The monkey's words drew my attention away from the watch face.
I looked around and sure enough, a hazy, indistinct feeling appeared.
Previously, we could barely see the general terrain 20 or 30 meters away by starlight, but now we can't even see the trees 5 or 6 meters away.
The fog around me grew thicker and thicker. I brought my head-mounted night vision goggles to my eyes, but the image had turned into a ghastly green and was still unable to penetrate the fog.
The monkey shone its flashlight around, but no beam of light appeared in the air; the darkness seemed to swallow the flashlight's beam. "Hey? What's going on? Is the fog in India different from back home? How come I can't even see water vapor?"
"Never mind all that, we need to climb the mountain as soon as possible! If we miss the appointed time, things will be completely ruined!"
Surrounded by fog, I pulled a compass from my pocket and used it to adjust my direction: "This way!"
Monkey pulled out the walkie-talkie from his waist, wanting to report our situation to Wei Shengnan, but after a few words there was no response. He then pulled out the Beidou satellite handheld radio and glanced at it: "Young Master Duan, our location has disappeared!"
I continued walking: "That's normal. These satellite positioning devices are most vulnerable to bad weather! The fog here is so thick, it's very difficult to get satellite signals."
"Damn it, we've had such bad luck! We only had two hours, and we encountered such thick fog! If we had slipped and fallen into a ravine, and ended up crippled, I would have regretted it for the rest of my life! That ten thousand yuan from the Wei family was really hard to earn!"
The monkey muttered to itself beside me, but still followed, and kept shining its flashlight on the path for me.
Guided by the compass, the monkey and I continued walking for more than ten minutes before stopping.
The monkey following behind, preoccupied with its feet, suddenly bumped into me: "Young Master Duan, why did you stop? Have we arrived at our destination?"
"We've not arrived at our destination; we must have been blindfolded by ghosts!"
I shook my head and pointed to their trouser legs, saying, "Fog is made up of water vapor suspended near the ground, but we've been walking for so long and we're still dry. The grass on the ground hasn't condensed into water droplets either, which means that what's around us isn't fog!"
“I’ve heard the elders in my family talk about this kind of strange thing before, but I never thought it would actually happen to me!” The monkey examined his trouser leg, looked at the surrounding mist, and asked me, “Young Master Duan, I heard that if you encounter this kind of thing, taking a piss will cure it. Why don’t we take a piss and try it?”
"The situation you described is called being trapped in a maze, which refers to a person walking at night or in the countryside who loses their sense of direction, has a blurred sense of self, and doesn't know where to go, so they keep going in circles. But our situation is more complicated, and I'm afraid your method won't work!"
As I spoke, I took out five coins from my pocket and placed them on the five corners of the compass.
As the last of the five coins fell, the compass needle wobbled slightly and moved gently to the left.
Seeing that the method in the judge's record was indeed useful, I perked up: "This way!"
This time, the monkey and I no longer went around in circles, but walked straight ahead and reached the foot of the mountain.
Shining a flashlight forward, one can barely make out the undulations of the terrain.
The monkey glanced at his watch: "Damn it, we've finally made it out! Young Master Duan, we have ten minutes left, let's hurry up the mountain!"
I grabbed the monkey's wrist: "Let's turn back, we can't go up this mountain!"
The monkey looked at me curiously: "Young Master Duan, we finally managed to get rid of the ghost's blindfold, so why are we suddenly stopping?"
I shone my flashlight on the compass: "See for yourself!"
At this moment, the compass needle in the center of the compass was slowly rotating like a second hand, and with the thick fog surrounding us, I had completely lost my sense of direction.
Even the bold monkey paled in surprise: "What's going on?"
The Duan family's geomancy technique is the Mountain-Turning Mirror, but there is no record of such a strange situation in the Judge's Record. I shook my head and said, "Now we have no direction and can't see the stars. It's too late for us to go up the mountain. Let's follow the footprints back! We can't go any further into this mountain!"
As soon as I finished speaking, Monkey and I shone our flashlights on the ground and started feeling our way back.
After walking for about ten minutes, stumbling along, I suddenly noticed a flickering light appearing in the dark fog ahead.
The monkey's face lit up with joy: "Young Master Duan, look at those lights over there. Isn't that Wei Shengnan and the others coming to look for us after they lost contact with us?"
I was a little doubtful: "That shouldn't be the case. We've lost contact with our superiors, how could they have found us?"
“This is perfectly normal. This mountain only has two branches, and our location didn’t just suddenly disappear. They could easily find their way here using our previous location!” The monkey didn’t find anything unusual. “Besides, we’re the only group of people in this mountain. If there were really a problem, would a ghost be carrying a light?”
After hearing what the monkey said, I felt it made some sense, so I quickened my pace and walked towards the light, shouting at the same time, "Hey! Who's that up ahead?"
The lights flickered in the distance, but there was no response.
As I walked forward with the monkey, the surrounding fog gradually dissipated, and when I saw the light source, I felt my hair stand on end.
The light wasn't from a flashlight; it was clearly from a large temple, with a string of lanterns hanging outside the temple gate.
This temple is different from the Indian temples we have seen before; it was built in the Chinese style.
With its red walls, yellow tiles, golden roofs, and stone walls, the courtyard reveals a vast complex of buildings with overlapping roofs.
In stark contrast to the temple's grandeur, between the massive courtyard walls, there is only a small gate, which looks to be no more than a meter high, with two small lanterns hanging at the entrance.
Looking at the temple in front of me, I suddenly remembered the story of the haunted temple that Galawa had told me.
During the previous meeting, Monkey had not heard the story of the ghost temple. Facing the ancient temple in front of him, he was completely bewildered: "Young Master Duan, we followed the footprints back, so we should have taken the same route. Even if the fog obscured the temple on the way here, we shouldn't have missed such a large complex of buildings and lights when we were on the mountaintop. This temple seems to have appeared out of nowhere."
Before I could answer the monkey's question, light shone again from the darkness on my left. A fat, Indian-looking monk carrying a lantern looked at us with a grin.
Perhaps it was the lighting, but the monk's face looked very strange, his mouth stretched almost to his ears, showing no compassion of a monk, but rather a sinister look: "Two benefactors, are you here to worship Buddha?"
The monkey shone its flashlight on the monk: "Hey! How come you, a foreign monk, can speak Chinese? Did you study in China?"
The monk seemed not to hear the monkey's words, walking with unusually steady steps on the bumpy mountainside, as if he were floating over: "Since you're already here, come in and pay your respects at the temple."
I glanced at the approaching monk, my gaze falling on the ground beneath his feet, and suddenly grabbed the monkey's wrist: "Stop fucking looking! Run the fuck away!"
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