself, staring intently at the camp.
He seemed completely unaware that he was repeating a grade. His face was filled with an intense desire that could not be concealed even by the mud, and he was shaking with excitement.
"If I don't go to the fields today, those things were originally meant for me... for us..."
He probably didn't know how hoarse and horrifying his voice was at this moment.
My heart sank.
Looking at the wild cat that was held by Gao Liu, he said nothing and was still staring at the direction where Gao Liu returned to the tent just now.
At this point, even the most obtuse person would have noticed that something was wrong.
Several almost crazy guesses flashed through my mind and rushed to my lips.
I felt more uncomfortable than ever before.
This time, it was Gao Liu who spoke first. She asked:
"Counselor, have we met just now?"
What does that mean? My mind was in a mess. I felt a pain in my hand. It was Wildcat who was holding my wrist tightly, and his tone was almost pleading.
He said: "Advisors... bow their heads, bow their heads..."
I calmed down, decided to believe him, and lowered my head. I felt his trembling hands pressing hard on my neck, as if he was afraid that I would run away. He whispered to me nervously:
"I just saw my sister jump down once."
This sentence was fleeting, and my thoughts went blank for a second, and I looked at him fixedly.
“Click…”
In the corner of his eye, Gao Liu unscrewed a bottle of mineral water that was still in his backpack and drank it. Noticing my gaze, Gao Liu was a little confused, and then looked at the wild cat, not hiding the slight concern in his eyes.
I felt a chill run down my spine and turned my gaze to the guys around me, realizing that I had made a big mistake.
These are all the people who accompanied me tonight. We climbed down together into the depths of the pit. Until that moment of change, I actually didn’t realize how long I had been separated from others.
Who arrived on the ground first? Did anyone communicate with the people in the camp in advance?
Has anyone found themselves turning into a monster in the mud?
Questions came one after another, and I suddenly looked down at my watch, which I had looked at countless times along the way.
An even more terrifying thought came to my mind.
In the eyes of the people in the camp, we, a group of mud monsters, are still friendly companions, without any abnormality.
So, what about the others I see?
When did my memory become so good? In the team we just formed today, I actually remembered the faces of every stranger and recognized them with certainty at this moment?
"Gu... Hu..." The breathing of Yan Er, the shopkeeper, became louder and louder. I thought of his extremely abnormal reaction just now, and suddenly I shuddered and looked at him in disbelief.
Yan Er looked at me straight, his eyes completely dull. His face, which had just completely collapsed, was covered with traces of mud and water washed away by sweat.
He also wanted to say something to me, but his jaw was shaking so violently that he couldn't open his mouth at all. In the end, he just moved his fingers stiffly and nodded as if to confirm.
The tremendous pressure and suspicion made me understand what he meant without any instruction at this moment, and my mouth was dry.
All he wanted to tell me was information he had already told me before dark. So, just like the "hide and seek" reminder in the headphones, there was no need to repeat it, just to confirm it with me again.
He took me through most of the camp and told me the location of the pit entrance; he said there were extra things; he said the equipment the Mud Stalker wore was 90% new.
At this moment, these words were reorganized into completely repeated but completely different meanings.
Manager Yan Er is saying that among us, right among us, there are still "evil spirits in the mud".
Because there is also an abyss-like pit entrance in this camp. Maybe someone has already jumped in and is now among us.
People cannot distinguish the evil spirits in the mud.
At this moment, my most terrifying thought was:
Is the so-called call of the pit that all of us have concluded in an extremely shallow and arrogant way all along really correct?
Gao Liu once used herself to decisively and ruthlessly verify the only piece of information that we can be sure of:
The pit will give the infected people the same peace as that of a mother's womb.
And in the moonlight mud disaster, I did hear an invitation like a child playing and participated in a game of "hide and seek".
At this moment, hiding in the crowd, and being hidden by something unknown, I can't help but wonder:
What is the logic behind the so-called people being infected and unconsciously drawn into the pit?
Does the mud monster have the habit of unconsciously returning to its mother's body?
Are those who have been infected once and gone deeper into the pit humans or something else?
Those tunnels that were originally hidden in the mountains and could be discovered at any time during excavation, who crawled through them to open them, and where did they lead to?
The questions were like heavy thunder, one after another, pressing down on my chest and almost ready to explode in the next second.
There was also an extremely loud, thunderous voice in my mind, asking me:
So what am I now?
I suddenly felt a ringing in my ears and almost fell to the ground. My vision kept turning black and blurry, and colorful patches of color mixed together weirdly.
“Pah.”
My nose felt hot and I was stunned for a moment. I raised my hand to touch it and found that warm blood was all over my hand, falling through my fingers and hitting the soil on the ground.
A small red circle appeared on the ground.
Manager Yan Er pulled me tightly, his eyes full of bloodshot. I smiled at him, sat down, and signaled that everyone else was fine.
"Give me five minutes. I'm a little dizzy because of the nosebleed. I'll take it easy." I said with a smile.
After a while, I was in a daze during these rare five minutes of peace.
Maybe it was because it was a rare time when I had nothing in my mind, and at this moment, the still unfamiliar face of the man wearing glasses suddenly flashed through my mind.
A very dull and slight tingling pain finally slowly crept up at the end of the day.
Glasses are really dead.
I realized it later and thought strangely. I also felt that this thought came out of nowhere.
Then, perhaps because of the weird affectation and fragility brought on by the nosebleed, I replayed the scenes in my mind one by one.
Glasses fell down and tears welled up in his eyes as he looked at me; Yan Er and I were talking; Xu You was soaking in the metal box, neither human nor ghost; we went down to the fields in a group, and I kept looking at him and asking questions out of curiosity, and everyone in the team was making jokes and laughing with me.
All of this happened in such a short day, without anyone noticing.
All the itineraries for the day were so crowded that they filled up my mind, along with those vague laughs, and then broke up again and turned into the mud in front of me.
His blood dripped down like this, but more, soaking the entire patch of soil. The smell of blood was familiar and definite, not my hallucination or nightmare.
The glasses existed, and I woke up as if from a dream.
At the same time, a voice reminded me: Xu You, whom I had known for a long time along the way, was half dead, and Zhou Tingmao, whom I had only known for a while but didn't look familiar to me, was gone.
What came to my mind again was a hospital room, where my parents cried in despair, and my younger sister Xu Ping leaned against me, her thin hair turning yellow. Ping Ping didn't have time to say anything to me, she just gently held my hand.
Why do I always find out a step late?
It seems like no one can save me.
Strangely, I touched my face and I didn’t feel very sad. My eyes were even dry and there were no tears.
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