Water marks
As the mine cart moved imperceptibly, I opened my eyes and looked into the eyes of the strange-faced man so close to me.
Reason told me that the mine cart was parked at the door, and I was only one step away from escaping;
These little yellow-rash men who had sat up from the mine cart at some point in time actually took at least ten minutes for one of them to move near my face while I was watching the situation without opening my eyes. This means that there is still a great chance of escaping.
But at this distance where I could hear my breathing, the thing was staring straight at me, but I couldn't find any focus to meet its gaze. The ambiguous feeling, as if it wasn't even a living thing, made me break out in a cold sweat.
The child had previously seriously signaled me not to move, and I dared not disobey for fear that any mistake would implicate her. I could only lie flat on my back, resisting the urge to turn my head away. It was extremely uncomfortable.
The dripping symptoms were still there, and the accumulated water had already risen to near my chest, soaking almost all of my upper body clothing. The debris and gravel around and above my body stuck to my body like a layer of fake skin, making my back tingle.
I don’t know if it’s a psychological effect, but I always felt that a long time had passed while my thoughts were racing, but the little man with yellow rash actually only moved a little closer to me again.
The mine cart was gradually pushed forward, and I was moved away from those eyes that were almost touching my face. I barely raised my eyes, and from this angle I could only see a pair of rough little hands clenched on the handrail of the mine cart. The patinated handrail was probably not easy to use, and thin blue veins were obviously stretched on the back of her hands.
As I was getting anxious, my field of vision, which was parallel to the dome above the mine, shook inexplicably, as if something was floating by.
But the change was too subtle, as if it was just a shadow passing by, even less noticeable than a shadow.
Then, the yellow rash-covered people surrounding me all moved, suddenly raised their bodies, and looked up at the top of the mine in an indescribable strange posture. Even the strange face under my eyelids suddenly raised its head and looked upward.
I don't know why, but at this moment, I suddenly felt a palpitation, as if their gazes were all focused on me in some way and were about to see me.
My hair stood on end, and I wanted to shout, but the little hands pushing the mine cart also stopped for some reason. From my awkward perspective, I could only see that she seemed to hesitate for a moment, and also made a move to raise her head, but her behavior was trying her best to resist.
What on earth is on top?
I was in a trance for a moment, and the thing on the dome seemed to be shaking slightly, like ripples from shallow to deep.
It was like... the traffic outside the door brought light and shadows into the room, and the thin straight light and shadows on the ceiling jumped back and forth, like a water mark scraping across the calm water surface.
"jingle……"
No, it’s the sound of bells in the stone forest!
For a moment, I seemed to see a huge, blurry and invisible corpse floating up and down in the swaying water on the dome.
My scalp exploded and I struggled immediately. The heavy objects on my body seemed to share some of the pressure due to the accumulation of water. I didn't care about anything else at this moment. I followed my instinct and violently pushed away some of the debris. I barely freed half of my shoulder and raised my hand to grab the girl who was looking up at the sky.
With just this one movement, a huge chill rushed back through my whole body. It seemed as if I was entering this mine for the first time. The omnipresent chill and sense of being watched hit me in the face.
Those little yellow rash figures seemed to be completely unaware of our movements. Their necks were raised even higher, forming a creepy and weird arc.
The little girl was shocked by my tight grip on her wrist and her pupils contracted violently.
I don't know if she saw anything more than I did, but she was obviously shocked and immediately closed her eyes. At the same time, she reached out and groped around, and began to push away the debris that was pressing on me, trying to help me regain my mobility as soon as possible.
Another "ding-ling" sounded, and this time both of us started sweating. We carefully quickened our movements. She seemed very annoyed by my recklessness, but in a hurry, she still said thank you silently.
The light and shadows on the dome grew darker again, and the jingling sound came and went. I had no idea where it was and there was no way to hide.
The more anxious I was, the more mistakes I made. The debris was like the Five Finger Mountain and could not be cleaned up at all. I don't know whose hand shook, but the debris became messy and collapsed in the middle, burying me deeper instead.
I was so anxious that I wanted to curse, but then there was another "ding-ling" sound, and I felt a dense gaze sweeping over me.
No, there's nowhere to hide.
My mind went blank, and somehow I dragged the little girl into the mine cart. Ding-ling, ding ...
After a few long breaths, in the sudden silence, I heard what seemed to be those little yellow rash people turning their heads, and the sound of their stiff neck vertebrae twisting made my teeth ache.
I don't know if it was because of the shock or because my limbs were pressed down by heavy objects for a long time, which blocked the blood circulation, but I felt numbness all over my hands and feet. The long-lost soreness, numbness, pain and itchiness spread across my back like needles, and I could roughly feel that several joints seemed to be swollen due to blood stasis.
For a moment, I even suspected that this thin body would shrivel and collapse without any warning, and fall into some bottomless black hole along with the child in my arms.
It was at this moment, in the midst of extreme stress and anxiety, that a picture flashed through my mind.
I began to recall over and over again the facial features of the little yellow rash man that had just been so close to me.
This was a very strange move, and I myself did not quite understand why I could still be distracted by such seemingly insignificant details at this moment. But the picture that emerged in my mind had become clear, bringing unspeakable fear.
I "saw" that the yellow rash seemed to become lighter as it lay on its back and away from me.
Strange, what does it mean to become lighter?
But if I were to describe it, it seemed to be like this. From the time I was frightened to death by it for the first time to now, until the dome was shimmering, the yellow rash man's face and body seemed to have changed and become more transparent.
It wasn't that it was pale to the point of being bloodless, but in the literal sense, the "transparency" feeling, like jade, was getting stronger. Those purple spots floated on it, clustered together like moss dried in the shade.
It was so weird that the strange feeling I felt after realizing it even overshadowed my fear at first.
I don't know why, but I tried to find some malicious intentions in my memories, as if to prove that the thing still existed. But the first thing that came to my mind was not the straight eyes, but the face that seemed to move at a certain moment.
As it moved, a block of color that had faded to the point of almost disappearing swam underneath for a moment and disappeared in an instant.
This is definitely not an illusion or hindsight. I must have noticed this subtle change inadvertently and sensed a huge crisis subconsciously, which is why I kept reminding myself to recall it at this moment.
What is it? That extremely uncomfortable feeling.
Amid the continuous ringing of bells, I said to myself, yes, there is something wandering and disappearing inside the body of the little man with yellow rash.
This is probably the image of a person washing a paint brush under a running tap, with the remaining paint disappearing in wisps as the water washes away. The facial features or physical characteristics of the little man with the yellow rash are really fading away.
So, what are the little people with yellow rashes being "washed away" by?
When I thought of this, my heart skipped a beat and I almost subconsciously denied it.
Perhaps she sensed my excessive nervousness, and her breathing in my arms also became heavier. I realized that I had lost my composure. No matter how calm and steady this child was, she couldn't be truly fearless. My strong emotional ups and downs actually brought her a lot of pressure.
Because no matter what happened in the past, I am an adult, and I always have the confidence to deal with problems. If I were in their shoes, trapped in the body of a thin child, the feeling of powerlessness would be exposed like the receding tide.
I took a deep breath and slowly slowed down my breathing. The cold water on my body made me more sober.
After an unknown amount of time, the bell sound stopped, but the shaking light and shadow from above seemed to still be there, and the light spots reflected through the eyelids still made people feel very uncomfortable.
I felt a light touch on my shoulder, and the accumulated water around me filled up again, reaching my mouth and nose.
This meant that the child who had buried her face in my shoulder had begun to hold her breath, but she had no intention of urging me to do so. She just tried to lift it up carefully, and after a moment she whispered, "It seems like you can move now."
I felt a little relieved and felt that she propped herself up and probably looked around, but she did not relax. Instead, she became more tense.
Has anything changed?
I was prepared for something to confront me again, but when I opened my eyes, I was stunned for a moment and immediately felt cold all over.
First of all, the appearance of those yellow rash-covered little people surrounding us has completely changed.
They are now almost completely transparent, with only the vague outlines of some organs remaining, slowly sinking to the bottom within the transparent border.
Things seemed to be worse than I thought. It seemed that the yellow rash man did not have his physical features washed away, but his true appearance was only revealed for the first time.
"What is this?" someone beside me whispered to me.
I sorted out my words and answered bitterly, "To put it simply, the little yellow rash man we thought we saw just now was just the stuff inside its body. Now, that stuff has been digested."
It reminded me of a funny little video I had seen before about algae-eating animals eating seaweed.
When a flagellate or a sphenodon eats algae, it bites open the green algae and completely wraps the algae in its transparent, oval body. At first glance, it temporarily turns green because of the undigested contents. People who don't know it well might think it was originally green.
What I was witnessing now was like something the size of a child, also misleading in appearance because it was wrapped around a piece of food, making people ignore its transparent body and mistake the digested food for itself.
The so-called human form it possesses is merely a temporary deformation caused by the size of the food.
The little girl wiped the water off her mouth and nose and lent me a hand. With the help of the buoyancy of the water, we finally got out of the mine car. The moment we stepped on the ground, I found that we were covered with gravel-sized stone chips.
Even in this situation, the child was very clean and tried to keep things as tidy as possible. He watched those transparent ghost things warily while brushing off the stone chips on his body.
The next second, the thing closest to me didn't have any cushioning, and suddenly it fell down as if it had melted. Half of it fell into the mine cart it was sitting on, and the other half that was leaning out fell all over the ground.
I can't describe the extremely bizarre feeling, because I was actually soaked to the skin, and a small puddle of water quickly formed under my feet. After the transparent thing dripped onto the ground, it spread silently and first melted into the water under my feet.
As if it was accelerated by some kind of catalyst, the frightening coldness spread along with the water flow, and spread in the opposite direction to my wet trouser legs. I felt like I had stepped into ice water, shivered directly, and quickly stepped back.
But there were also mine carts behind us, and we almost hit another transparent ghost thing when we retreated. It was the child who pulled me, and we bent over and tiptoed, reminding each other to find a way out from the mine carts and quickly retreated.
What I want to say here is that I just accidentally got a little bit of the melted product of that thing on my ankle, and my ankle started to get red and swollen.
I wasn't sure if there was anything corrosive or digestive fluid in it, so I immediately ripped the trouser legs open at the knees and threw them away.
We stared at the group of things and retreated a long distance, seeing them melting into liquid one by one.
Just this time, we were further away from the wooden door of the exit.
The wooden door was still open, and the light from outside shone in, bringing an indescribable temptation. But from this distance, it was difficult for me to see what was happening outside the door.
It would be a lie to say that I didn't feel any regret. We were only one step away, but suddenly so many things happened that we couldn't leave. Anyone would feel suffocated. Fortunately, I was used to things going wrong. I just patted the child's head and thought that I had to change my bad habit of not following orders.
She didn't blame me, but was a little dazed.
Seeing those mine carts loaded with transparent objects tightly blocking the wooden door, I didn't dare to get any closer. There was no hope of escaping, so I looked around and gave her some time to digest the incident.
This time I was no longer lying on my back, and my vision was much wider. When I looked around, I was stunned again.
Strange, I was wondering why it was so quiet just now, why didn't the other miners make any noise or movement. Now I looked, the whole mine was clearly empty, with only the little girl and I.
But I still remember the noisy noises before the villagers left, which meant that mining was definitely going on here. The scaffoldings placed everywhere also proved that someone was definitely working here.
Apart from anything else, the gravel in the mine cart that almost made me vomit couldn't have been dug out by a ghost.
"Where are the miners?" I asked curiously. There was flat land everywhere and there was no place to hide.
The little girl seemed to be awakened by me. She was silent for a moment, then said solemnly, "I don't know. In the past, after they left, the wooden door was closed and it was pitch black here. We should have all fallen asleep to save energy. This is the first time there is still light at this time, and I am still awake."
In other words, she had not noticed before that the miners disappeared without a trace after dusk.
Apart from that, I still felt that what she said just now was a bit weird, what did she mean by everyone should be asleep?
She thought for a long time before slowly asking me, "Do you think those things are now full and dormant?"
My eyelids twitched and I wanted to say yes.
She seemed a little sad, and asked me another question: "Before being completely digested, do you think those little people who became food still have their own consciousness?"
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