Chapter 148
Chapter 148
Qingshui led the other two along the narrow path.
They didn’t dare walk openly down the middle of the road. The concrete stood out too much. If a Madman happened to pass by, it would spot them at a glance. Their only choice was to keep close to the fields beside the road, taking every step with extreme caution.
As they continued, houses gradually became more frequent. At first, there were only a few scattered buildings dotted sparsely along the edges of the fields. Farther on, they formed small clusters, packed close together.
Qingshui made a hand signal. The three of them bent low and followed the raised field boundaries, carefully skirting one cluster of houses after another.
The only sound was the wind rustling through the fields.
Before long, the houses on either side disappeared, replaced by neatly laid-out farmland.
A smooth concrete road wound toward the village ahead, flanked by fields divided into orderly plots. Some were planted with low-growing leafy vegetables, while others held tangled paddies of withered yellow rice stalks.
At the end of the road, houses with white walls and gray roofs stood at varying heights, forming a continuous settlement among the green trees.
The beauty of the countryside, once so picturesque, now filled them with nothing but fear.
There were simply too many houses, too many corners where Madmen might be hiding. None of them wanted to encounter another Madman.
The three crouched in a patch of dark green rapeseed plants. The plants rose above their knees, just high enough to conceal them. Whenever the wind blew, the green leaves swayed gently, completely swallowing their figures.
A powerful stench of decay flooded their noses.
It came from vegetables rotting in the fields. With no one to harvest them, they had decomposed where they grew, soaking in rainwater and releasing wave after wave of foul odor. The stench was so intense it made them want to vomit, but that also meant it could mask their own scents.
Ye Que raised her head and pointed into the distance.
“We should go that way,” she whispered. “There should be citrus trees farther up.”
Qingshui followed her finger with her gaze. Halfway up the hillside, she could just make out a patch of deeper green. Unlike the low crops surrounding it, those were fruit trees.
She nodded.
The three began making their way across the fields, bent at the waist.
The soil beneath their feet was soft, muffling their footsteps almost completely. Rapeseed leaves brushed against their legs with faint rustles. They didn’t dare straighten up and had to remain hunched over, like three animals creeping close to the ground.
After about ten minutes, they found an orchard tucked against the innermost slope. It contained citrus trees and pomelo trees.
The citrus trees had grown wild, their branches and leaves tangled together until they completely blocked the once-orderly paths between the rows. Branches reached out in every direction like countless hands barring their way.
Qingshui stood at the edge of the orchard and peered inside.
All the fruit on the outermost trees had rotted. The citrus fruits still hanging from the branches were blackened and shriveled. Some had decayed until only a layer of skin remained, their insides crawling with insects. The cloying sweetness of rot mingled with a sour reek so pungent it made them want to cover their noses.
“Let’s go deeper,” Ye Que whispered. “The fruit out here is spoiled, but the ones inside might still be good.”
They pushed aside the overgrown branches and squeezed deeper into the orchard.
Ye Que led the way, constantly parting leaves and forcing her way through. Then she stopped. The citrus fruits on the trees ahead were still good.
Golden yellow and perfectly round, they hung from the branches.
Ye Que reached out and picked one. A fresh, sweet fragrance filled her nose, cutting through the foul stench of decay.
She turned and nodded to Qingshui and Wu Wujie.
They began picking fruit.
The three opened the backpacks they had scavenged from the houses earlier and started stuffing them with citrus fruits. Ye Que worked the fastest, plucking fruit with both hands and shoving each one straight into her bag until it was packed full.
Wu Wujie took care of the fruit higher up. He was tall enough to reach it simply by extending an arm. Qingshui stood a short distance from the other two with her back to them, keeping watch.
Her gaze swept over the silent orchard, the wildly tangled branches, and the direction they had come from.
Ye Que had already stuffed several fruits into her bag with practiced ease. The backpack quickly began to bulge. She glanced back at Qingshui, then continued picking.
As Qingshui stared into the quiet grove, a strange feeling suddenly welled up inside her. Something felt wrong, though she couldn’t say exactly what. A chill crawled up her spine.
“Stop picking them.” Qingshui immediately called a halt. “Let’s go.”
Ye Que and Wu Wujie’s expressions darkened, and they stopped at once.
“Back the way we came?” Wu Wujie asked.
“No.” Qingshui swept her gaze around them before settling on the right. “We go right.”
Qingshui took the lead. She had barely gone a few steps when-
Rustle!
Two figures burst out of the citrus groves on either side!
They were too fast!
Qingshui couldn’t even make out what they looked like. All she saw were two naked shapes springing from between the branches, raising something in their hands-
Hiss-!!!
A stream of acrid crimson liquid sprayed straight at her face!
Qingshui instinctively squeezed her eyes shut. Fortunately, her helmet’s visor blocked the liquid, but her vision instantly became a blurry wash of crimson.
“RUN!”
Even as she shouted, she grabbed Ye Que beside her and bolted back the way they’d come. The three of them plunged blindly into the orchard like headless chickens.
Maniacal voices rang out behind them.
“We can’t play them to death so quickly this time! I want to keep them! Keep them and play with them nice and slow!”
“Keep them, keep them… or I’m going to lose my mind!!!”
The laughter mingled with the pounding of their hearts, making their scalps crawl.
Something caught Qingshui’s foot, pitching her forward, but she managed to steady herself. Scrambling on all fours, she threw herself between the low citrus trees.
The other two followed her into the dense, low-hanging foliage. Not daring to pause for even a second, they crawled forward with all their might.
“Hee hee hee… they ran that way… I saw them…”
“Over here, over here… idiot… they went this way…”
The voices were too close, as if they were whispering right into their ears!
Qingshui forced her eyes wide open. That damned liquid was still streaming down her visor, but she could at least make out a few shapes now. Ahead was a denser patch of citrus trees, their branches hanging even lower, with a narrow gap underneath!
She dove toward it, and Ye Que squeezed in after her. Wu Wujie’s massive body got stuck. Gritting his teeth, he forced his way through, snapping branches beneath his weight with a series of sharp cracks.
The three of them huddled beneath the low citrus trees, not daring to make a sound.
The laughter continued to drift nearby.
“Huh… where did those three bastards go…?”
“Where’d they run off to…?”
Through the dense gaps between the leaves, Qingshui saw a pair of feet pass less than ten feet away. They were bare, black with mud, and their toes were twisted and deformed.
The feet stopped right beside the citrus trees where they were hiding. Then another set of footsteps approached.
“Find them?”
“No… they’re pretty good at hiding…”
“Hee hee hee… then we’ll take our time looking… After all… we’ve got plenty of time…”
The laughter gradually receded.
Qingshui could finally see clearly again. She stared fixedly at the two blurry figures as they walked farther and farther away, eventually disappearing into the depths of the orchard.
No one dared move. The three of them remained huddled beneath the low citrus trees, perfectly still, their breathing reduced to the faintest whisper.
Only when their legs began to go numb did they start inching their way out.
After crawling out of the trees’ shadow, they cautiously continued on all fours for a little farther. Qingshui had just braced a hand on her knee to stand when her heart suddenly sank.
The ground beneath her feet felt wrong.
The next second, there was a sharp crack. The ground abruptly gave way, and her body plunged downward.
Qingshui reacted in an instant. She hurled herself forward and clung desperately to the edge with both hands!
Below her was a pitfall. It wasn’t very wide, but it was deep, and its bottom was filled with sharpened wooden stakes. The blackish-brown spikes stood upright, stained with who knew how many things.
Scattered among them were rotting limbs, so badly decayed it was impossible to tell what they had once belonged to. They had simply been left there.
Qingshui’s pupils contracted.
Her entire body dangled over the pit, supported only by her hands gripping the edge. Her fingers dug into the earth, but the soil was too loose. It crumbled away bit by bit, and she could feel her grip slipping.
…This was bad!
She could almost hear the laughter on the wind rising into a shrill, piercing pitch.