Chapter 49

Chapter 49

“Hah!”

Ji Feifan’s eyes flew open, and he gulped down air. Cold sweat poured off him, as though the terror from his nightmare still clung to his body.

He shook his head. His vision was a blur at first, taking several seconds to barely come into focus.

He was still alive…?

The realization came belatedly. He tried to move, but his body felt as though it had been taken apart and put back together. Every joint screamed in protest, while a dull ache throbbed through his left shoulder and right leg in particular.

He struggled to turn his head slightly and surveyed his surroundings. He was lying in a narrow crevice. Then he saw Chen Yuhui curled up beside him, sleeping fitfully.

She lay on her side facing him, her brow tightly furrowed. Even in sleep, fear and exhaustion lingered on her face. Her jacket and pants were caked in mud, and her exposed wrists and forearms were covered in scrapes and cuts.

Ji Feifan frowned as a storm of conflicting emotions welled up inside him.

He remembered now.

After the fall, he had actually regained consciousness before Chen Yuhui. Everything around him had been pitch-black, and the pain and dizziness had nearly made him vomit. He had felt around until he found his phone nearby, then used its faint glow to make out Chen Yuhui lying unconscious a short distance away.

He had also seen the shadows moving in the darkness around them.

At that moment, a voice had screamed inside his head: Run! Run now! Let her hold off those lunatics!

As if possessed, he had simply left her there. It was as though he hadn’t even cared that, alone, he might be torn apart by those lunatics himself. Gritting his teeth against the agony, he had braced himself against the trees and staggered off alone in what he remembered might be the right direction.

He hadn’t made it far. Perhaps it was the blood loss, perhaps his concussion had worsened, or perhaps the pain had drained the last of his strength. His mind had grown hazy, the darkness deepening around him, and he had lost consciousness once more, collapsing by the side of the trail.

And yet here he was, still alive, saved by the companion he had abandoned.

Relief mingled with an indescribable irritation, tightening his throat.

He tried to slowly sit up, but even that slight movement instantly startled Chen Yuhui from her light sleep. She jerked, her eyes snapping open as she went from dazed to alert in an instant. The dagger in her hand came up on reflex. Only after recognizing Ji Feifan did she slowly lower it and let out a long breath of relief.

“You’re awake?” Her voice was hoarse and dry, heavy with exhaustion. “How do you feel?”

Ji Feifan shifted uncomfortably and avoided her gaze. “I’m fine… I won’t die.” After a pause, he added almost inaudibly, “…Thanks.”

Chen Yuhui seemed not to notice that last word, or perhaps she simply had more pressing concerns. Rubbing her aching neck and arms, she looked toward the growing daylight beyond the crevice. “It’s morning. We can’t stay here long. Can you walk?”

Ji Feifan tested his arms and legs. They hurt, but he could still move well enough. “Yeah.”

They carefully pushed aside the cover concealing the entrance and crawled out.

“This way.”

Chen Yuhui checked their bearings, then continued north. Ji Feifan could walk, but his pace was noticeably slower.

They traveled in silence, an awkward tension hanging between them.

The terrain was even rougher than they had expected.

After struggling over a steep slope of loose rock, they found their path blocked by an almost vertical cliff.

“You’ve got to be kidding me. What is this?” Ji Feifan clicked his tongue and tried to find a handhold to climb up, but Chen Yuhui quickly stopped him.

“Over there!” She pointed to the base of the cliff. Behind thick vines and shrubs, there seemed to be the dark mouth of a cave.

They laboriously pulled back layer after layer of vegetation, revealing a natural cave so narrow that only one person could pass through at a time, and only while stooping. The interior was pitch-black.

“Should we go in?”

Ji Feifan poked his head inside, then looked back along the way they had come. Gritting his teeth, he said, “Let’s go. There might be another way out.”

Chen Yuhui took a deep breath and entered first, with Ji Feifan close behind. One after the other, they cautiously squeezed into the cave.

The passage twisted and turned far more than they had imagined, and the floor was slick and littered with loose stones.

Chen Yuhui could only brace herself against the cold, damp rock walls as she struggled forward in the dim light. The darkness and crushing confinement were suffocating. Only their footsteps and breathing echoed through the narrow passage.

She had no idea how long they had been walking. Just as Chen Yuhui was beginning to question the wisdom of their decision, the passage ahead suddenly brightened.

“Light! There’s light up ahead!” she cried excitedly, quickening her pace.

Sure enough, after rounding another bend, they no longer faced endless darkness. A distinct patch of light filtered in from ahead, and they could even feel a faint current of air. Their spirits lifted, and they hurried forward.

They practically had to crawl through the final stretch. When they finally emerged in a sorry state from the other end of the cave and found themselves beneath the bright sky once more, they both gulped down lungfuls of fresh air, overwhelmed by the feeling of finally seeing daylight again.
The cave exit was concealed at the foot of a hillside, with a relatively open, gentle slope stretching out before it. And at the top of that slope was a gray-black road!

A blessing in disguise!

The thought flashed through Chen Yuhui’s mind, only to be crushed by the desolate scene before her.

The road was completely deserted. There were no pedestrians, much less any familiar faces. Only the wrecks of several abandoned cars lay crooked along the roadside.

Qingshui, Xiaolin, and the others were still in the mountains. Had they lost their way? Or had they already…

Chen Yuhui didn’t dare continue that thought. She shook her head hard, trying to cast off those ominous notions.

“They must still be somewhere in the mountains,” she said, more to reassure herself than anything else. “We have to… We have to find a way to tell them the exit is here.”

“Tell them?” Ji Feifan’s lip curled, tugging at the scrapes on his face and making him wince. “How are we supposed to tell them from across a mountain? Shout? Write a sign and hang it from a tree?”

Chen Yuhui ignored the barb in his voice and frowned in thought. A few seconds later, she looked up, a spark lighting in her eyes. “Smoke! We can burn something and make smoke! If they’re on one of the nearby mountains, they might see which direction it’s coming from!”

Ji Feifan instinctively glanced over the empty fields and the road around them. In the distance, the outlines of forested mountains stretched across the horizon.

“Start a fire?” His frown deepened. “That’ll attract the madmen, won’t it? Are you sure that’s not suicide?”

“We’d be better off…” The rest of the sentence, hurrying down the road on their own, circled in his throat. Then he met Chen Yuhui’s gaze and swallowed it back down.

He knew that if he actually said they should abandon the others, Chen Yuhui would never agree. She might even part ways with him on the spot. He was injured all over, and his chances of surviving alone on this unfamiliar road were far too slim.

He raked a hand irritably through his hair before conceding. “…It definitely can’t be a big fire. That would stand out too much. We only need smoke, a thin, steady stream of it. Just enough for them to notice something unusual in this direction. If they’re alert enough, they should spot it.”

Chen Yuhui considered this and decided he had a point. She felt through her pockets and pulled out a lighter. “Then we need something that’ll make smoke. Leaves?”

“That won’t be enough. We also need fuel to keep the fire going for a while.” Ji Feifan’s gaze swept over the abandoned car wrecks along the roadside. “Gasoline. There might still be some left in the tanks.”

They exchanged a look and nodded at the same time. “Let’s go.”

Ji Feifan braced a hand against the ground and stood, dusting the dirt off himself. “Be careful.”

He didn’t want to take the risk, but they had no choice.

They got to their feet but did not head straight onto the road. Instead, they followed the edge of the slope, using the sparse shrubs for cover as they cautiously approached the nearest vehicle, a white sedan.

The car had overturned beside a drainage ditch at the edge of the road, its wheels pointing skyward.

When they were about twenty meters away, Ji Feifan motioned for her to stop. He picked up a rock by his foot and hurled it onto the road a few meters in front of the car.

“Thud… rattle, rattle…”

Aside from the sound of the rock rolling, the surroundings remained deathly silent. Nothing reacted.

They held their breath and waited a little longer, making sure no madmen came charging out from beneath the car or anywhere nearby.

“Go,” Ji Feifan whispered. Keeping low, he led the way across the last stretch of open ground and pressed himself against the sedan’s rear. Chen Yuhui followed close behind.

An overpowering stench hit them, far stronger than anything they had smelled in the woods.

Alarm bells blared in both their minds. Holding their breath, they crept around to the other side of the overturned car. The moment they peered past its twisted door and saw what lay near the front, their blood seemed to freeze in their veins.

The white sedan’s hood was drenched in dark red fluid, as though coated in a thick layer of paint. It had spread across the ground, forming what was almost a pool of blood.

And at the center of that pool lay a human body.

A naked adult man lay sprawled on the ground in a grotesque pose. His abdomen had been split wide open, and his organs were nowhere to be seen. All that remained was a hollow abdominal cavity, gaping like a hideous mouth. Pieces of dark red tissue were scattered around him, a sight that made their skin crawl.

But that wasn’t the worst of it.

His limbs, both arms and both legs, were gone.

And his face…

He had no skin on his face.

It had been peeled away in some unimaginably cruel manner, exposing the bright red muscle beneath. Only two black, empty sockets remained where his eyes had been. His lips were gone, leaving his teeth and gums completely exposed.

“Ugh!”

Chen Yuhui could no longer hold back. She whipped around, doubled over, and retched violently. Her stomach was already empty, so all she managed to bring up was a little acidic fluid.

Ji Feifan’s face also turned white as a sheet. His stomach convulsed wildly, but he clenched his teeth and fought desperately against the urge to vomit.
He forced himself to look away, but those hollow black eyes and that skinless face had already seared themselves deep into his mind.

“Don’t… don’t look!” His voice was hoarse, the words coming out in a near growl. “Watch the other side! Keep guard!”

Chen Yuhui raised a trembling hand and wiped her mouth with the back of it, tears streaming from her eyes after all the choking and retching. She didn’t dare look back. All she could do was stare fixedly at the other side of the highway and the open wilderness beyond.

Ji Feifan took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down. This was no time to be afraid.

Gasoline! They had to get some gasoline!

He pulled a plastic bottle containing the last dregs of their water from his bag, tipped his head back, and drained it in one gulp. Then he gripped the empty bottle and turned his attention to the sedan.

The fuel tank was usually beneath the rear seats or near the back of the car. Ji Feifan carefully made his way to the rear and bent down to peer underneath.

Brown mud caked the fuel tank’s casing. Holding his breath, Ji Feifan tightened his grip on the knife, lined its tip up with a seam at the bottom of the tank, and stabbed down with all his strength.

Clang!

The blade struck the casing and left only a shallow white scratch. The impact sent a painful jolt through his hand.

Ji Feifan refused to give up. He tried another angle and put all his strength into prying at the seam, but all he managed to do was leave a few more white scratches.

“Damn it.”

Ji Feifan straightened, his brow tightly furrowed. He struck the fuel tank in frustration, prompting Chen Yuhui to glance over warily.

“It’s no use. We can’t pry it open by force,” Ji Feifan said in a low voice. “We need a tube. A hose would be best, something we can feed inside to siphon the gasoline out.”

“A tube?” Chen Yuhui froze for a moment, then gave a bitter smile. “Where are we supposed to find one in the middle of nowhere?”

“Then we’ll keep going.” Ji Feifan pointed farther down the highway, where several more car wrecks stood at intervals. “We’ll search them one by one. One of them might have something we can use.”

The two continued along the edge of the highway. The next vehicle was a gray SUV about fifty meters from the white sedan.

Ji Feifan picked up another rock and threw it in front of the vehicle. After waiting a while and seeing no movement, they slowly approached. The SUV’s rear hatch was slightly ajar. Chen Yuhui carefully pulled it open.

Unfortunately, there was nothing inside except a few empty cardboard boxes.

“Nothing,” Ji Feifan murmured, unable to hide his disappointment. He walked over to the passenger side, reached through the half-open window, and opened the door.

He bent down and searched the compartment beside the driver’s seat, but found only a packet of tissues and some scattered documents. Unwilling to give up, he opened the glove compartment on the passenger side.

There was a black tube inside!

They had found one!

Ji Feifan’s eyes lit up. He grabbed the tube and yanked it free from the clutter. It was a little over a meter long and looked like the kind used to change the water in a fish tank.

He stepped back, found the SUV’s fuel door, and pried it open by force. Then he carefully fed the hose into the tank.

He looked at Chen Yuhui. “Get the bottle ready.”

Chen Yuhui immediately unscrewed the cap and crouched beside him, holding the bottle in both hands with its mouth positioned beneath the end of the hose.

Ji Feifan took a deep breath and held it, then placed the other end of the hose in his mouth. The taste of rubber and another indescribable odor immediately flooded his mouth.

Suppressing his nausea, he sucked hard!

An icy liquid reeking of gasoline surged into his mouth. He jerked the hose free and immediately swung its end over the mouth of the plastic bottle.

Slightly yellow gasoline flowed through the hose and poured into the bottle!

It worked!

“Thank goodness!”

Delight spread across Chen Yuhui’s face. She carefully adjusted the angle of the bottle to catch as much of the gasoline as possible.

After the bottle was a little over half full, the flow through the hose began to slow. A few final drops trickled out before it stopped entirely. That was probably all the gasoline left in the tank.

Ji Feifan pulled out the hose, and Chen Yuhui quickly screwed the cap back onto the bottle.

“Now let’s find some kindling,” Ji Feifan said, catching his breath. They retreated into the nearby field and gathered some relatively dry, withered grass.

Chen Yuhui built a simple fire pit, laying withered grass and thin twigs at the bottom before covering them with dry moss. Ji Feifan then carefully unscrewed the gasoline bottle and soaked the top layer of twigs and grass.

“Light it,” he told Chen Yuhui.

Chen Yuhui took out the lighter.

Click.

A flame sprang to life and moved toward the gasoline-soaked grass.

Whoosh!

A small burst of fire flared up, quickly igniting the dry kindling underneath before spreading upward. Billowing gray-white smoke immediately rose in a straight column toward the gradually brightening sky.

“Go!”

With that done, the two of them quickly hid in a secluded thicket.