Chapter 17: Escape from Guigu
It was not until dawn that the noise of fighting in Lao Ba's shack gradually subsided.
After being tortured by this horrible sound all night, Juzi and others fell asleep in a daze with their clothes on.
When they woke up, the sunlight was already filtering through the cracks in the shack.
Juzi was so frightened that she jumped up: Oh my God, if it was any later, they would not be able to return to Banpo Village that day!
"Get up! Get up!" Orange shouted and opened the door of the shack, but was stunned by the scene in front of him: five or six immature wolf cubs were lying stiffly in the grass not far from the shack. Next to them was the aluminum basin that was used to hold meat last night, but now the basin was upside down.
"Oh my God! These wolf cubs were poisoned to death by the human flesh!" Lan Zi screamed in surprise.
"We're done for now. If the wolves come seeking revenge tonight, none of us can escape..." Yuhuan's desperate voice sounded darkly behind her ears, making Juzi's scalp numb.
Juzi remembered that Shadiuer's mother said that there was a large den of wolves on the back mountain, at least dozens of them. If they didn't escape from this place tonight, the consequences would be disastrous.
She hurried to Lao Ba's shack, wanting to wake up the mute woman, but when she arrived at the door, she hesitated and didn't dare to go in.
She had a bad feeling that the shack was filled with the aura of death.
He bravely lifted the straw door curtain of the shack , and the light immediately illuminated the inside.
Juzi first saw the mute's legs. After a closer look, she saw that his feet were off the ground, hanging in the air. Then she looked up and saw the mute's ugly face with a long tongue sticking out, swaying in front of her.
"Ah... someone come quickly!"
Thinking back, Juzi felt that she shouldn't have been so surprised. The mute woman's death was the result of her own evil deeds. But when she discovered this fact, she couldn't suppress her inner shock and panic.
Without the mute, their strength would be even weaker, and it would be much more difficult to get out of the Valley of Confusion!
When the heavy body of the mute woman was put down, it was still limp, and it seemed that she had been hanged not long ago .
The moment they put the body on the ground, Juzi discovered that there was a clear map drawn on the floor of the shack. It must have been drawn by the mute according to Lao Ba's confession, with the location of each pile of bones marked on it. But after turning a few corners, the route back home still pointed to where the shack was. This means that if they followed the route provided by Lao Ba, their final destination would still be to return to the original place, then run out of food and wait for death. Because all Lao Ba left for them was a bag of black opium paste and a bag of opium seeds.
She then realized that the mute woman had suffered a mental breakdown due to this terrible reality. After repeatedly drawing a map to get out of the mountain but finding no hope, she had no choice but to end her troubles in this way.
In this valley filled with the breath of death, there was no time to waste! Juzi called Lanzi and Yuhuan, and the three of them took the things they needed on the road and went into the forest.
Despite three failed escape attempts, Juzi still doesn't believe the mysterious descriptions of the Valley of Confusion by Lao Ba and all the women.
She stubbornly believed that Lao Ba did that for his ulterior motives, and those women were deceived by Lao Ba's tricks.
Now, Lao Ba is dead, and the mute sleeps forever on the mountain, with no worries left behind.
Juzi believed that she would be able to find a road to Banpo Village. How could Lao Ba go back and forth on this road again and again without leaving any traces? It was just because they were too flustered when they escaped in the past and could not calmly identify the path.
The sun was streaming down from the forest. It was a beautiful autumn day. Juzi felt that she could breathe smoothly and walk easily. She was more proud than ever before. Since she entered the mountain, she had been forced to become a poor insect crawling under Lao Ba's feet. Now, she had become a dignified and lively person again.
Lao Ba said in his confession that he turned right at the first pile of bones.
Juzi still remembered the large pile of bones she encountered during her third escape. That place was closest to the shack and must be what he called the "first pile of bones."
Juzi remembered that she had been wandering around the shack for a long time that day before she encountered the pile of bones. So now she did not rush to run away, but took the two women to circle around the shack, and finally found a pile of bones in the opposite direction of her usual escape. A closer look revealed that it was the pile she had encountered that day, with more than a hundred dead bodies lying in a mess.
"Turn right."
Juzi looked to the right and was immediately stunned. It was a neatly cut wall, five or six meters high and dozens of meters long, as if it suddenly emerged from the ground, so abrupt and without any reason.
Her mind was spinning rapidly, searching for a possible "hole" or other passage on the broken wall, but she found nothing. The damned Lao Ba was fooling them!
Juzi looked back at the two women. Their faces were gray and they looked listless.
It didn't matter that she turned back, she found that the forest behind her seemed a little different.
When I walked over and took a look, I saw that although the forest was densely packed, the bushes would obediently .
Some wild vines that seem impenetrable can be drilled through with a drill.
"Come quickly! We found it! It turns out to be turning left. Lao Ba lied to us..." Juzi shouted excitedly. Before she finished her words, the person had already disappeared into the bushes.
The three women were crawling through the wild vines and bushes that were as dark as an underground passage, bumping into each other here and there. If they couldn't get out, they would look for another exit.
The bloody scratches on their faces and arms were ignored. No one uttered a word. Only heavy breathing and the crisp sound of dry branches and leaves being crushed could be heard.
Suddenly, a huge wall of wild vines appeared in front of me. I pushed it with my hands, but it didn't move at all.
Despair was like those vines as thick as bowls, which bound the orange so tightly that it couldn't breathe.
She sat down in the weeds, and several women fell to the ground as well, as if they could no longer withstand such a heavy blow.
Oh my god, are you really going to end my life? Juzi didn't dare to let out the whine in her heart, for fear that Lanzi and Yuhuan would be upset. She sat on the ground, wiping the sweat off her face, breathing heavily, but her eyes kept scanning the wild vine wall.
Suddenly, she lay on the ground and tried to lift a thick vine that was close to the ground with her hands, and the horizontal vine actually moved.
He pushed harder and it moved again.
"Come on, help me lift it!" The three women worked together, and the wild vine wall that was so aggressive just now suddenly had a gap big enough for one person to climb through!
The three women crawled in one after another without saying anything. When they stood up, they were already at the entrance of a narrow hairy road. "I understand! If Lao Ba says right, we go left. If Lao Ba says left, we go right!" Lan Zi suddenly said with enlightenment.
"Right! This old bastard is against us until his death! We should just listen to his words in reverse!" Juzi looked around as he walked, "If we find the second pile of bones, it will prove that our idea is correct."
After hearing what she said, the two women fell silent again. It was still uncertain whether they could find a second pile of bones, so it was indeed a little too early to be happy now.
The birdsong in the mountains became louder and louder, and through the gaps between the branches, they could vaguely see the sun rising high in the sky. Orange and the others didn't feel thirsty or hungry, and they only wanted to quickly find the pile of bones that would determine their next move.
The forest became denser and denser, and the road became more and more difficult to walk on.
In fact, there was no road at all. We could only grope forward in the overgrown forest, taking half a step forward and half a step back.
"Look!" Yuhuan suddenly lowered her voice and called out to the two women mysteriously.
Through the dense bushes, vaguely visible before my eyes were the white bones, half-hidden and exposed among the dark green grass and trees in autumn, which was very eye-catching.
The waist-high weeds swayed in the breeze. Small piles of bones were scattered in the grass, appearing and disappearing, blocking their way.
The women stayed where they were, and no one dared to take the first step.
Suddenly, a foul smell came straight into her nose. "Why is it so smelly?" Lanzi sniffed and couldn't help covering her mouth. At this moment, an old yellow-haired wolf poked its head out from the bushes.
Juzi thought of the wolf cubs that were poisoned to death in the camp that morning, and her heart began to beat wildly. The moment of life and death had finally arrived...
I remember that the last time I escaped, Orange had been to this wolf family’s territory.
At that time, it was the old wolf who was "standing guard". The situation of one wolf guarding the pass and ten thousand men unable to break through was so fierce that it made people retreat without fighting. Now, they are the "enemies" of the old wolf. How will it deal with them?
Perhaps, this place is the fortress to enter and exit the Lost Soul Valley? Why can't they get out, but Lao Ba can...
Was Lao Ba's "human bribe" to the wolf pack just to get through this throat? When Juzi thought of this, he felt terrified. It seemed that he could not escape today...
The women were silent and motionless, not even daring to breathe.
"You... go first. Hurry up, go first, go back!" Orange whispered orders to the two women.
"What about you? What are you going to do?" Yuhuan was anxious. She pulled Juzi's collar from behind and asked in a low voice.
"I told you to go first, so you go first!" Juzi suddenly became impatient and raised her voice.
"Maybe... they don't know yet that the wolf cub was poisoned to death. Let's go together!" Yuhuan took advantage of Juzi's inattention, pulled her up and ran, with Lan Zi following closely behind.
All I heard was a rustling sound in the grass, accompanied by the panting of several people. When I looked back, the old wolf was gone.
"Oh my God, where have they run to?" Orange looked around and realized that they were already separated from the wolf's den by a hill.
It was really strange, once they got anxious, the road seemed to become much smoother, and they actually bypassed the vine wall and bushes they had just passed, and ran back to the woods they had just passed.
The women threw their bodies into the grass like a sack that could no longer bear the weight, and lay there only to "gas".
"Fortunately it was broad daylight, if it was night... none of us would have been able to escape from the wolf's mouth alive..." Orange said, panting with lingering fear.
"I heard that a leading wolf only needs to bark once to call a large group of people..." Lan Zi shivered involuntarily.
"When they find out that the wolf cubs don't come back, they have to go look for them. If they find dead wolf cubs, we're done for..." Yuhuan's voice was as if she was talking to herself, so low that it was almost inaudible. Juzi knew that she was afraid of scaring them, so she looked at the sky and decisively ordered:
"It's getting late, time to go!"
"Should we turn right now?" Lan Zi was the first to crawl out of the grass, looked around for a while, and asked hesitantly.
"Maybe, not necessarily..." Yuhuan muttered a little timidly.
Juzi's heart was more conflicted than the two women's. If Lao Ba had deliberately lied to them, there was no way to be sure of his confession. She could only try.
"Let's go, right. This time we need to mark the way as we go. If we go the wrong way, we can go back here and turn left again." Yuhuan took off her red shirt and tore it into strips, which she distributed to everyone. She tied a strip to a conspicuous place as she walked. From a distance, it looked like small fluttering red flags.
"The third pile of bones...Juzi, I think the third pile of bones that Lao Ba mentioned may not be real. How can there be so many dead people?" Yuhuan was a woman who liked to think. She expressed her concerns to Juzi as they walked.
"I think, let's go for a walk and have a look. I remember my grandfather said that during the 'Restoration', the mountains were full of guerrilla bandits, who were later chased into the Valley of Confusion by the People's Liberation Army. Not a single one of them came out!" Lan Zi said affirmatively.
Juzi didn't know what to say. She kept scanning the forest, afraid of missing any clues. As long as they found the third pile of bones, they would not be far from home.
Thinking of this, Juzi's heart beat faster and she felt full of energy, even though she was already hungry.
"Let's take a break and eat some dry food when we find the third pile of bones." Orange looked at the two women. Their faces were covered with sweat, their hair was messy, and their lips were chapped, but no one took the initiative to suggest eating.
This gave her even more hope.
In a blink of an eye, the sun had tilted to one side from the middle of the sky. The women were exhausted and could no longer walk.
The expected third pile of bones has not yet appeared. Although the road is still passable, the exact direction is no longer known.
Yuhuan's red cloth shirt had been torn off long ago, and now they were tearing off Juzi's white shirt.
"I'm so hungry, Sister Juzi, let's eat something." Lan Zi finally hummed timidly in Juzi's ear, like the buzz of a mosquito.
Juzi felt all the nerves in his body relax, and he immediately sat on the ground: "Forget it, let's take a break! Anyway, it will take a while to find the pile of bones..."
The three women sat together, in the eerie atmosphere of the woods, chewing some dry and hard steamed buns with the wild cabbages growing here and there in the grass.
Juzi felt a tightness in her chest. She hadn't had a single sip of water since morning. She struggled to get up and went to a large stone slab to look for water. Lying on the stone slab, she heard the sound of a mountain spring flowing from underground, but there was no crack around the large stone, so she could only listen to the sound of the spring.
Lan Zi also came over to listen. Encouraged by the sound of water, she stood up and walked around nearby, trying to find an exit to drink some water.
Juzi lay flat on the big stone slab and stretched out her limbs, only then she realized that her arms and legs were in unbearable pain. She had no idea about the road ahead, thinking about the hungry wolves that would come to seek revenge at night and her home far outside the mountain, she couldn't help but worry.
Suddenly, she heard Lan Zi screaming not far away: "Sister Orange! Sister Orange!"
"What's the matter?" She jumped up from the stone and ran towards Lan Zi.
Lan Zi was hiding behind a big pine tree. She poked her head out and nodded at Juzi in surprise.
Juzi looked back and saw a small stream faintly flowing through a pile of rocks. "Ah! There's water!" Juzi didn't care about Lanzi's strange behavior at the moment and turned around and ran straight to the spring.
She leaned over the water and drank until she was satisfied. Then she looked up and called Yuhuan and Lanzi.
When she looked up, she saw a scene that chilled her to the core: a fresh skeleton was spread out on a large stone slab beside her, with some tattered clothes, neither black nor gray, tangled on it.
This is exactly the man who brought Yuhuan to justice who was killed by Lao Ba a few days ago!
The orange shook and fell down like a scarecrow damaged by a storm.
