Chapter 109 Cave Mucus.
His shout woke everyone up.
Xia Zhu was a little embarrassed.
"I just saw a figure..."
She turned her head and found Feng Mian sitting in the other corner with a strange expression. Their eyes met, and he nodded slightly.
"I saw it too."
He did see the eerie shadow, but for a moment he didn't know whether he should speak up to warn it, and he was afraid of alerting it. He wanted to see what the shadow was up to first, but found that it seemed to be just imitating Xia Zhu.
Imitate the way she sleeps.
"What shadow?" Ji Yinxiu asked. "Is it a demon god?"
Feng Mian shook his head hesitantly, "I'm not quite sure either. That thing appeared suddenly. The light was dim, and I couldn't see it clearly. In the blink of an eye, the shadow appeared on the tent."
"At first, I thought it was A-Zhu's reflection and didn't pay much attention. But something felt increasingly off. The lamp was small, and Ying Ya was sleeping close to the tent, yet no shadow was cast..."
"I vaguely heard a strange breathing sound and that's when I realized something was wrong," Xia Zhu added, adding that the sound still sends chills down her spine.
She instinctively looked for Ying Huo's location, only to find him sitting in a corner, his expression obscured.
"Well then, I'll go out and take a look..." Ji Yinxiu was about to get up when Feng Feng stopped her. She frowned and turned her head slightly.
"Wait, wait, wait a minute, although I always say this line, I have a bad feeling about this time..." She put a finger to her lips to signal everyone to be quiet, and then said, "Didn't you hear anything?"
Almost as soon as she finished speaking, Xia Zhu felt the ground beneath her tremble. The six of them exchanged silent glances in the darkness, and the next second, everything in the tent began to plummet. The feeling of weightlessness overwhelmed her, and in her panic, Xia Zhu seemed to hear someone shout her name. She reached up and touched something cold.
A few seconds after falling, the person and the tent crashed to the ground with a loud thud.
Although there was a soft mat under the tent, Xia Zhu still fell so hard that she was dizzy and saw stars.
Fortunately, I didn't feel much pain.
Everything was pitch black. As she fell, the small lamp went out. Xia Zhu tried to get up by supporting her upper body with her hands, but her left hand touched something smooth and cold.
She blinked in the darkness, trying to think and make out what was happening. She slowly realized that the cushion beneath her seemed a little too soft, and not only that, the "cushion" was undulating violently as if it were being inflated.
As she moved, the thing in her palm moved too. Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be a hand, and the ring on the finger was cold.
"Can we go down now?"
A faint, weak voice drifted from below.
"Oh." Xia Zhu realized that someone had acted as a human cushion. "Thank you."
"Thank you?" Ying Huoqi laughed. "You're welcome."
Xia Zhu rolled over to the empty space next to her, reached out and groped around until she found the lamp. She turned on the switch, and thankfully it wasn't broken; the lamp lit up again.
The tent was mostly collapsed. She and Ying Huo were still holding on, but the other side was completely falling apart. The tent fabric covered Feng Feng and the others completely, and it looked like a stack of toys.
The meow's screams were deafening.
She rushed over, lifted the tent flap, and found the puppy lying unharmed on top, while Ying Ya was piled high with several people on top of him. She moved the lamp over, and Miao Miao, seeing the light again, realized that she was completely unharmed, let out a couple of embarrassed whimpers, shook her ears, and jumped off Feng Mian's back.
"You stinky dog... I haven't even barked yet... help me first..."
Xia Zhu quickly went over and pulled her out from under Feng Mian.
"Are you all alright?" Ji Yinxiu found a flashlight from somewhere, and its bright light instantly illuminated the entire tent. Fortunately, there were no external injuries, but the extent of internal injuries was unknown.
"What happened? Was it an earthquake?" Feng Feng rubbed his butt and crawled into the other half of the tent.
"We'll find out when we go out." Feng Mian had already reached the tent entrance, reached for the zipper at the bottom, paused for a second, glanced back at everyone, and then slowly pulled the curtain up.
A cold, damp wind carrying a distinctly fishy smell blew in from outside, and as far as the eye could see, everything was pitch black.
Since they only put a flashlight in the tent before going to sleep, Ji Yinxiu took the lead and left the tent first, with Xia Zhu following behind and quietly taking out her phone.
The pale moonlight cast a cold, impenetrable glow from above. Xia Zhu looked up and could see a large, round hole. It seemed that the ground had indeed collapsed, causing them to fall from above.
This place looks like some kind of cave formed later in life.
As long as the clouds obscure the moon, the entire cave will be pitch black. The phone's light is too weak to see anything beyond the general surroundings; Ji Yinxiu can only rely on the flashlight in her hand.
They were about four or five meters above the opening above them, and if they wanted to get up, they would probably have to rely on Feng Feng's vines. However, this cave looked a bit strange, so the group discussed it and decided to take the opportunity to explore it first.
Xia Zhu walked to the side and brought her phone close to the cave wall. The soil there didn't look dry; instead, it was so damp it reflected light. She hesitated for a moment, then reached out and gently dabbed a little soil with her fingertips, rubbing it in.
It feels like some kind of mucus.
After walking a few steps, they discovered that the entire cave was covered by this unknown slime, making the walls incredibly smooth. If an ordinary person fell in, it would be almost impossible to climb back to the surface.
She brought her fingers to her nose and could also smell a faint fishy odor.
This place didn't feel like it was man-made; it felt more like an animal's nest.
But how big of an animal would it have to be to dig such a hole?
"Come over here quickly and take a look." Feng Feng's voice came from the other end, and Xia Zhu hurried over.
"There's another passage here, but we don't know where it leads. Shall we go in and take a look?"
An opening appeared in the wall, but the walls remained smooth and sticky. Xia Zhu peered inside. The tunnel was long and deep, and the stench inside was even stronger than outside. A cold, damp wind blew in from the depths, accompanied by eerie echoes—a distant call.
Xia Zhu shared her guess about the animal's nest with everyone, and Ying Ya nodded in agreement. He had a similar feeling; it seemed that something was hidden in the cave, something that gave him a vague sense of fear.
"Let's go, we're already here."
Since the purpose of this trip is to capture demons, and this place doesn't seem right no matter how you look at it, we must find out the truth no matter what.
The entrance to the cave was very narrow, allowing them to enter one by one. So Ji Yinxiu went first, with Feng Mian bringing up the rear. But after only a few steps, Miao Miao started whimpering impatiently behind them. Xia Zhu turned around and saw that its legs were stuck in the ground, and it was twisting its neck and refusing to go any further.
Helpless, Feng Mian had no choice but to stay in the tent and wait for everyone to return.
As everyone disappeared into the cave entrance, he led Miaomiao back into the tent, turned the lamp back on, and retrieved his backpack from the pile of collapsed skeletons. He then opened a can of food for Miaomiao to soothe it.
The puppy was eating heartily when Feng Mian suddenly heard something fall from the top of the tent, making a rustling sound. He peeked his head out from the curtain and saw a huge red-eyed raven perched on it.
Bathed in moonlight, the black feathers transformed into a silk-like texture.
When the crow saw Feng Mian come out, it tilted its head curiously. The man and the bird looked at each other. Feng Mian shook his head, thinking to himself that this kid was quite thorough in his work.
The tunnel was narrow and seemed endless, growing increasingly unsettling with each step. The road ahead remained largely unchanged, meaning that turning back to escape in case of sudden danger was unlikely, but direct confrontation severely hampered maneuverability—it was practically a dead end.
Fortunately, after walking for a while, the passage seemed to gradually widen.
Xia Zhu and Ying Huo walked at the back. She remembered how he had been so frightened by the ghost story that he couldn't speak, so she stopped and turned to look at him.
"If you don't want to continue, you can go back the way you came to find Feng Mian."
Unexpectedly, the person behind her remained silent. She shone the light from her phone in his face, causing him to squint and make an impatient click of his tongue.
"Alright then." Xia Zhu gave up trying to persuade him.
Stubborn to the end.
"Stop for a moment."
Ji Yinxiu, who was walking at the front, suddenly stopped. He adjusted the sword at his waist and turned his body to face the wall on the left.
Unexpectedly, in this kind of place, the Xuanyuan Sword not only couldn't be used effectively, but it also became a hindrance.
"Look, there seems to be something on this wall." His voice floated lightly from the front, and although there were two people in between, it seemed to be a great distance away. When it reached Xia Zhu's ears, it was distorted considerably.
She projected his image onto the left wall using the light from her phone. Sure enough, beneath the layer of transparent slime, there seemed to be mottled marks different from the yellowish-brown soil.
When the light shines on it, it looks like a deep red color.
She was about to reach out and touch it when Ying Huo stopped her.
"It's dried blood."
"How did you know?" She shone her phone's flashlight into his face again.
"Tsk, can't you smell a strong stench of blood here?" His tone was a little awkward as he reached out and pushed Xia Zhu's phone to the other side.
“But if it’s blood, it looks like it’s been dried for a very long time.” She leaned closer again. If you didn’t look closely, the color wasn’t much different from the soil next to it, like paint that had faded after being exposed to the wind and sun.
"Maybe it's been dry for thousands of years," he said inexplicably.
"After thousands of years, how could it still be red?"
"See this slime? Maybe it has a preservative function."
Xia Zhu thought for a few seconds and felt that what he said made a lot of sense. In short, once she stepped into the world of divine blood, her worldview had already been shattered.
“I have some here too,” Feng Feng said excitedly. “So what is this?”
Xia Zhu looked up along the wall and found that these marks were not only on the side, but filled the entire tunnel, with dark red marks densely covering the left, right and overhead.
"That's not right..." she said as she tried to squat down. Her field of vision gradually widened, and the marks seemed to be able to connect into one.
"Looking at it this way, it resembles a painting."
"A painting?" Upon hearing this, Ji Yinxiu also squatted down in her manner.
"You know what! It really does look like it." Feng Feng was very excited about this discovery, after all, a picture means there is information. "It looks like it... but I can't figure it out, what is it?"
As she spoke, she turned to Ying Ya beside her and asked, "Little Crow, can you tell?"
"Like a human."
"A person?" Feng Feng tilted his head, almost lying down on the ground.
Upon hearing this, Xia Zhu also felt that it resembled a person, but the painting skills were clumsy, and he could only guess at it.
Extending from in front of her to Feng Feng's position, the painting depicts two people sitting opposite each other, and from the length of their hair—if you can even call it hair—you can tell they are a man and a woman.
There were four indescribable things drawn at their feet.
The closest thing to Xia Zhu was a winding, thin line, which, with a bit of imagination, could be roughly regarded as a small snake-like creature.
The four of them crouched on the ground and slowly moved forward, and the whole scene unfolded before their eyes. Besides the small snake, there were three other things: one that looked like a dog, a black blob that was hard to identify, and a stick figure with its arms outstretched in an abstract manner, looking rather grumpy.
Xia Zhu was taken aback and couldn't help but look at Ying Huo behind her, shining the flashlight on the painting in front of her to signal him.
“You’re a bit like me,” she said.
But she managed to choke on the last word.
Unlike the others, Ying Huo did not squat on the ground, but stood upright from beginning to end.
"What's wrong?" He looked down and noticed that Xia Zhu's expression was a little strange.
"nothing."
Xia Zhu shook her head stiffly, unsure of what to say. She couldn't very well tell Ying Huo that from her angle, she could see another pair of legs behind him.
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