The group walked out of the forest, and stretching before them was a massive rift, its length almost endless.
Tang Zeyu leaned over to look down into the crack; the bottom was like a bottomless abyss. On a clear day with good light, one could still see the depths, but at night, it was a void of darkness. One had to be extremely careful not to lose their footing and fall while walking nearby.
“Why is there such a massive gap here?” Lu Shiyu asked.
“This is the canyon I told you about before,” Tang Zeyu said, withdrawing his gaze. “This canyon undergoes periodic changes. When it’s wide, it can span nearly a hundred meters; when it’s narrow, one could jump across with a running start.”
Tang Zeyu looked at the rift, which currently spanned several dozen meters, and said, “Our luck is good. The base scouted this in advance, and the canyon has just finished contracting. It’s the perfect time to cross directly and avoid a long detour. If we don’t hurry across before the canyon expands again, we’ll have to take a massive loop.”
He made it sound simple, but Lu Shiyu didn’t feel lucky at all. Tang Zeyu spoke so lightly, as if one could just stroll across the canyon now, but the distance before her was impossible for her to jump, let alone with all their luggage. It was impossible to leap across with such heavy loads.
Even if there were some other way, a single failure would mean plummeting to the bottom of the valley. Lu Shiyu estimated the depth—it was just enough to shatter every bone in one’s body.
“No, no, no, let’s just take the detour,” Lu Shiyu shook her head frantically in resistance. “Actually, the detour can’t be that much further, right? What if the canyon suddenly starts widening while we’re halfway across? Let’s just take the detour; it’s so much safer.”
Tang Zeyu looked at Lu Shiyu and said, “But taking the detour would add nearly a week to our journey.”
“As long as we walk faster, it should be fine, right?!”
“What kind of nonsense are you saying?” Yan Hong said. “Taking a detour is so much trouble; let’s just cross the canyon directly.”
“No, no, no, I don’t want to.”
Lu Shiyu shook her head vigorously like a dog shaking off water, but unfortunately, under the rule of majority vote, her protest was overruled.
“Honestly, how is it even possible to get across?”
Lu Shiyu crouched on the ground, hugging her knees, watching the others busy themselves with something she didn’t understand. She didn’t hold much hope in her heart.
But if they really did have a way to cross the canyon vertically to reach the other side, what would it be?
Lu Shiyu began to speculate. Would they use some kind of bird? For example, she remembered a story from a book she read as a child where a large piece of meat was tied to a person, and then a goshawk would grab the meat and fly the person out of the canyon.
No, that wasn’t right. First, they didn’t have such a large piece of meat; second, that was a way to get from the bottom of a canyon to the top, not a way to cross it. If they actually tried that, the entire team would probably be packed up and carried away by a giant eagle.
Could they have some kind of plant grow a bridge across? For example, plants growing on both sides of the canyon connecting together to form a botanical bridge.
That wasn’t right either. Where would such a plant come from? Besides, a plant grown on short notice certainly wouldn’t be sturdy enough.
Just as Lu Shiyu’s thoughts were wandering, Tang Zeyu’s voice interrupted her.
“Here, this is yours.”
“Ah.”
Lu Shiyu accepted the rock-climbing gear Tang Zeyu handed her with a dazed expression.
“Put the gear on; we’re preparing to go down.”
“Go down? Down where?” Lu Shiyu still didn’t understand what he meant.
Tang Zeyu raised an eyebrow slightly and pointed toward the others who were already prepared and in position. “We’re going to descend from here to the bottom of the canyon and then climb up the other side. This way, it will only take one day to cross.”
Lu Shiyu’s brain felt as though it had been wiped blank, and her expression turned somewhat vacant.
Ah, so that was how they planned to solve it.
Lu Shiyu put on her protective gear and safety harness. Yan Hong and the others had already secured ropes to a sturdy tree nearby. After repeatedly confirming they were firm and secure, they grabbed the safety ropes and descended.
“Watch carefully how they go down, and then follow their lead,” Tang Zeyu said.
“And what if I don’t learn how?” Lu Shiyu’s voice was still a bit shaky; she was still terrified of falling and dying a miserable death.
“It’s okay, you won’t fall,” Tang Zeyu tugged at her safety harness. “The rope will ensure you don’t plummet.”
Just as Lu Shiyu breathed a sigh of relief, Tang Zeyu added, “But if you don’t hold the safety rope properly, you might smack against the stone wall, and you might just knock your teeth out.”
Hearing this, Lu Shiyu instantly bristled. She certainly didn’t want her teeth knocked out!
Tang Zeyu couldn’t help but let out a laugh. The faint sound was caught by Lu Shiyu, who immediately realized he was deliberately scaring her. In her annoyance, she couldn’t help but punch his chest, which only made him laugh louder.
Shao Xingyang and Yan Hong were the first to go down to scout the path. After confirming there were no mutated creatures or dangers below, they signaled the remaining people at the top to descend.
Lu Shiyu was the second to last. Tang Zeyu rubbed some white powder on her hands to increase friction. Once he confirmed the safety buckle was secure, Lu Shiyu tentatively tried to descend while holding the safety rope.
Throughout the entire process, she didn’t dare let go of the rope completely, fearing she would fall straight down. As a result, she could only shimmy down bit by bit. Fortunately, Tang Zeyu had the foresight to put powder on her hands; otherwise, it would have been even harder to maintain a grip if her palms got sweaty.
After moving slowly for a long time, Lu Shiyu finally reached a position several meters above the valley floor. This period of time had been truly agonizing. The finish line was right before her eyes, but her hands were running out of strength.
The three below weren’t doing anything; they just stood beneath Lu Shiyu, watching her shimmy down inch by inch.
At a position about three meters from the ground, Lu Shiyu felt she no longer had the strength to keep moving and simply stopped where she was.
“Hey? Why aren’t you coming down?”
“Could she be out of stamina?”
“No way, it’s not that much of a distance.”
The discussion below made Lu Shiyu want to cry. She tried to shimmy down again, but one of her hands suddenly lost its grip. A sensation of weightlessness hit her. Lu Shiyu thought she was definitely going to fall this time and might even crush the other three below her.
Just as Lu Shiyu’s body stiffened in fear, she suddenly felt herself land on something soft.
Lu Shiyu opened her eyes in astonishment and found she had landed on a buffer pad made of several piled-up sleeping bags.
“Eh?” Lu Shiyu felt surprised.
“Scared silly?” Yan Hong crouched down and waved a hand in front of Lu Shiyu’s face.
Lu Shiyu looked at the sleeping bags beneath her and scrambled up.
“When did these get here…”
“When you were too afraid to move down,” Shao Xingyang kicked a sleeping bag. “The Captain said that if you were too scared to come down, we should put something underneath to catch you. Well? Falling didn’t hurt, did it?”
“Yeah, thank you.”
In reality, the place Lu Shiyu fell from wasn’t very high; even without the sleeping bags as a buffer, nothing serious would have happened. If Lu Shiyu hadn’t been afraid, she could have even jumped down from that height. In the end, she still had to rely on her teammates to pile up buffer pads to catch her. At the thought of this, Lu Shiyu’s face turned bright red.
“Ooh, she’s blushing.”
Shao Xingyang tilted his head to look at Lu Shiyu, who had her head down and face flushed. He was as annoying as a boy in an elementary school class, successfully earning a sharp rap on the head from Yan Hong.
“Stop bullying her.”
After confirming Lu Shiyu had landed safely, Tang Zeyu also descended along the safety rope. Unlike Lu Shiyu’s cautiousness, Tang Zeyu dropped a significant distance with each jump. In just a few moments, he was at the bottom, several times faster than Lu Shiyu.
“How are we going to recover this rope?” Lu Shiyu tugged at the safety rope; it was still very firm.
“Just leave it here. We’ll need it when we return.”
Tang Zeyu found the backpacks they had lowered with ropes earlier and pulled out a new set of safety ropes, handing them to Yan Hong.
Yan Hong took the ropes and loosened her limbs to ensure flexibility. Securing the rope to her waist, she began climbing the stone wall on the other side.
“Once Yan Hong gets up, she’ll secure the rope and throw it back down. Then we can just pull ourselves up with the rope.” As he spoke, Tang Zeyu glanced at Lu Shiyu.
Lu Shiyu looked at the steep stone wall, feeling a bit intimidated. “I feel like I won’t be able to climb that. What should I do?”
“It’s fine. When the time comes, tie the rope around yourself, and we’ll pull you up from the top.”
Lu Shiyu: “…”
Why did that sound both feasible and unreliable at the same time?
The stone wall was quite steep with many points to leverage. It wasn’t too much effort for Yan Hong to climb up, but just as she reached the edge and was about to pull herself up, she pulled back and began climbing down bit by bit, returning the way she came.
“What’s wrong?” Tang Zeyu asked. “Why didn’t you go up?”
Yan Hong patted the dust from her hands and sighed. “Don’t even think about going up for now. I poked my head out to look and saw something that looks like a crocodile sunbathing on a large rock.”
“A crocodile?” Shao Xingyang asked. “There’s no water nearby; where would a crocodile come from?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Yan Hong spread her hands. “Anyway, that thing looks just like a crocodile. It’s covered in coarse scales, dusty gray in color, and its claws are this long. Its teeth are also extremely sharp; it’s likely a carnivore. I’m not confident I’m stronger than a crocodile on my own.”
“None of the rest of us can climb up except for you,” Chen Yunliang said.
“Exactly, so that’s why I said don’t think about going up for now,” Yan Hong found a clear spot, brushed away the dust, and sat down. “We’ll wait for that thing to leave on its own.”
There was no other way at the moment. Since they had already descended to the bottom of the canyon, taking a detour now would almost certainly lead to getting lost. Their only choice was to rest in place and wait for the mutated creature to leave of its own accord.
Seeing as they had no choice but to wait, the group compromised. Lu Shiyu saw that the atmosphere was a bit low, so she proposed, “Why don’t we see if there’s anything to eat around here?”
“Something to eat?”
“Yeah,” Lu Shiyu said in a tempting tone. “At the bottom of this canyon, it’s hard for animals to survive, but the same might not be true for plants. Maybe something grows here that can’t be found outside, and the taste is surprisingly good.”
Chen Yunliang pushed up his glasses and said, “It’s not impossible. This canyon opens and closes frequently. Occasionally, an animal won’t notice when the canyon expands, falls down, and gets buried when it closes again, becoming nutrients for this land. So maybe the plants here can rely on those nutrients to grow into something unexpected.”
Lu Shiyu: “…”
Although she could sense Chen Yunliang was agreeing with her, his theory about animals being buried and becoming nutrients made Lu Shiyu somewhat reluctant to eat plants that might be growing on corpses.
“Then let’s look around. We’re idle anyway.”
Yan Hong stretched, stood up, and began looking around.
Some freshly sprouted weeds grew on the nearby ground, which were clearly inedible. So Yan Hong turned her gaze to the plants on the stone walls and, sure enough, found a distorted tree growing there.
Distorted was meant quite literally; the entire tree didn’t grow outward but clung tightly to the stone wall, adhering to it like a vine wrapped around a trunk, struggling to survive. Under such harsh conditions, it had still managed to flower and fruit, growing several small, green fruits.
Yan Hong rubbed her hands, aimed at her target, and climbed up in a flash. She made a clean sweep of the fruit on the small tree, picking every last one and stuffing them into her pockets. The already sparse crop was completely looted by Yan Hong.
When Yan Hong climbed down with a pocketful of fruit, she found the others huddled around a corner, having found something.
“Yan Hong, come look! There are wild buns here!” Shao Xingyang shouted to her.