Lin Xia leaned closer to look, the firelight making her cheeks burn. The red line on the map resembled a winding lifeline, extending among the dense contour lines. She suddenly remembered her sketchbook, filled with the scenery she had drawn before getting lost; the veins of the leaves and the ripples of the streams that she had carefully depicted were now just blurry memories.
“Let me tell you a story,” Zhou Ziqi suddenly said, her voice much calmer than before. “My grandfather used to be a forest ranger. He said that the mist in the mountains has a spirit, and if a lost person listens attentively, they can hear the mountain god’s guidance in the wind.” As she spoke, the firelight danced in her eyes, like two small stars falling into them.
Old Zheng laughed heartily, "You silly girl, you're full of feudal superstitions." But there was no sarcasm in his laughter; instead, there was a sense of relief and ease. Chen Mo threw a piece of resinous wood into the fire, and a rich aroma instantly filled the air, dispelling some of the damp chill.
Night deepened. The fog gradually dissipated, revealing a few dim stars through the sparse treetops. Lin Xia lay in her tent, listening to the crackling of the campfire and Chen Mo's even breathing. Suddenly, she realized that fear wasn't so terrible after all. When it was laid bare in the firelight and enveloped by everyone's conversation, it slowly lost its sharp edges. She remembered Chen Mo's words before they set off: "curing urban ills." Perhaps the real cure wasn't escaping the city, but learning to coexist with fear and find solace in companionship when lost.
IV. Finding the Way: Clues in the Morning Light
Dawn was awakened by the chirping of birds. When Lin Xia unzipped the tent, she saw Chen Mo already packing his backpack. The campfire was reduced to a few dark red embers, emitting faint white steam. Zhou Ziqi was brewing coffee in a portable kettle; the rich aroma, mixed with the freshness of the morning dew, helped to relax her nerves, which had been tense all night.
"Good morning," Old Zheng said, emerging from the tent with a few bits of grass stuck in his hair. "Did you sleep well last night? I dreamt that I was back in the exploration team, hammering rocks with a geological hammer." He bent over and stretched his shoulders, his joints making a "click" sound.
Breakfast consisted of compressed biscuits and instant coffee. Lin Xia chewed on the dry, hard biscuits, watching the first light of dawn breaking in the east, a strange sense of anticipation rising within her. Chen Mo unfolded a map and circled several points on it with a pencil: "I thought about it last night, and there might be two branches downstream of the valley. We need to find the main channel first." His finger traced a dense array of contour lines on the map. "The terrain here is complex, everyone must stay close and not act on your own."
Before setting off, Chen Mo made an unexpected decision: he asked everyone to pick up a suitable branch to use as a trekking pole, and required everyone to leave a mark in a conspicuous place every ten minutes—it could be a broken branch, an arrow made of piled stones, or a knife mark on a tree trunk. "Even if we really get separated, we can find each other by following the marks," he said, his eyes unusually serious.
Morning light filtered through the leaves, casting dappled shadows on the forest floor. Lin Xia held the bark-worn branch, feeling it resembled some ancient totem, giving her a sense of reassuring strength. Old Zheng walked in front, occasionally squatting down to examine the soil, muttering, "Look at these earthworm tracks, it means the water table is high, there should be a water source nearby." Zhou Ziqi was responsible for taking photos of the landmarks along the way with her phone; although there was still no signal, she believed these photos would come in handy someday.
They proceeded in the direction they had roughly determined the night before, leaving countless markers along the way. Sometimes they encountered steep slopes, in which Chen Mo would climb up first and then pull the others up with a climbing rope; other times they came across waist-high bushes, in which Lao Zheng would cut a path with a machete. Lin Xia noticed that when everyone was focused on overcoming the obstacles in front of them, the anxiety about getting lost seemed to be temporarily forgotten, replaced by a focused collaboration.
Around noon, they rested in a relatively open clearing in the woods. Zhou Ziqi took out the last few packets of pickled vegetables and shared them with everyone to eat with biscuits. Old Zheng took a few sips of water and suddenly pointed to a pine tree that had been struck by lightning not far away: "Look at that tree. The direction of the break in the trunk is southeast. Yesterday afternoon, the wind was from the northwest. The direction of lightning strikes is usually the same as the wind direction, which means that the terrain to the southeast is lower, and the stream may flow in that direction."
This discovery cheered everyone up. Chen Mo immediately took out a map to compare, his brows gradually relaxing: "If the southeast is lowland, then it's very likely the main river channel we're looking for." He stood up, patted the mud off his pants, and said, "Let's go take a look over there."
The further southeast they went, the more tangled the vegetation became. Vines entwined the trees, forming a natural barrier, and the humus underfoot grew thicker and thicker, feeling soft like a sponge. Lin Xia's ankles were scratched in several places by branches, and sweat mixed with drops of blood trickled down her ankles, but she ignored the pain and just kept up with the person in front of her.
"Wait!" Zhou Ziqi suddenly stopped and pointed to a blurry mark on the ground. "Is this... a horse hoofprint?"
Everyone immediately gathered around. It was indeed a hoof print, the edges somewhat blurred, clearly some time old, but enough to prove that there had been human activity here. Chen Mo squatted down to examine it carefully, then touched the trampled ferns beside him: "The hoof print is facing that way, let's follow it."
The flame of hope was rekindled. Everyone's steps became lighter, even their breathing became somewhat hurried. Lin Xia could hear her own heartbeat, this time not from fear, but from anticipation. She imagined what might appear ahead—a winding river, a wooden bridge spanning its two banks, even the smoke rising from the distant village.
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