Chapter 248 Strange Creatures
The rain was still falling. There were few vehicles on the mountain roads here, and it was raining heavily today. No car passed by for a long time, and there were no cameras nearby.
Youxi sat in the car and put on windproof glasses (to protect against rain), put on a light waterproof jacket over her short-sleeved shirt, changed her sandals into sneakers, got out of the car, and put the electric car away.
She returned to the edge of the cliff, took out the rope and other climbing equipment, first used the tools to climb down the steepest part of the cliff, then put away the equipment and moved down the slope nimbly. In
just a dozen minutes, she successfully descended from the top of the cliff, which was about 100 meters high, to the front of the forest in the valley.
Although the bus was damaged, it did not fall apart as a whole. It crushed a patch of shrubs and many branches, and finally the front of the bus was stuck by a thick tree trunk. The rear of the bus fell to the ground and was stuck between two trees at an angle of nearly 30 degrees.
There was a strong smell of gasoline and blood in the air, and even the heavy rain could not cover it.
Youxi quickly walked into the woods and noticed something unusual before she got close. It was too quiet ahead. There were no cries of pain or crying, no cries for help, and even no gasps that humans should have.
She quickly stepped forward to check, and sure enough, through the broken glass, she found that there was no one on the bus.
There was no angry driver, nor panicked tourists. The bus, which was half full just now, was now empty. There were bloodstains everywhere. Some broken glass still had pieces of clothing and flesh hanging on it, but the strange thing was that there was no one inside!
Everyone was missing.
How could this be possible?
Even if someone fell out of the broken glass window when the bus fell off the cliff, there wouldn't be a single person left!
All the luggage, backpacks and other items were in the bus, scattered in a mess and mixed with blood, but there was indeed no one inside.
She checked the ground near the bus, intending to trace footprints, but the rain was too heavy today, and the rainstorm washed away everything. Even if there were traces around, they were all washed away by the rain.
Youxi felt a huge doubt. From the moment she saw the bus rushing down the cliff, to the moment she went back to the bus to make a phone call, to the moment she decided to go down the cliff to investigate, to the moment she changed her clothes and took out her climbing equipment, to the moment she landed smoothly, the whole process would not have taken more than half an hour.
In half an hour, if she really wanted to leave, she could indeed leave the bus accident site. In addition, there were dense forests nearby, with overlapping shadows of trees and heavy rain, and she would not have noticed if the people on the bus had left. This could indeed create the illusion that everyone was missing.
But the problem lies in logic. Even if everyone on the bus was conscious and could move, they would not have gotten off the bus and walked to ask for help in half an hour, right?
This is totally illogical.
Youxi looked around several times again, trying to find some abnormal phenomenon similar to the empty city, but there was nothing strange in the vicinity except this empty bus.
Although Youxi wanted to hide the reward, she couldn't find it and it was useless to stay any longer. She took out her mobile phone, took a few photos of the inside and outside of the bus, and then chose to leave.
She was not familiar with the road conditions in the col, and she couldn't navigate due to poor signal, so she finally chose to climb the cliff again.
Of course, this time she changed the place and found a road that was easier to climb the cliff, and climbed up the mountain road on the other side in the rain.
After checking that there was no one and no cars around, she quickly took out the car, opened the door and got in.
After this incident, she decided to postpone her trip to the Heibola village, turned left at a fork in the mountain road, and drove towards the coastline avenue in the west.
After the car left the hills, the phone finally had a signal again, so she called Tang Yatong and Lin Wu directly and made an appointment with them to meet.
**
An hour later, Tang Yatong came to the agreed coffee shop on the Moonlight Bay Seaside Avenue to meet Youxi. At this time, Youxi had already dried her hair, hands and face in the nearby bathroom and changed into fresh and dry clothes.
Tang Yatong came from the water house near the southwest side of the island. She saw a train passenger there and followed the passenger.
She told Youxi that the tourist was also investigating a missing person on the island, but he was unlucky because the missing person was not another tourist, but his own companion.
"I remember that guy. He was a novice passenger who arrived at Paradise Island on the same train as us. He was sitting in Carriage No. 4, and we passed by there when we were waiting at the door to get off. He was wearing a school uniform and looked quite young, but he was not as panicked as the other novice passengers, asking random questions without any reason.
It might be because of his age, and he probably read the infinite flow novel you mentioned before, so he quickly accepted the status quo. There was another novice passenger sitting near him at the time, and they got off the train together, so they should have formed a team. Now it is his companion who is missing."
After listening to this, You Xi thought of something: "If they are both novice passengers, then this is their first stop. I guess both of them will have unlimited currency. Now that his companion is missing, it is not ruled out that he was killed by the veteran passengers and his equipment was taken."
"I was suspicious before, but he captured something," said Tang Yatong, pulling out her phone and clicking on a video. "I saw that although he was anxious, he was very steady during the investigation, and he was not like some novice tourists who just acquired their skills and wantonly suppressed the indigenous people. So I showed up to communicate with him and wanted to ask him about his friend.
He was very cautious and bought a ticket after checking into the water house. The camera was installed on the door and window. Before his friend disappeared, he went out to buy dinner. When he came back
, he found that his friend was missing. The camera on the balcony of the water house captured something. "Because it was night, and there was a shallow sea area outside the balcony of the water house, there was no light, so the video was very dim. Only a person's feet were vaguely captured. The person seemed to be resting on a lounge chair on the balcony.
Suddenly, he seemed to hear something, sat up abruptly, and half of his back appeared in the picture. He looked around vigilantly. After a while, probably because he didn't find anything, he lay down again. Just after he lay down, something suddenly appeared in the dark picture and quickly hit the camera.
The sound of the camera falling startled the people on the balcony again. The camera was facing the floor and could not capture the scene after that, but the video could hear a young man's terrified voice: "What are you——"
The voice stopped here, followed by a series of struggling movements and dull guttural sounds, as if the man's mouth was covered by something. Then, with the sound of splashing water, the screen fell into silence.
The video ended. You Xi took Tang Yatong's phone and dragged the screen to the place where the camera was hit again, then paused and zoomed in, and took a screenshot.
The screen showed a shaking arm, which looked too slender to be human. There was a sticky film between the five open fingers, like an animal's webbed feet. At the same time, from the arm to the fingers, it was all sticky blood.
"You found it too?" After she checked, Tang Yatong opened the photo of the bloodstain that she had taken in the villa next door. After comparing the photo with the screenshot, she found that the strange webbed finger was highly consistent with the bloodstain in the villa.
This is not a bloodstain, but a bloody handprint.
"Train!" Youxi remembered the bloody handprint that appeared outside the window glass before entering the station, and intuitively felt that it was the same thing.
So the crisis at the station this time is biological mutation?
But what is the relationship between these two missing incidents and the bus incident just now? It can't be that a group of mutant creatures took away everyone on the bus, right?
When Youxi and Tang Yatong were discussing and analyzing the two things, Lin Wu called. He went to the local residential area on the east side of the island by the sea today, and it would take some time for him to get over.
"Have you watched the news?" he asked on the phone. "If there is a TV nearby, turn it on immediately, or check your phone. The news has already spread on the Internet."
You Xi did not hang up the phone, and Tang Yatong clicked on a popular online news platform.
The platform has been flooded with a video, and it is no longer clear who posted it first.
The video was on a cliff by the sea on Paradise Island. Judging from the surrounding light, it should be around dawn. In the picture, a blood-red creature with slender arms stopped rushing towards the camera after the sound of the snatch.
It looked like a human, but it was hunched over, with its hind legs slightly bent and its front legs on the ground, making hoarse screams of pain. It was obvious that it had just been hit by a bullet, but because it was covered in blood-red liquid
, it was hard to tell where the wound was. It was very angry and seemed to want to rush up again, but the person filming with a mobile phone fired again, this time with several shots in a row. The screams forced the blood-red creature to retreat again and again, and finally retreated to the cliff and jumped off from there.
If it was just a picture like this, it would be fine. This video would at most show the discovery of a new strange creature. But before the creature jumped off the cliff, it spoke in a hoarse voice: I will come back... to find you...
Although the words were unclear, it was clear that it was indeed human language.
Is the blood-red creature a human?
Or has this creature learned human language?
This video caused a complete uproar on the Internet. Someone recognized this place, which is on the cliff along the east coast of Paradise Island.
"Have you finished watching it?" Lin Wu asked on the other end of the phone, "Ordinary tourists won't steal it. It should be a video taken by a tourist."
"Well, sister Yatong and I have also made a new discovery today." Youxi immediately sent the video that Tang Yatong found to Lin Wu.
Through the photos they took in the villa next door, the video obtained by Tang Yatong, and this video posted on the Internet, we can know that the creature that appeared in the three incidents is the same.
The three incidents took place at the seaside, which means that the creature should have entered and exited from the water. Those missing people were most likely dragged into the sea.
Police officer Ron led a secret investigation into this matter. It is currently impossible to determine whether he represents a private organization or the official. There is an action of taking blood from creatures for research in the action team, which at least shows that Ron is also investigating this creature.
In addition, it can sneak attack people on the island like humans, and it always happens at night or before and after dawn when the light is the worst and people are the most tired.
It can be seen that the creature should have been a human in the past, just like the black reptile. For some reasons, it has become what it is now, but it still retains some of the human way of thinking or instinct, and can organize and plan actions.
When Youxi and Tang Yatong analyzed and summarized these, they both received a prompt at the same time.
Tip: Track the whereabouts of the "blood man" and find the cause of the formation of the "blood man" to get a hidden reward.
Seeing the new prompt task, Youxi was not very happy. There were too few clues about the things that happened at the station this time. She always felt like she was surrounded by fog, and her thoughts were trapped in a narrow space, unable to see the overall situation.
However, she still chose to share this hint and the previous hint of the bus with her teammates one by one. Maybe Tang Yatong and Lin Wu might find the answer that she couldn't find.
After Tang Yatong asked Lin Wu where he was, she told him not to rush over for the time being. It had been raining heavily today, making it inconvenient for the investigation. They decided to go back to the villa first.
Before Lin Wu was about to hang up the phone, he heard You Xi suddenly shout "wait".
"What's wrong? Is there something important?" His heart tightened.
"You should pass by Palm Road, right?"
"Yes."
"When you pass by Palm Road, remember to go to the dessert shop at the intersection and pack more coconut mango desserts. They are delicious."
"..."
You Xi hung up the phone, stood up and called the waiter. When the other party saw that she was leaving, he immediately moved two large boxes out of the cafe with another waiter and put them in the trunk of the car for her.
Youxi happily closed the trunk and explained to Tang Yatong who was looking at him: "I had already ordered 30 cups of coffee, 30 cakes and hot dogs to take away before you came. The things were just finished. Was the time calculated just right?"
Tang Yatong: ...
Hoarding is a disease.
**
That night, when the three of them were eating hot pot around the tea table in the villa living room, the news about the bus falling off the cliff that Youxi had mentioned appeared on the TV news.
In the news footage, the heavy rain had stopped. It was evening. The bus fell into the woods in the valley with flames rising to the sky. The fire brigade rushed to put out the fire, but because the terrain of the valley was complicated, the fire truck could not drive in, so they could only go to the nearest deep pool to draw water to put out the fire.
However, during this process, huge flames frequently burst out from the bus body, and the fire intensified. By the time the fire brigade successfully pumped out the water from the lake, it was too late...
The screen quickly cut back to the studio, and the announcer said solemnly that the bus had fallen off the cliff and the fire was serious. The driver and tourists on the bus were all killed in the fire.
The cause of the bus falling off the cliff is still under investigation. According to expert analysis, it may be because the road was slippery due to rainy weather and the line of sight was blocked, so the accident occurred on the sharp turn.
If Youxi had not been at the scene and witnessed the whole process with his own eyes, he would probably have thought it was just an ordinary traffic accident and ignored it.
"How could there be a fire? It was raining heavily when the bus fell off the cliff, and the sparks were all extinguished by the rain."
Lin Wu frowned: "Why did the officials lie?"
"Even if they didn't lie about the fire, when I went to check, there was no one in the bus. How did they come to the conclusion that everyone on board was killed in the fire?"
"So, the authorities are not only lying, but also covering up something." Tang Yatong pondered for a moment and put forward another hypothesis, "Do you think it is possible that those people in the bus are still alive?"
"It is possible." Lin Wu nodded.
"But even if they are still alive, the official conclusion is like this, which means these people will never come back..." Youxi thought about the whole thing, and his thoughts automatically went in another direction, "The reason why the bus fell off the cliff was because of brake failure, but this kind of tourist bus company, safety is the top priority, generally will not make such a low-level mistake.
Could the brake failure be man-made? Could it be... This whole thing was controlled by officials or some organization from beginning to end? They artificially let the bus lose control and cause the accident, they moved the people on the bus, and used fire to cover up the truth... So, what do they want these people to do?"
Not long after these words were spoken, Youxi and the other two received notifications on their mobile phones at the same time.
Congratulations on finding the reason why the bus lost control.
Rewards: Breathing Bubble (One-time item, usable underwater, lasts 4 hours.)
Clues: Island, Full Moon.
Because Youxi shared the bus hint before, all three of them got clues and rewards.
Clues are not important, Youxi can share them herself, the key is the props of the reward.
On the mobile screens of the three people, there is an additional prop column under the skill column.
Props (up to 5): Breathing Bubble (One-time item, usable underwater, lasts 4 hours.)
When Youxi clicked on the three words "Breathing Bubble", a pop-up window popped up: Do you want to use the breathing bubble? Yes/No
Since this is a one-time prop, she was afraid that she would not be able to take it back after using it, so she clicked no.
Tang Yatong and Lin Wu did nothing and received the same reward, which made them feel more favorable towards the idea of forming a team.
"But now there is a problem." Tang Yatong sighed, "You just said two answers at the same time, and the phone should have defaulted to one of the answers as correct before the reward popped up. So, which one is the real answer? Is the mastermind behind this an organization or an official?"
**
The next day, the order of Paradise Island gradually became chaotic.
After a day of fermentation, the video on the Internet had a greater impact, and almost all the tourists in Paradise Island knew about it.
Everyone was very concerned about this. Some went to the police station to inquire about the situation of the strange creature. Some people began to frequently call shipping and air transport companies to book tickets to leave. Some people once again took photos and videos of the blood-red creature and posted them online immediately, causing greater panic.
Paradise Island is a tourist island and also a small island country. In addition to the main island of Paradise Island, there are some scattered islands in the nearby waters, but those places have hardly developed and only a few local people live.
Once Paradise Island is in chaos, the entire small country is in chaos.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
