While I was chopping tree branches, I heard Jiang Man scream, and the hairs on my body stood on end. I stumbled and ran towards her.
The second match in Fengmen Village was designed to be a competition with no rules.
Among these fourteen teams, only a very few experts, like Qu Ruilin, are capable of uncovering tombs from flat ground. Most people need to rely on the terrain to determine the feng shui.
To avoid encountering those people while I was traveling, I didn't choose flat terrain and deliberately took a detour through the woods.
At that moment, I was extremely nervous. After all, there were venomous snakes everywhere. Whether she was bitten by a snake or injured by someone, if she was injured, it would pose a huge threat to us given the lack of medical care and medicine.
The three groups of us weren't far apart, and we quickly gathered at Jiang Man's location.
I saw Jiang Man standing there, her face pale. I ran to her, panting, and asked, "Xiao Man, what happened? Are you hurt?"
"It's nothing, I was just startled."
Jiang Man patted her chest and pointed to the bushes in front of her: "There are corpses in there."
"It's okay, don't worry."
After hearing Jiang Man's explanation, I finally felt relieved. I had thought she had seen the carcass of some wild animal, but when I went over, I also frowned.
In the bushes ahead lay the corpses of two people.
The two corpses lay side by side, their bodies mangled and bloody from being gnawed by insects. The flesh on their faces had been completely devoured, with blood and flesh clinging to the bones. Insects crawled in and out of their sunken eye sockets, and even the air was filled with a pungent, fishy stench.
"vomit!"
Lin Que saw the two corpses in the woods and immediately spat them out; the others also turned their gaze away.
The monkey wasn't afraid of the corpses. It peered over and said, "Judging from the state of decomposition, these two bodies must have been dead for a long time, right? But we've only been in the jungle for two days. Could these corpses not belong to the participants in this competition?"
“I recognize one of the clothes; he’s one of the contestants. And the temperature in the rainforest we’re in is very high, which will accelerate the decomposition of the body.”
Jiang Man, forcing back her nausea, said, "We need to perform autopsies on these two people to determine their cause of death."
Lin Que vomited everything out of her stomach and looked at the bushes with disgust: "We're not forensic doctors, what does it have to do with us how these two people died?"
I looked at the two corpses, took a deep breath, and prepared to go forward to examine them: "Jiang Man is right, we must determine the cause of their death. If they died from poisoning, we must leave this area."
"Mr. Duan, let me do it!"
Jiang Man's bodyguard, Xue Dong, stopped me: "I went to police academy and studied criminal investigation."
I exchanged a glance with him: "Together."
Xue Dong heard what I said but didn't say anything. He walked over and put the spear under the corpses: "These two corpses are already somewhat decomposed and have attracted so many insects. Don't touch them with your hands, or you might get infected with some germs. Use the spear to turn them over."
I stood side by side with Xue Dong, crossed our spears under the bodyguards, and simultaneously exerted force to turn one of the corpses over.
When the body was lying on the ground, there were no wounds on its front, but there was a blood hole about the size of a thumb on the back of its neck. The skin around the wound was bruised and the purple blood vessels on it were clearly visible, like the veins of a leaf.
Xue Dong glanced at the wound and immediately determined the cause of death: "He died of poisoning. Don't touch his wound!"
"Was it attacked by some kind of venomous snake?"
I crouched down and took a look at the man's swollen neck and the everted wound. I quickly dismissed my guess: "He only has one wound on his body, and it's not a bite wound. Could it be some kind of poisonous insect?"
Xue Dong broke off two stalks of grass and examined the man's wound: "No, he was murdered. There are many splinters in his flesh. He must have been stabbed in the neck by a sharpened stick. But I have never heard of any plant that can be so poisonous."
"What if it's poisoned?"
After Xue Dong reminded me, I voiced my guess: "The people who attacked them used sharpened branches as weapons, and then caught venomous snakes in the jungle, smeared the venom on their weapons, and used the venom to kill people?"
"This is the most reasonable guess! The rainforest is not only full of venomous snakes, but also many venomous frogs and highly poisonous insects. If used properly, these things can be used as weapons, so there must be a master of poisons among the people who attacked them."
Xue Dong took a deep breath: "In the journey ahead, we must be extra careful of our opponents and make sure we don't fall into their trap."
I nodded: "Can you tell how long these two bodies have been dead?"
Xue Dong pressed the skin next to the wound on the corpse with a twig: "There are signs of rhabdomyolysis, and the gnawed skin has dried out. Judging from the humidity in the rainforest, the time of death is at least more than eight hours. The person must have died early this morning."
Hearing Xue Dong's words, I felt relieved: "This means that the other party has been gone for a whole day, and we won't meet again anytime soon."
Xue Dong broke off two tree branches and covered the corpse's face: "Although these two people were not bitten to death by poisonous creatures, the smell of blood will inevitably attract some wild animals. I suggest we move the campsite further away while it's still light."
An hour later, we found a new place to camp and then drank river water collected from leaves and ate dried grilled fish for dinner.
Perhaps because they had seen the two corpses, everyone's appetite was poor, especially Lin Que and Jiang Man, who didn't eat a single bite.
The monkey, however, was unaffected. It spat out a fishbone and said to me, "Young Master Duan, according to your analysis, once we climb this mountain, we will be able to see the overall feng shui. It seems that from here on, some people are already unable to suppress their desire to kill."
"Yes, I thought the killing in this jungle would only begin when the token was seen, but I didn't expect someone to have already started eliminating their opponents at this point."
I nodded solemnly, while also having a vague feeling that as we continued to delve deeper, we would inevitably come into contact with this team.
Suppressing my unease, I said to the others, "The fact that this team is willing to kill people here shows that they are absolutely confident that they can find the token. That's why they've started eliminating potential threats. Starting tomorrow, we need to speed up our pace. Only by obtaining the token as soon as possible can we avoid endless fighting with these people."
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