In the spacious valley, the sunlight shining down on the snow-white ridge was dazzlingly bright.
On a patch of flat, rocky ground at the foot of the mountain, a few tents were pitched crookedly, with several boxes of instant food and equipment bags stacked beside them.
Four young people wearing mountain climbing clothes of various colors were camping and resting right here.
“Sisters, come give me a hand!” Ai Wen called out to the others. She was trying to set up a barbecue grill, holding a pair of shiny, specialized barbecue iron skewers in her hand.
“Wait for me, I’ll be right there!” Yi Jin replied loudly, but sat right back down in her folding chair, focusing intently on the camera screen in her hands.
She sat under the shade of a tree. Sunlight filtered through the gaps between the leaves, falling onto the tips of her light blonde hair and gilding them with broken gold, which set off her skin as white as fresh paper. Her deep blue eyes were as clear and bright as gems, concealed beneath long, slender eyelashes.
“Can you do it or not? Setting up a barbecue grill still requires help.”
Pei Yiting had just sat down in her chair when she was called up to work again, a look of impatience on her face.
“Are we here to shoot a documentary or to camp?”
Seeing the two people not far away busily working hand over foot to assemble the barbecue grill, Kashiwagi Rin was caught between laughter and tears. She walked over to help and set it up in two or three moves.
They were all students from State Xinyu High School, a temporary four-person team thrown together. There was no clear division of labor, but Yi Jin covered all the funding and equipment for only one goal: to shoot a presentable nature documentary.
Apart from Kashiwagi Rin, who was Yi Jin’s good friend and helper, the other two girls were brought together by Yi Jin through a post she made on the academy’s official website, giving them a chance to hitch a ride along.
“Since we are already here, wouldn’t it be a pity not to enjoy the natural scenery?” Yi Jin put down the camera in her hands, pulled out a pair of sunglasses from her pocket, and put them on.
Not far away was a lake surrounded by mountains. Various types of algae grew at the bottom of the lake, giving the water an eerie blue-green hue.
In the distance, layers of tree shadows overlapped, reflecting a brilliant array of colors on the water’s surface like an oil painting.
She stood up and gazed out at the lake, resting her hands on her hips and taking a deep breath. A moist atmosphere laced with vegetation and soil seeped into her nasal passages.
“Whether it is a sacred deer or a sacred horse, as long as we capture something novel, our mission will be a complete success.”
“Currently, our track record is zero, though,” Kashiwagi Rin doused her with a bucket of cold water.
“Sob, sob, sob… Don’t remind me about this.” Yi Jin covered her face and pretended to sob.
She had just flipped through several hundred photos earlier; all of them were plain and ordinary landscape shots. Forget about finding a unique highlight, even posting them on social media platforms would hardly net a few likes.
It had been four or five days since they stepped onto Deer Spirit Island and entered the valley. On this underdeveloped little island, not only were there no novel things, but even animals were rarely seen.
“Is it possible that the photo in that news report was fake?” Kashiwagi Rin touched her chin. “Maybe they just tricked us into coming here for tourism.”
She had advised Yi Jin to pay a director to shoot it for her. After all, Yi Jin’s mother had plenty of money, so what price couldn’t she afford to pay?
However, Yi Jin insisted on doing it herself.
“Aww,” Yi Jin dragged out her voice, leaning all the way back in her chair with her sunglasses sliding up to her forehead. “But I still want to shoot it myself.”
She raised her phone again to browse that pushed article, which was precisely the post that prompted her to come here:
[Art Weekly | Special Report
“A Polaroid photo sparks a viral sensation: Is a ‘living Muse’ hidden on Deer Spirit Island?”
…]
There was also a photo attached, with a somewhat blurred picture, but one could vaguely make out the silhouette of a half-human, half-deer girl.
Yet, following the shooting location mentioned in the news to Deer Spirit Island, traces of birds and beasts were scarce, and not even a shadow of a deer could be found.
Yi Jin’s eyebrows knitted into a tight knot. Could they really have been played?
“Let’s search again tomorrow,” Kashiwagi Rin patted her shoulder. “If there’s nothing, we’ll go back. We can’t stay and guard this place forever.”
“Mm… I know.”
Over on that side, Ai Wen called out to them, saying the food was all grilled, while Pei Yiting had already sat down earlier to dig in heartily.
Kashiwagi Rin responded and walked over.
Leaving Yi Jin alone in place, her gaze turned toward the nearby lake, her expression lost in thought.
What she had not told the others was that ever since stepping onto the island, she had been having the same strange dream.
In the dream, she stood by the edge of a lake.
That lake was no different from the one in the valley.
A faint halo of light swayed in the center of the lake, with a thin layer of white mist dispersing around it.
In the dream, she seemed to stand from the perspective of an observer, unable to intervene in the dream world, yet free to overlook and observe at will.
The center of the lake was far from the shore, but she could distinguish a vague, dark outline.
Intuition told her that was precisely the thing she was looking for.
Yet upon waking up, she came to the valley full of anticipation, only to find nothing at all.
“…Wasn’t it a prophetic dream?” Yi Jin murmured to herself while looking at the lake surface.
“What?” Kashiwagi Rin came up behind her, not hearing her words clearly. “The food is all cooked, come eat.”
The familiar voice pulled her back to the real world. Yi Jin gathered up her earlier thoughts. “Coming, coming! Stuff it right into my mouth!”
She rubbed her stomach, and smelling the aroma of roasted meat, she quickly cast that troubling dream to the back of her mind.
“He who does not work shall not eat; go eat grass,” Kashiwagi Rin joked with her.
“Don’t be like that. Would you really have the heart to?” Yi Jin nuzzled against her shoulder to act playfully.
“I would.”
The two gradually moved away from the lakeside, leaving only a trace of lingering warmth on the empty chair.
On the dense branches of the large tree resting against the back of the chair stood a bird that was emerald green all over, which was difficult to notice unless looking closely.
It leisurely pecked at the feathers under its wing and then remained motionless, its ink-black pupils reflecting the figures of the two laughing and playing as they walked away.
Yi Jin did not want to give up.
What if there really was something? What if others managed to shoot it while she didn’t? Wouldn’t she become that pitiful soul who gave up when she was only an inch away from digging up gold?
“I’m going to take a look in the jungle on the southeast side. You guys don’t need to follow.” She stuffed the equipment into Kashiwagi Rin’s arms, picked up her camera, and walked outward.
“You’re going alone?” Kashiwagi Rin’s brows knitted tightly.
“Just walking around nearby, I won’t go far.” Yi Jin waved her hand without turning her head.
Along the small path in the forest, she walked alone along a trail concealed beneath tree shadows.
Having just passed the hottest time of noon, the sky was bright, and sunlight scattered large bright patches through the canopy. The withered wood and moss made the ground soft and slippery.
A girl caught up from behind, breathing heavily.
“Yi Jin! You’re walking too fast, wait for me!” Pei Yiting rested her hands on her knees, panting for air. “I’ll go with you, it’s unsafe for one person.”
“Senior, you don’t need to…”
“It’s fine, it’s fine. I’ll just follow along and won’t disturb you.” Pei Yiting fell into step on her own initiative, trailing a few steps behind her.
Yi Jin said no more and raised her camera on her own, taking photos of various uncommon plants and flowers all along the way, only regretting that she had not come here sooner.
A crisp bird call sounded, and a small bird resembling a tit landed on a piece of dead wood a few steps away.
This bird was emerald green all over, its tail feathers covered in cobalt blue, and its belly had soft, light yellow down. It tilted its head to look at her, looking extremely cute.
“Wow, this little bird is so pretty.” Yi Jin, who usually liked taking photos of small animals, immediately pulled out her camera and squatted to the side, preparing to shoot.
“Is it… a green finch? Doesn’t feel like it.” She muttered quietly to the camera lens.
“It’s probably just an ordinary bird.” Pei Yiting walked toward that bird.
That bird was not afraid of people either; instead, it flapped its wings and hopped two steps closer to her side without flying away.
“Senior, keep your voice down, don’t scare it away.”
“What’s the big deal? If it were going to fly, it would have flown away long ago.”
Ignoring Yi Jin’s attempt to stop her, Pei Yiting approached the little bird and squatted down, holding out her palm toward it.
“Ouch!” She cried out in pain.
The bird pecked her hand unceremoniously and nimbly flew up to a branch, leaving behind only a few pieces of yellow-green down.
“I told you so…” Yi Jin pursed her lips into a helpless smile, continuing to raise her camera to track that bird.
Through the lens, she saw that the bird had a distinct white ring around its eye, and its pupils were ink-black, staring straight at them.
This bird sure was bold. Perhaps human beings were rarely seen in this jungle.
“Let’s go, let’s go.”
Pei Yiting shook her hand. That bird’s peck hurt like crazy, and she cursed a couple of times under her breath at the stink bird.
The two continued along the forest path toward the denser vegetation. Yi Jin shot various uncommon plants and flowers all along the way with an expression of wonder, only regretting that she had not come here sooner.
Immersed in her camera lens, she failed to notice that the vegetation behind her was growing at an eye-visible speed, as if on fast-forward.
The tender green leaves quickly turned dark green. The vines originally at the base of the tree roots quickly wrapped around several times, climbing up the tree trunk where that little bird had once stayed to rest.
“Damn it, we forgot to leave markers.”
Pei Yiting looked at the compass app on her phone, which kept spinning around and could not stabilize at all. She bit her thumb, her tone full of impatience. “Tsk… What a useless app, completely unreliable at a critical moment.”
“Don’t panic.” Yi Jin pulled out her phone and said, “I’ll make a phone call to Kashiwagi Rin and have them bring equipment to come find us.”
After her fingertip pressed the call button, the receiver remained dead silent: “Beep… Beep…”
After a standstill of a dozen seconds, the call automatically disconnected.
She dialed Ai Wen’s phone number again, but it was similarly impossible to get through.
What was going on? She hurriedly checked the icons on her phone, only to find that the signal bars had vanished.
“How can there be no signal…?” A trace of surprise flashed across her eyes.
They had walked less than two kilometers, and the signal at the camp was at full bars, yet there was not even a speck of signal here.
In order to avoid straying further off course, the two were forced to stop in place.
“We’re finished, it’s going to be dark soon.” Pei Yiting punched the tree trunk beside her in frustration. “Yi Jin, why did you insist on doing some jungle exploration? Now look what happened, we’re lost.”
Why was she blaming her again?
Yi Jin crossed her arms, her way of speaking never being particularly soft-spoken. “I didn’t force you to come.”
“Tsk.” Pei Yiting went quiet, then looked around the surroundings again. “Let’s not talk about this for now, finding the way back is what matters.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
The light gradually dimmed, and moisture seeped up from deep within the ground, winding upward along the tree trunks. The forest scenery that had been clear not long ago was suddenly shrouded in a hazy white veil of mist.
The figures of the two were gradually swallowed up by the dense fog.