Chapter 47
Chapter 47
So heavy… My head feels like it’s splitting apart… Everything feels so heavy…
Chen Yuhui summoned every ounce of strength just to force her leaden eyelids open a crack. Every breath tugged at her chest, sending a dull ache through it that left her barely able to breathe.
All she could see was a blur of darkness, broken by fragmented silhouettes. Her mind felt as though it had been filled with glue, leaving it completely blank. Only instinctive pain and dizziness remained, spinning endlessly inside her head.
She lay there stiffly for several seconds. A frigid wind brushed her cheek, bringing a sharp sting with it, but also allowing her muddled thoughts to slowly piece themselves together.
She had fallen… from that tendril… together with Ji Feifan…
Chen Yuhui sucked in a sharp breath, only for the ache in her chest to send her into a coughing fit. She coughed so hard that tears sprang to her eyes.
It hurt so much!
She had no idea how long she had been unconscious, but the impenetrable darkness and deathly silence of the mountain forest told her that quite some time had passed.
Struggling, Chen Yuhui used her still-mobile right hand to feel around beneath her. Her fingers met something rough. It felt like… bark?
It seemed this tree had caught her in midair. The tremendous cushioning force had saved her life.
What about Ji Feifan?!
“Ji… Feifan?”
Chen Yuhui tried calling out in a hoarse voice, but beyond the sound of her own words, there was only dead silence.
Enduring the pain, she forced her stiff neck to turn and desperately searched as far as she could see. Above, below, left, and right, there were only the pitch-black outlines of trees and even deeper darkness. There was no sign of anyone, nor any human sound.
Where had he fallen? Could he be… somewhere below her?
Fear and worry twisted together inside her.
She couldn’t stay here forever.
Gritting her teeth, Chen Yuhui tried to move. Every slight motion made the bones in her body protest as though they had all come apart. Her chest and back were the worst, throbbing with pain that was both sharp and heavy.
Feeling around, she found a relatively secure handhold and slowly worked herself free. Then she wrapped her arms around the rough trunk and carefully slid toward the ground.
When her feet finally touched solid earth, Chen Yuhui nearly collapsed from exhaustion. She leaned against the tree trunk and spent several minutes catching her breath.
Darkness smothered everything, robbing her of nearly all sight and magnifying every faint sound around her.
With her back pressed against the trunk, Chen Yuhui’s heart pounded wildly. Her ears instinctively strained to catch every noise in the forest.
Rustle…
The bushes to her front left shifted slightly.
Rustle…
Something seemed to brush across the fallen leaves behind her to the right.
Chen Yuhui held her breath. Every hair on her back stood on end as cold sweat broke out across her skin.
Was it an animal?
Or… those things?
With a trembling hand, Chen Yuhui took out her phone. The instant the screen lit up, its faint glow illuminated only a tiny patch in front of her, making the darkness around it seem even more terrifying.
She quickly swept the light around. Other than trees and the shadowy outlines of bushes, there was nothing there.
But she didn’t dare lower her guard. The constant, barely audible noises slithered into her ears like venomous snakes, gnawing away at her nerves.
This couldn’t go on… She would lose her mind.
Clenching her teeth, she switched off the screen. Darkness descended once more, sharpening her hearing instead. The rustling seemed to continue, yet it could just as easily have been the natural sound of wind stirring dead leaves.
Calm down, Chen Yuhui. Calm down.
She forced herself to take a deep breath, trying to suppress the metallic taste rising in her throat and the frantic pounding of her heart.
If they were madmen, they wouldn’t be prowling around so quietly. They would have smelled a human by now and come charging at her, screaming.
It was probably just some small nocturnal animals, or the wind… That had to be it.
That had to be it.
She repeated the words over and over in her mind, soothing her frayed nerves as though reciting an incantation. It took a long while for her violent heartbeat to settle somewhat. The fear remained, but at least her hands and feet were no longer trembling so badly.
She turned her phone on again and lowered the brightness until it illuminated only the first few feet of the path ahead.
She had to get out of here. She had to find Ji Feifan. She had to… find some way to reunite with the others.
“North… I need to go north.”
Chen Yuhui murmured to herself as she struggled to read the compass on her phone. After adjusting her direction, she began stumbling through the darkness.
Every step was agonizingly difficult.
The ground was covered with tangled roots, and vines or branches from the undergrowth kept catching at her feet. The pain in her chest and back persisted with every movement, while unseen scrapes rubbed constantly against her clothes, sending fresh waves of pain through her body.
She didn’t dare move quickly. She was afraid of falling, and even more afraid of making too much noise.
How long had she been walking?
Time blurred amid the darkness and pain. Just as she was nearing her limit and about to find somewhere to rest, the edge of the faint circle of light suddenly fell upon something.
A pair of legs clad in dark pants protruded from the roadside weeds at an unnatural angle.
Chen Yuhui’s heart seemed to stop. She immediately killed the light on her phone and, almost entirely on instinct, crouched down behind a clump of dense vegetation. Clamping a hand over her mouth, she even stopped breathing.
In the darkness, all she could hear was the thunderous rush of blood in her head.
Was it a madman? Or… a corpse?
She waited for what felt like an eternity, but nothing moved over there. There was no laughter, no movement, only deathly silence.
After waiting a little longer, she switched on her phone again with a trembling hand and cautiously directed its light toward the figure.
The beam first illuminated pant legs caked with dirt and bits of grass, then slowly traveled upward… a bloodstained jacket… disheveled hair… and a familiar profile smeared with blood and grime.
Ji Feifan!
He lay there without moving.
Chen Yuhui’s heart leaped into her throat. No longer caring whether she remained hidden, she practically scrambled over on all fours. She dropped to her knees beside him and cautiously held a trembling finger beneath his nose.
A faint trace of warm breath brushed her fingertip.
He was alive!
Overwhelming relief instantly shattered her tightly wound nerves, and Chen Yuhui let out a breath. But then an even more difficult problem arose.
Ji Feifan was unconscious. What was she supposed to do?
Leave him behind? Impossible. Even if her conscience allowed it, being unconscious in a place like this was practically a death sentence.
Her only option was to take him with her. But she was already covered in injuries herself. How could she possibly carry him?
First, she needed to find somewhere relatively safe to spend the night. It was too dark to get far while hauling an unconscious man, and her own strength was almost spent.
Chen Yuhui forced herself to calm down and think. Rising to her feet, she held up her phone and carefully searched the area.
She couldn’t go too far. Otherwise, she might not find her way back, or something might happen to Ji Feifan while she was gone.
Chen Yuhui carefully examined her surroundings. Then her eyes lit up.
At the base of a rock face ahead, she spotted a shallow crevice. It wasn’t spacious, but there was enough room for the two of them to hide inside.
That would do.
After memorizing its location, she hurried back to Ji Feifan. Looking at her unconscious companion, Chen Yuhui gritted her teeth and crouched down. She pulled one of his arms over her shoulder, then summoned every ounce of strength she had and tried to haul him upright.
He was so heavy!
The full weight of a grown man bore down on her injured body. A dull pain flared through her chest, and her vision went black.
“Ugh…”
Chen Yuhui staggered, nearly sending both of them crashing to the ground.
This wasn’t going to work. She couldn’t move him like this.
She had no choice but to change tactics and drag him instead. Grabbing the back of Ji Feifan’s jacket by the collar, she pulled him toward the crevice one step at a time with every last bit of strength she could muster.
Ji Feifan’s body scraped over the uneven ground, his head lolling limply to one side.
Chen Yuhui was panting hard herself. Sweat seeped into her wounds, making them sting unbearably.
As she repeated the same dragging motion over and over, a question that fear and urgency had suppressed suddenly surfaced in her mind.
They had fallen from above together. Even if they had been separated on the way down, they should have landed relatively close to each other.
So why… had Ji Feifan been lying here all alone?
This spot was already quite some distance from the tree where she had regained consciousness.
Could he have… moved on his own after waking up?
Crack.
Just as Chen Yuhui was lost in thought, the unmistakable snap of a dry branch being stepped on came from the woods diagonally ahead of her.
Her thoughts were instantly cut short. Chen Yuhui froze, held her breath, and stared in terror toward the darkness where the sound had come from.
Was something there?!
An animal? Or…?
No crazed laughter or pounding footsteps followed the sound, but a bone-chilling sensation crept up her spine.
She couldn’t wait any longer. She had to get out of there!
Chen Yuhui unleashed the last of her strength and forced herself across the final short stretch. With a heavy thud, the two of them tumbled into the narrow crevice together.
Ignoring how badly the fall had rattled her, she immediately began using both hands and feet to scrape dead branches and fallen leaves over the opening, concealing it as thoroughly as she could.
In the darkness, the mountain forest beyond the crevice remained silent.