Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Lu Lingzhu had tried to pull a fast one and ended up worse off for it. She crouched on the ground, retching so hard she was about to bring up bile.

The three of us laughed until our stomachs hurt. But as we were laughing, the entire vehicle suddenly lurched.

My expression froze. Hua Yuling moved fast. With one hand, she grabbed the upper edge of the window, ducked, slipped nimbly out, and jumped down to the ground.

“One of the tires is leaking air.”

Song Feifei frowned. “Something’s wrong here. Let’s get out first.”

I turned to look at the rows of seats at the back of the vehicle. “What about your brother?”

Song Feifei shook her head. “That wasn’t him. Someone pasted a photo of him on the window.”

I went over to take a look. Sure enough, it was a photograph covering the entire window. The face in it was almost the same size as a real person. In the dark, looking in from outside, it would be very easy to mistake it for him.

I tore the photo down, rolled it up, and tossed it into my bag. I planned to find a safe place later and examine it carefully to see if there were any clues.

The three of us got out of the vehicle. Hua Yuling had already circled around it to inspect the area. She told us that she had found Wriggling Grass mucus at the foot of the mountain as well. Not only that, but the nearby shrubs also showed signs of being broken.

“There should have been other people in the vehicle at the time. After they were attacked by the Wriggling Grass, they abandoned the vehicle and ran. They went up the mountain in this direction.”

Following Hua Yuling’s directions, we headed into the mountain.

Along the way, Lu Lingzhu was weighed down with worry. Both hands pressed to her stomach, she kept asking Hua Yuling whether she had also been parasitized by the Wriggling Grass.

Hua Yuling nodded and handed her a detoxification pill.

“The Wriggling Grass requires an extremely specific environment to grow. Its full name is Abyss Wriggling Grass, and it has to grow at the bottom of a cliff or ravine, somewhere dark that never sees daylight.

“There also has to be an underground water source nearby, plus no fewer than three types of poisonous insects. You have to understand, poisonous insects have a very strong sense of territory. Wriggling Grass can only grow where those territories intersect.

“This thing needs an incredibly harsh and extremely coincidental environment to mature. Your brother and the others were just unlucky. How did they even manage to run into Wriggling Grass?”

According to Hua Yuling, once Wriggling Grass successfully parasitized something, it became a mobile creature no longer limited to the bottom of a cliff. It would move around freely, and it was highly aggressive.

Song Tianming and the others had come to Phoenix Mountain as tourists, and they had even arrived at the foot of the mountain in the middle of the night. Most likely, their vehicle had just parked when they ran into the Wriggling Grass.

So the whole group had panicked and fled blindly up the mountain.

I thought that possibility was pretty slim.

If a normal person was attacked by an animal, why would they think to run uphill? Wouldn’t that put them at an even bigger disadvantage?

Besides, there were more than twenty of them. Surely someone would have managed to escape, or at least make an emergency call in time. But over the past few days, not a single one of them had contacted the outside world.

Still, aside from Hua Yuling’s theory, I had no other ideas for the moment. For now, all I could do was listen to her and go up the mountain to look for them.

Hua Yuling followed the traces left by the Wriggling Grass, tracking it the whole way.

As we trudged through the mountain forest in the dead of night, I felt that the atmosphere was especially wrong.

This forest was far too quiet. The insect calls and bird cries that should have been there were completely absent. There was not even the slightest whisper of wind. Everything around us lay dormant in the shadows, utterly still.

All that remained by my ears was the sound of my own footsteps, landing on dry fallen leaves with faint crunches.

Crunch, crunch. Crunch, crunch.

The sounds grew louder and denser.

I wasn’t walking that fast, was I? I abruptly stopped.

Crunch, crunch-

Now I heard it clearly. The sound was coming from the bushes beside me.

I reached into my bag and pulled out my peachwood sword. With my other hand, I pinched a lightning talisman between my fingers and strode toward the bushes, shouting, “Huahua, get over here! There’s something here!”

The bushes shook violently. I raised the peachwood sword, about to hack down.

Then a shriek suddenly came from inside.

“What the hell? Who are you?!”