Chapter 263: Mist In The Deep Mountains
The next morning, Fang Mu and Mo Guangning took the necessary items for mountain exploration and set off.
Fang Mu had a premonition that this mountain trip would be exceptionally dangerous, and he couldn’t guarantee how much time they would spend in Nong Mountain. In any case, he brought enough food to last two or three weeks, mostly portable compressed food. His backpack was bulging with a large pile of things, but water took up the largest part of the weight.
Mo Guangning didn’t say anything about this. This man from the Zhuang ethnic group, simple in appearance but delicate in heart, actually already somewhat sensed that Fang Mu was heading into the dangerous Nong Mountain to do something even more perilous. He remained calm on the surface, but hesitated inwardly, sometimes lost in thought.
After leaving the range of the mountain village and entering the woods, Fang Mu couldn’t help asking Mo Guangning, “How far is it to Nong Mountain?”
“It might take more than an hour. The road here is uneven. Can you manage with all that stuff on your back?” Mo Guangning said.
Fang Mu smiled and said, “No problem. I should be fine.”
After that, both began advancing in silence. Mist started rising in the woods ahead, growing thicker and thicker…
Although Fang Mu didn’t know where Nong Mountain was or what it looked like, he felt himself drawing closer and closer to it. Panic emotions gradually amplified in his heart.
The deeper they went into the mist, the more bizarre and strange the vegetation in the woods became. Occasionally, they saw tree roots as thick as trunks, with trees growing leaves from the roots, as if the big trees were growing down from the sky. Not to mention those plant green leaves as translucent as green gemstones, and plump unidentified fruits emitting a rotten foul smell hanging upside down from the trees.
Besides the magnificent yet bizarre rare sights visible to the eye, this woods shrouded in thick fog was as quiet as cotton in a pillow. He and Mo Guangning were like the only two creatures traversing this stifling world, tiny and lonely.
Gradually, the mist thickened to the point where even his feet were barely visible. Fang Mu involuntarily slowed his pace, but he noticed that Mo Guangning, leading the way ahead, showed no sign of slowing down. He called out to him, wanting him to wait.
However, Mo Guangning seemed not to hear and walked straight ahead.
Fang Mu had a bad premonition and tried to step forward to grab him, but his foot was tripped by something soft and sticky, nearly causing him to fall.
In just that moment of fright while looking at the road, the tour guide Fang Mu had hired disappeared into the clouds and mist.
Fang Mu broke out in a cold sweat. He called out to Mo Guangning while slowly advancing, hoping this was just Mo Guangning’s joke.
But time passed second by second, with no one answering him. The surroundings were in deathly silence.
Fang Mu couldn’t help but maliciously speculate that this was no simple malicious joke. He deeply suspected it was a trap set by that uncle and nephew pair, a scheme by the village that once worshiped an evil deity, all aimed at him. They wanted to murder him and leave him to die in this misty forest from which he could never escape.
They likely regarded him as the sacrifice for the ritual, offering him up to that indescribable toad-like thing.
That diary was real, written by his future self who for some reason returned to the past. But the village chief of Wenyatun was lying. He clearly remembered “his” appearance from the moment he arrived in the village.
It was for faith and for the village of old, so the village chief and his nephew plotted revenge against him.
Last night, he hadn’t been drunk at all; it was all an act. After being carried back to the bedroom by the nephew, they began scheming how to make him die in this lawless forest…
The more Fang Mu thought, the more confused he became, his facial expression changing unpredictably.
Gulp croak…
While Fang Mu was lost in wild thoughts, he suddenly heard a call. It was the first sound of another creature in the environment since he entered this mist-sealed woods.
This frog croak was like a stone smashing into a calm lake, stirring up layers of ripples. Soon, the woods were filled with frog sounds.
Fang Mu felt a large patch of toads and frogs appearing around him. They hid in the dark, peeping at him mockingly as he behaved ridiculously out of panic, despising him this overconfident human.
No, they might not be harmless creatures like toads or frogs, but a group of frog people curiously peeping at him. He was like a stray cat that had wandered into someone else’s home. He could only pray that those things had no tendency to abuse “cats,” so that only he could survive.
“Ah!” A scream rang out, like a thunderbolt striking Fang Mu.
He trembled all over as if electrocuted, then forced his shaking legs to move, stumbling forward in a frantic, undignified sprint, faster and faster, heedless of everything.
While running, he forced his voiceless throat to emit a hoarse shout: “Mo Guangning! Mo Guangning! Where are you!?”
Fang Mu didn’t know where he had run to. He was just chasing the direction of that scream, but midway he was tripped again by something.
Falling to the ground, Fang Mu’s backpack was slashed by something sharp. In the thick fog, he felt a lightness on his back as a large pile of things from the backpack suddenly scattered across the ground.
The pain suddenly calmed Fang Mu for a moment. His heart trembled as he realized he shouldn’t have run toward the source of the scream, because that meant throwing himself into danger’s embrace—it was suicidal!
Only after realizing this did Fang Mu break out in a cold sweat, but he was soon scared speechless again by the scene before him.
He saw that beneath his calf lay a severed leg wearing army-green hiking pants, only the lower leg part remaining. The cross-section and pant fabric still had foul-smelling mucus and mangled bite marks, with the fresh bloody smell assaulting Fang Mu’s nose like choking chili.
He recognized it—this lower leg belonged to the pitiful Mo Guangning, the tour guide who had accompanied him here and then “abandoned” him to flee. In this deep mountains’ mist, he had unfortunately encountered some unknown large beast and been eaten down to this severed limb.
Seeing the corpse of his murdered companion, Fang Mu could no longer maintain reason and ran wildly through the woods. He no longer cared what he might step on, or if he might miss a step and fall from that high slope, or whether there were sharp things ahead that could easily tear his backpack, even if he got cut.
The frog sounds around him grew louder and louder, like a welcoming procession for this noble guest’s arrival. No… more like a funeral procession sending him off to death. They were “cheerfully” ushering him into death.
“Ah!” Fang Mu missed a step, flailing his hands and feet wildly for something to grab onto. But his body uncontrollably fell downward, falling, falling… into the valley bottom, dropping into a bottomless cave.
When he awoke again, the badly injured Fang Mu found himself in a mysterious cave.
