The shadow that suddenly appeared in the carriage looked very strange.
It seemed as if it had no bones, and its entire body drooped limply from behind the seat, covered in bright red.
No...it should be said that it was the blood gushing out from the broken neck that soaked its body, making it look red.
["Run away—"]
As it whispered, something white moved on the cross section of the neck.
It seemed like its vocal cords.
Blood foam gurgled out from the damaged blood vessels, and the sweet and fishy smell in the air became even stronger.
"…"
Jiang Chuyan gasped in fear at the horrifying scene.
"What's wrong?"
Hearing the young man's rapid breathing, He Yuan turned around and asked.
"Back, back seat——"
Jiang Chuyan shouted, immediately attracting the attention of the three people in the back seat.
"Jiang Chuyan?"
"Wow, what's wrong? Jiang Chuyan, your expression is really scary."
"Chu Yan, are you okay?"
…
However, when Jiang Chuyan turned around and looked carefully at the back seat, he found that the figure he had just caught a glimpse of out of the corner of his eye had disappeared.
What was draped on the backrest of the car was just a red scarf.
As the car bumped along, the red scarf kept shaking. It was probably because He Yuan accidentally turned the scarf out while rummaging through miscellaneous items when he was looking for the plastic bag.
…Turns out it was just an illusion.
It was as if a voice whispered in his ear.
Jiang Chuyan let out a breath slowly, and his whole body relaxed instantly.
"Nothing, I was mistaken."
He replied.
Jiang Chuyan did not doubt that he was hallucinating. After all, he had been busy with various courses during this period. He had nightmares every night and his mental state was getting worse day by day.
Liu Tianyu patted his chest and sat back abruptly. "Oh, I'm not saying anything, Jiang Chuyan, but that was too real just now. I was scared to death. I thought it was really something."
"Well, in this kind of road condition, it's normal to make mistakes...but Chu Yan, you look a little pale."
Xu Yuanzhou looked at Jiang Chuyan and spoke with a little worry.
"Brother Chuyan must have been scared just now, right? That chicken was really scary."
Bai Ke also looked at Jiang Chuyan with concern.
"...But Brother Chuyan, you still have to take care of your health. Thinking too much all the time will cause a lot of mental stress."
The young boy spoke quickly.
"Feel sorry."
Jiang Chuyan lowered his eyes and turned his head.
A few seconds later, he subconsciously turned his face slightly and met He Yuan's eyes.
"you--"
"I'm really fine." Jiang Chuyan said. Seeing the boy's lips moving in the driver's seat, he couldn't help but add, "I don't want to eat candy either."
"...oh."
After a moment of silence, He Yuan said dryly, his eyes returning to the road.
The conversation between the two was quick and light, but Jiang Chuyan inexplicably felt a little regretful.
Because he always felt that after he instinctively rejected He Yuan's candy, the boy next to him looked inexplicably depressed.
It's just, very weird.
After this little incident, everyone fell silent for the rest of the trip. Except for the three people in the back seat who couldn't stand the traffic anymore, who took turns asking to stop the car and retching a few times, no one spoke again.
As the sky darkened, He Yuan drove the car through countless circles in the mountains. The further he got to the back of the road, the more lush the vegetation grew on both sides of the road. It was so lush it almost felt wild. By the end, even the usually calm Jiang Chuyan felt a strange sense of panic. He felt as if he was slowly being pulled away from his familiar world, being dragged, powerless, by He Yuan into the dark and savage jungle.
Fortunately, before the last ray of light disappeared, they finally arrived at their destination this time - Longzhao Village.
After seeing the location of Longzhao Village, Jiang Chuyan was almost speechless for a moment.
Indeed, the location of Longzhao Village is one of the indispensable conditions for it to remain remote and far away from the civilized world in this day and age.
The small village is surrounded by rocky cliffs that are almost at a ninety-degree angle to the ground.
The entire village is like a microcosm that accidentally fell into a deep well, surrounded by mountains on all sides. The only entrance and exit to the outside world is a narrow gap in the middle of the western cliff.
After driving for a while between two towering cliffs, in a landscape similar to "a line of sky", they were finally able to see the whole picture of Longzhao Village with their own eyes.
Below such a steep cliff, a small piece of gentle slope suddenly appeared.
The ancient buildings of Longzhao Village are scattered sparsely on this slope. The small buildings with strong ethnic characteristics are surrounded by green fields of varying shades, and there are winding streams running through the fields.
"Damn... this is simply the Peach Blossom Spring?!"
Liu Tianyu leaned against the car window and looked at the village that suddenly came into view, muttering to himself.
"Wow, it's so beautiful! No wonder you come here so many times, Mr. He! This is the real original ecology!"
Xu Yuanzhou was also shocked.
After such a tragic journey, they finally saw the village, and it was such an ancient and unique ethnic minority village. Everyone in the car, except He Yuan, was more or less shocked.
Near the entrance to the village were two ancient trees of unknown species. This was probably the main gate to Longzhao Village. He Yuan found a spot under the trees and parked the car.
Everyone hurriedly opened the car door and jumped out, Jiang Chuyan was no exception.
"Welcome, welcome! Welcome!"
As a result, as he just set foot on the land of Longzhao Village, a strange male voice suddenly came from the side.
His voice was a little unclear, as if he had a lisp. Even though it was just the simplest sentence, the ups and downs of his voice and the pronunciation were indescribably stiff and harsh.
Jiang Chuyan was startled, and when he looked up again, he found a hunched man wearing ethnic costume standing under the tree.
When did this person appear?
Jiang Chuyan was sitting in the passenger seat, and he clearly didn't see anyone when He Yuan parked the car.
"Welcome guests from afar!"
Meeting Jiang Chuyan's gaze, the man raised his face, smiled, and repeated his welcome speech in that strange and harsh tone.
When he first saw the man, Jiang Chuyan instinctively thought that he must be an old man. However, now that he saw his face, he realized that he had overestimated his age.
The man's face looked different from that of an ordinary person. His skin was so pale in the twilight that it seemed transparent. His round face was as smooth as a baby's, without a single wrinkle. His eyebrows were so pale that they seemed nonexistent. His eyes were slightly bulging, appearing exceptionally black and large, seemingly reflecting no light at all.
I have to admit that even though I quickly recognized that this man should be a villager from Longzhao Village, Jiang Chuyan was still frightened by him.
"Buda Cuocuo!"
He Yuan shouted a few words in an incomprehensible dialect at the man.
Then he turned around and introduced the few people who got off the car in confusion, "He is the village chief of Longzhao Village."
"He Yuan, you are finally here——"
As he was speaking, the man named Budacuocuo had already come up to the group with his back hunched. He bowed respectfully towards He Yuan.
"I've been worried. You're much later than scheduled. If Sun Ata goes home and only Moon Am holds the lantern, even the ancestral spirits will have trouble protecting you."
Budacuocuo held He Yuan's hands with both hands and muttered something.
"Don't worry."
He Yuan didn't seem to care much about the courtesy of the Buda village chief.
He turned sideways so that Budacuocuo could see his classmates clearly.
"...These are the friends I mentioned to you on the phone before. They need to enter the Dragon Swamp with me and live there for a while."
Buda laughed, rolling his bulging eyes and sweeping his dull gaze from left to right at the college students beside the car, becoming more and more enthusiastic.
"He Yuan's friends are our Longzhao's friends. Welcome! It hasn't been this lively here in a long time—"
He smiled and opened his arms towards the college students.
Jiang Chuyan's gaze paused for a moment on Budacuocuo's arm. He felt that the man's arm seemed a little short compared to his body.
Jiang Chuyan was definitely not one of those superficial people who only cared about appearance. He had never discriminated against anyone because of their appearance, especially minor physical flaws. But today, standing before Budacuocuo, whose body was disproportionate and whose facial features were odd, he felt extremely uncomfortable.
He couldn't help but look at the people around him. Unlike him who was nervous, the others were obviously infected by the village chief's enthusiasm. They greeted Budacuocuo, whose Chinese was not very good, with relaxed and happy smiles on their faces.
And it was at this moment that Bai Ke took out his mobile phone and took a picture of the amiable and enthusiastic ethnic minority uncle in front of him - he could see clearly that the clothes the village chief wore when he came to greet them today were not the Yiwu stuff that could be seen everywhere in the so-called "ethnic village".
He was wearing the kind of authentic old-fashioned ethnic clothing that is extremely rare in today's society. The stitches were very fine, and it was the kind that was carefully embroidered stitch by stitch, taking a lot of manpower and material resources.
The man also wore a lot of silver products around his neck and waist. Although they had become slightly black due to long-term wear and did not look gorgeous, it could be seen that the small pieces of silver stacked together were imitating the scales on a fish.
Whether in terms of style or design, the sound of Budacuocuo looks particularly special.
And what the online world likes most is this kind of "special".
Bai Ke thought that the footage he shot might make him famous online. However, just as he raised his phone, the man who was smiling a second ago suddenly changed his expression after noticing that he was filming.
"*&…￥——!!!!"
A loud, local utterance erupted from his mouth, and the hunched man suddenly straightened up, seemingly appearing to have grown larger. Before Bai Ke could even react, Budacuocuo rushed in front of him and knocked his phone away with a single blow.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?!"
Seeing the newbie he had just bought flying away like that, Bai Ke instantly got furious and started cursing at Budacuocuo.
For modern people, mobile phones are equivalent to their own external organs. Now Bai Ke's "external organs" are lying in the mud and his life or death is unknown. Bai Ke has a series of Chinese curses waiting to greet this poor lunatic in front of him.
However, all those curses were stuck in Bai Ke's throat.
Because he was looking towards Budacuocuo's face.
Bai Ke was startled.
Perhaps because of his excitement, the face of the village chief who was jumping and cursing at him seemed to be deformed. His round head seemed to have become much wider, and his two eyes became more and more bulging, as if they were about to burst out of the eye sockets in the next second.
The internet celebrity's pupils shrank slightly, and a chill suddenly ran down the back of his neck.
"Buda Cuocuo!"
At this moment, He Yuan's voice came.
The tall, dark-skinned boy crossed his arms over his chest and called out to the furious village chief in his fluent dialect.
Then he turned to Bai Ke, who was pale and frightened.
"Longzhao Village does not allow any form of filming. Bai Ke, are you crazy? Have you forgotten the precautions so quickly?"
"ah?"
Bai Ke was stunned.