Chapter 76 Spicy Strips
The thick white fog that enveloped the maze gradually dissipated, and the long corridor in the green wall gradually became clear.
"Damn wild flowers! I haven't slept all night and I'm so sleepy." Li Dong yawned.
At six o'clock in the morning, the fog dissipated and Xu He took the opportunity to climb to the top of the wall.
The rustling sound of footsteps came from far away, and just as the footsteps were about to approach them, Xu He had already slid down from the top of the wall.
After he landed, he pulled Xie Liang up and ran forward.
"Run!" Xu He turned around and shouted.
Upon hearing this, Li Dong hurriedly took Ji Ranzi and ran towards the corridor ahead. Xie Liang looked back and saw that the place where they had just stood was already crowded with lizard monsters.
After turning several corners, they finally got rid of the lizard monsters behind them.
After stopping for a while, Xu He told everyone what he saw on the top of the wall.
According to him, there are more lizard monsters on the top of the wall, and there are the same green walls in front, behind, left and right. They may be very close to the center of the maze. As long as they don't take the same route repeatedly, there is a high probability that they will find the exit soon.
Li Dong breathed a sigh of relief: "It's worth the long walk!"
Just then, a man in front of the corridor ran towards them hurriedly, as if he was being chased by something.
After seeing Xie Liang and the others, the man quickened his pace and ran towards them as if he had seen a savior.
When the man was about five or six meters away from them, one of his legs suddenly sank into the grass, splashing a pool of mud.
"Fuck! There's mud under the grass!" Li Dong exclaimed.
Xie Liang reacted instantly and shouted at the man, "Don't come over! There's a swamp under the grass!"
The man glanced at Xie Liang and subconsciously pulled out the leg that was stuck in the mud, but gradually, his other leg also sank into the mud.
"Don't move!" Xie Liang shouted.
"Help! Something is pulling at my legs from under the mud! Ah!" The man struggled frantically. He sank even faster, and soon his entire body below the waist was submerged in the mud.
He was still calling out in panic and struggling, his body sinking at a speed visible to the naked eye.
They were too far away, and Xie Liang and his group had no time to rescue him. The mud covered his chest, neck, and then his chin. His terrified eyes stared at Xie Liang and his group.
Soon, the quagmire returned to calm, as if such a person had never appeared.
"If...if he hadn't run over here, we would have walked over! Then we would have been the ones to die! Damn it!" Li Dong punched the green wall beside him in fear.
A "crack" sound came from his fist, and then the short grass covering the ground of the corridor disappeared at a speed visible to the naked eye. A pool of mud appeared in the middle of the corridor, and some human skeletons were vaguely visible on the mud.
"The mirror again!" Li Dong looked at the shattered lens with his fist. "They're trying to kill us! Who would have thought there was mud under the grass?"
"Is there such a mirror in every passage?" Ji Ranzi asked.
Only then did Xie Liang realize that her originally clean and fair face had turned into a dry, gray-brown color, covered with tiny granular bumps, just like the scales on the faces of those lizard monsters.
"What's wrong? Why are you looking at me like that?" Ji Ranzi picked up the fragments of the mirror that Li Dong had just broken and looked at herself in the mirror.
"Ah!" She was so frightened that she dropped the mirror on the ground, covered her face with her hands and screamed, "Ah! What is this? What's going on! Am I poisoned?"
Li Dong said with an unpleasant expression: "Beauty, you are not poisoned, you seem to be infected. The color of your skin is similar to those lizard monsters..."
Li Dong didn't say anything else. He glanced at Ji Ranzi and took out the remaining apple. "Here you go. The apple is sweet."
Ji Ranzi pushed away the apple that Li Dong handed her and said in despair, "Will I become like them soon?"
Xie Liang didn't know how to comfort her, but he thought that if he went back before that, she should still be alive.
"If that's the case, everything will be fine if we go back before then," said Xie Liang.
Xu He still felt that they should go forward. What he meant was that there was only one main road, and as long as they didn't go in circles, it would be easier to reach the exit by going forward.
"Let's hurry up and get on the road. You'll be fine if you go back early." Li Dong said.
There are only two ways to get out of this quagmire: one is to climb over the top of the wall and walk over, but Xie Liang thinks this is unrealistic. The top of the wall is too high and it is full of lizard monsters, and he is afraid of dying faster; the other is to slowly move over by hanging on the vines of the green wall. Xie Liang thinks this method is dangerous but feasible.
"Let's go." Xie Liang held the vines of the green wall tightly with both hands and lifted them up. "These vines can bear a lot of weight. To prevent them from breaking suddenly, we will split into two groups and climb up the two walls respectively."
By the time they reached the tunnel across the quagmire, more than an hour had passed.
They continued walking forward and soon came to a bend. Standing there, they could vaguely feel the wind blowing.
"Is there wind? Are we almost at the exit?" Ji Ranzi became excited.
The skin on her face had mutated even more severely, cracking into lumps. One could clearly see that the original small bumps had turned into keratin scales.
"What are we waiting for? Let's go!" Li Dong said as he quickened his pace.
After walking forward for a while, a patch of half-human-high reed grass appeared on the ground of the corridor.
"Someone has been here before, and there are traces left by the person just now." Xie Liang said.
A trace of walking was left on the dense grass. The grass in some areas was pressed all over the place, and it was obvious that someone had fallen several times while walking through the reed.
They walked along the grass that was separated in the middle of the corridor. At first, Xie Liang was worried that there was something in the grass, so everyone walked very conservatively, but later they found that it was just some ordinary Miscanthus, so they quickened their pace.
Ji Ranzi's condition was getting worse and worse, and it looked like she would soon turn into a lizard monster. Her fingers had turned into claws and had grown sharp nails like those of the lizard monsters.
Soon after, she began to lose control of herself and kept shouting that she was itchy. Her hands turned into claws and kept scratching the newly grown scales on her body, leaving her flesh and bloody. Her leather coat was also torn by her own scratches.
"Stop grabbing! If you keep grabbing, you'll be killed by yourself before you transform." Li Dong said as he held her grabbing hands tightly.
"Do you think I want to? I can't control it! My body is itching so much!" Ji Ranzi's eyes were red and she was about to cry.
After obtaining her consent, Xie Liang took out a bundle of rope from his bag and tied her hands.
After passing through the Miscanthus grass, the ground was bare, wet mud.
They continued walking forward for more than ten minutes, and two forks in the road appeared in front of them.
"The road has forked again. Which way should we go?" said Li Dong.
"Miss Ji Ranzi, can I borrow a strand of your hair?" Xie Liang said as he gently pulled half of Ji Ranzi's long purple hair.
He stood at two forks in the road, holding the half strand of hair and observing it. At one of the forks in the road, the wind was blowing the long purple hair.
"Brother He, this way?" Xie Liang asked.
"Well, there are a lot of footprints on the ground. There might be something inside." Xu He said as he walked in with his sword.
Upon hearing this, Xie Liang and Li Dong also took out their weapons and followed Xu He with Ji Ranzi.
It was still the same wet mud ground, but the difference was that there were many more round pits of different sizes on the mud ground. The big ones were forty to fifty centimeters wide, and the small ones were twenty to thirty centimeters wide.
From a distance, you can see some white, round objects in some round pits in the distance.
"Is it an egg?" Ji Ranzi asked.
"Not really. You'll know when you take a look." Xie Liang said.
At this moment, something was vaguely moving in the distance, spreading towards them.
After seeing what it was, Xie Liang got goose bumps all over his body - several large green snakes as thick as wrists were snaking towards them!
Those white, round things in the round pit are not eggs, they are clearly snake eggs!
"Fuck! It's spicy strips! And big spicy strips!" Li Dong yelled.
The snakes quickly crawled in front of them. Xu He walked in front with a sword, chopping off one snake at a time, and if there were two, he would chop off a pair. From time to time, a snake would slip through the net and crawl towards him from behind, so Li Dong would go up and hit it with a kitchen knife.
The further they walked, the more snake eggs there were on the ground. The group had to carefully deal with the snakes that kept crawling over as they walked.
I don’t know how long I walked, but the green walls on both sides of the corridor gradually became higher and higher, and the view in front of me gradually became wider.
After walking for another ten minutes, the group finally saw the end of the corridor.
At the end there was a circular deep pit about three meters in depth, and the group walked towards the pit.
Xie Liang was stunned, and the scene before him was so shocking that he was speechless.
"Damn! I've never seen such big spicy strips!" Li Dong said in astonishment.
Inside the deep pit, a large python as thick as a bucket was coiled at the bottom of the pit to rest. Its belly was swollen, as if it had just eaten.
"Look! There is a door right behind the giant python!" Xie Liang said, pointing to a place.
The three of them looked in the direction he pointed. It was a white stone door about one meter high, standing out from the green wall covered with vines, and it was out of tune with the green wall.
"Do you want to go over?" Ji Ranzi asked.
Her whole body was shaking, and she twitched from time to time, looking very uncomfortable.
"Are you cold now and shivering all the time?" Li Dong asked.
"I'm not cold, and my body isn't as itchy anymore, but I can't help shaking," said Ji Ranzi.
At this moment, the stone door was opened by someone. The person accidentally stepped on empty air and fell into the deep pit, hitting the diamond-shaped head of the big python directly.
The big python opened its vertical pupils the moment it was hit by him, and wrapped the man tightly with its thick tail. The man immediately let out a scream like a pig being slaughtered.
"Azhu! Run back! Don't worry about me!" The man shouted towards the stone gate, panting.
A woman in yellow clothes stood inside the stone gate. She did not listen to the man and run away, but jumped into the deep pit with some determination.
"If we want to get in, we have to find a way to kill the snake," said Xie Liang.
In the pit, the woman who was thrown aside by the giant python's tail saw Xie Liang and his group and looked at them for help.
Seeing that the man was about to be strangled to death by the giant python, Xie Liang jumped down into the wet mud at the edge of the pit with a dagger in his hand.
Xu He jumped down almost at the same time as him. Before he could stand firmly, Xu He stood in front of him.
"Beauty, wait here, I'll be back soon." Li Dong said as he jumped into the deep pit with a kitchen knife.
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