As the day grew late, the jungle was soon submerged in a thick white mist. Rustling sounds echoed from its depths every now and then, making Yi Jin shrink her neck involuntarily.
“How about we head toward a place where the sky looks a bit brighter?” She suggested while looking at the sky where a tiny bit of lingering glow remained.
Pei Yiting gave an affirmative response, following behind her without much of an opinion.
When they arrived, they were heading in the southeast direction; walking west, they should be able to make it back to the lakeside or find a path leading out of the valley regardless.
“Holy crap?!”
Pei Yiting, who was originally walking ahead, suddenly darted violently toward her side, almost knocking her to the ground. Her terrified voice startled several birds into flapping their wings and taking flight.
“What’s wrong, Senior?” Yi Jin rubbed the shoulder that had been bumped into, the patience in her heart nearly exhausted by getting lost and the onset of darkness.
“No, nothing.” Pei Yiting looked flustered, her gaze sweeping around everywhere. “Just now, something seemed to touch my leg. Maybe it was a squirrel.”
“There was something?” Yi Jin shrank her neck, carefully looking around in a circle.
Her first reaction was a snake, a cold crawling animal that liked to haunt places dense with vines and trees like this.
Just as the words left her mouth, a wave of coldness brushed across her ankle, a smooth tactile sensation. She snapped her body straight up, not daring to move even half a step easily.
“Huh!?”
Her gaze slowly shifted downward; there were only withered branches and fallen leaves.
Now it was her turn to act skittish and hesitant. She tensed her body and urged Pei Yiting to hurry up and walk ahead.
What neither of them noticed was that within the mist surrounding them, a figure flashed past not far away.
Yi Jin and Pei Yiting walked west together.
Before long, it turned completely dark. Yi Jin turned on her phone’s flashlight, its light only enough to illuminate a small area in front of her eyes. They continued forward semi-blindly for about an hour.
“Strange. Hah. Is this jungle really this big?” Yi Jin stopped, holding her knees while panting slightly, feeling her physical strength running out.
Pei Yiting was equally puzzled, wiping the sweat off her chin. “Yeah.”
This jungle clearly occupied less than a quarter of the island’s total area. By right, they should have reached the edge of the lake or the seaside by now, yet they had still not walked out of the jungle.
Nor had they heard the sound of ocean waves.
The battery life was inadequate, and Yi Jin’s phone soon ran out of power and shut off.
Before Pei Yiting’s phone also died, they were forced to find a spot to stay for the night and wait until daylight.
Fortunately, Pei Yiting still had the lighter used for yesterday’s barbecue on her person. They barely managed to gather some fallen leaves and tree branches that had not yet turned damp, lighting a small bonfire on the flat ground.
The burning tree branches popped every now and then, and the dancing orange-red firelight reflected on their faces. Yi Jin’s hands repeatedly clasped, tightened, and released, her eyes constantly scanning the surroundings for fear that a wild beast might leap out from somewhere.
Although they had not encountered any large animals during the days they spent shooting in the valley, that did not mean there were none in the jungle. During the day when they had many people, nighttime was the real showcase hour for wild beasts.
Pei Yiting, sitting opposite her, took the initiative to chat about gossip as if to alleviate this creepy atmosphere.
Yi Jin forced a few responses. Under normal circumstances, she would not mind chatting about these things, but this place was clearly not a good spot suited for idle chatter.
The firewood they had picked up earlier was not much, and the flames soon weakened, darkness gradually closing in.
“Unbelievable, these branches really don’t last. I’ll go pick up some more.”
“Senior, I’ll go with you.” Yi Jin felt a bit creeped out, feeling scared to stay alone.
“What is there to be afraid of? It’s just a few meters away. You wait here.” Pei Yiting stood up, dusted off the dirt clinging to her clothes, turned on her phone flashlight, and walked outward.
Yi Jin sat in place, watching that small beam of light sway back and forth in all directions. Only the remaining crackle of the bonfire and the distant bird calls remained in her ears. She hugged her knees even tighter.
Suddenly, that beam of light in the distance vanished without any warning, and the surroundings turned pitch black.
Yi Jin stood up abruptly.
“Senior?” Her voice turned raspy for a moment, then raised a few pitches higher. “Pei Yiting? Where are you? Say something!”
Her voice echoed in the darkness for several turns, but no one responded.
The bonfire was on the verge of dying out. The last few tufts of flame licked the edges of the charred wood, lighting up a small patch of ground in front of her in dark red. Further out was a dense, light-swallowing blackness.
She picked up a half-burnt branch and stood up, her knuckles white from gripping it tightly. Three or four possible scenes had already flashed through her mind: wild boars, sinkholes, snakes.
Her eyes could capture nothing in the darkness, only vaguely distinguishing tree shadows swaying in the distance, with faint, rustling sounds made by something crawling slowly through the bushes.
“Hey!” She shouted loudly.
“Help!” A voice coming back from not far away was so frantic it cracked. “Yi Jin! There’s something!”
Pei Yiting’s voice came to a sudden halt, as if her throat had been choked off by something.
Immediately after, something, goodness knows what, sprang up violently from the pile of withered leaves beside her feet.
It was as thick as a wrist, bursting out from the soil and wrapping around her lower leg.
The moment she frantically lowered her head, another vine flew in from the side, wrapping around her wrist and yanking upward fiercely. Her field of vision spun upside down instantly, her back slamming into a tree trunk. The pain almost caused her to faint, knocking half of the remaining air out of her lungs.
In the darkness, her phone screen flickered a few meters away before finally coming to a stop in place.
Crack! She heard the sound of the phone being crushed by some force, and the sole source of light vanished along with it.
A damp, icy tactile sensation crawled across her neck. That rope-like living entity choked her throat, and the lack of oxygen caused her consciousness to blur. She frantically slapped at the foreign object on her throat with her hands.
In her blurred field of vision was the outline of another person squirming in the darkness. Both of her legs were violently swept up by black vines one by one and dragged into the depths of the bushes.
She made no outcry, only whimpers squeezed out from her throat, and soon she was no longer able to make any sound at all.
While in front of Yi Jin’s eyes, everything turned entirely dark, and she lost consciousness.
When she woke up, what met her eyes was an unfamiliar ceiling. No! Where was there a ceiling? It was clearly a gray-brown rock wall.
She opened her eyes and closed them again, hoping she was dreaming, and that the next time she opened her eyes, it would definitely be a hospital ceiling.
Unfortunately, it was not.
Judging from the dripping rock wall, she should be inside a cave. She felt the dry straw beneath her, which felt a bit prickly to the touch. Beside her lay a few stalks of wild grass and wild fruits she could not name, placed here by who knows whom.
The air inside the cave was damp, laced with the scent of soil and vegetation.
Wanting to stand up, a burst of severe pain shot from her left foot, and she could not help but suck in a breath of cold air and sit right back down.
It hurts so much!
She looked down; her pant leg was torn above the knee, and her ankle was swollen purple, wrapped in loops of dark green floral vines.
Those vines were moving on their own, their leaves slightly curling and fluttering gently against her skin, as if they had a breathing pulse.
What is this?
Before she had time to search her brain for what kind of creature this was, she let out a breath of relief. The feeling of surviving a disaster brought nothing but gratitude.
Following the relief was a much stronger emotion: fear.
She remembered the feeling of those vines surging out from the soil to entwine her, that unyielding force impossible to contend with.
Why am I here? Who brought me here?
Aside from herself, there were no traces of anyone else inside this cave, nor were her companions here.
Just as questions flashed through her mind one after another, a voice came from above her head. That voice was crisp like raindrops falling into a stream, gentle yet carrying a bit of innocence.
“You’re awake?”
The voice came from outside the cave.
A young girl walked in from the bright exterior. Strangely, the sound of her walking was a clattering sound like horse hooves stepping on rocks.
A pair of deer ears grew atop her head, and her long hair fell to her waist. The skin on her body was pale unlike a living human, faintly showing a bluish-white hue.
This is a girl? No!
Yi Jin’s heart rate accelerated to the extreme, and even her ears hummed slightly, because she clearly saw the young girl’s lower body.
The lower body was that of a deer, covered in short, dense fur, light brown in color, with a few delicate spots scattered across it.
Half-human, half-deer.
She had really found it.
Yi Jin’s brain went blank.
Her first reaction in her mind was that she was dreaming, but the dull pain at the back of her head reminded her that everything was real.
The young girl tilted her head as if asking why Yi Jin did not answer her question, the soft deer ears atop her head gently fanning.
She wore a tattered white shirt on her upper body, looking like something picked up from somewhere, a short section that could barely cover her torso.
Further down from her waist and abdomen was that deer body covered in light brown fur. The human torso and deer body pieced together brought an immense visual impact.
“Hmm?” The young girl let out a small sound of doubt and took a step closer to her.
Yi Jin shrank back violently, her back slamming against the rock wall, which pulled at the injury on her leg and caused her eyes to go dark from the pain.
Ignoring the pain, she curled her whole body into a ball, her eyes staring fixedly at the half-human, half-deer girl in front of her.
“Don’t move around, your leg is broken.”
Did she save me? Or did she attack me?
Her memory snapped at the image of Pei Yiting being dragged away by the vines. The last things that appeared in her field of vision were those dark green vines, bearing an identical aura to the half-deer girl in front of her.
“Did you capture me?” Yi Jin’s face turned pale.
“Captured?” The young girl tilted her head, her horizontal pupils transforming into round pupils in the dim cave, her irises flashing with an eerie blue-green light. “You were lost. I brought you here, isn’t that good?”
“Good my foot!” Yi Jin stared at her, constantly worried that those vines would burst out like a barrage of arrows in an instant and pierce through her.
She looked at the other party with vigilance as she squatted down and reached her hand toward her left leg. She instinctively moved away, but those vines bound her leg to the ground.
Is she going to break my leg? Yi Jin was so frightened she did not dare open her eyes.
A soft palm rested on her swollen ankle, a cool feeling penetrating inward as the severe pain slowly receded, turning into a soothing warmth.
Her closed eyelids slowly opened. Only then did she realize that this half-human, half-deer girl was helping her heal.
“Where is Pei Yiting?” Yi Jin suddenly remembered. “Is she still alive?”
The movement of the young girl’s hand visibly paused.
She raised her head, the light in her eyes swaying slightly. “Who?”
“Pei Yiting. My senior.” Yi Jin struggled, wanting to sit up. “She was swept away by those green vines. Where did you put her?”
The young girl did not answer. Her fingers were still resting on Yi Jin’s ankle, but the gentle temperature felt on her ankle seemed to grow a few degrees cooler. “Is this very important to you?”
“Of course it’s important! She came here together with me.” Yi Jin paused for a moment, pressing on, “Is she still alive?”
The young girl nodded gently, then released her hand and stood up. Backlit by the opening, her expression was impossible to see clearly. “She has already returned to the earth.”
Yi Jin’s breathing hitched instantly.
Senior, is she dead?