Our shirts and pants were almost completely soaked, but luckily the sun had come out.
After going to the car and putting on Lili’s jacket, it wasn’t too cold.
We never did manage to catch any fish.
The stream was flowing—there were definitely fish in it, but actually catching them was a hassle.
It made me think of back in the mountains, how deftly Suo Tian used to catch fish, and I found myself missing him a little.
It had been over half a month since he left.
Taozi, Han Xue, and Xu Shu shook the water out of their hair and plopped down.
Uncle Gazi poured us some hot water from the thermos to drink, while ordering Yangyang to go fetch a towel from the car.
At the same time, he scolded me, “You’re already this old—how can you still be so reckless? You just jump into the water like that. What if something happened? Wouldn’t all that time you spent in the hospital have been for nothing? Those IV drips weren’t going into someone else’s body, you know!”
I let out a couple of sheepish laughs and explained, “I’ve been cooped up at home for too long. The moment I got out, I just couldn’t hold myself back… I’ll be more careful next time.”
Hearing that, Taozi covered his mouth and snickered, adding, “If Suo Tian were here, his brows would probably be knotted together again.”
“Damn you, Taozi! Didn’t you drink enough water or what?!” I bared my teeth and shot him a glare.
Taozi immediately fell silent and even cooperated by letting out a burp.
Before Yangyang could bring the towel back, we were suddenly drawn to Yiyi’s frantic barking from the distance.
Truth be told, Yiyi was a bit of a coward.
At home he liked to put on airs, but once outside, he was even afraid of kids shorter than him.
Sometimes even a sparrow landing nearby would make him jump up in fright, tail tucked, and run back home.
He had never made such sharp, panicked sounds before.
Following the noise, we looked over.
Yiyi’s figure flickered in and out among the taller grass in the distance—it was too far to see what he was barking at.
After watching for two seconds, Uncle Gazi suddenly slapped his thigh and shouted, “Oh no! Where are the two kids?!”
Only then did we realize we hadn’t noticed Xiao Hu and Tingyun for quite a while.
With that reminder, we all sprang to our feet and started looking around.
The meadow was huge—aside from a few trees, there was nothing blocking the view.
We quickly scanned the area, but there was no sign of the two energetic kids.
Then Yiyi let out another even more intense burst of barking.
That’s when it hit us—Tingyun and Xiao Hu might be over there.
Not daring to waste a second, we all rushed in that direction.
Uncle Gazi, even before getting close, was already shouting, “Yun’er! Hu’ya! Where are you? Come out!”
As we got closer, Yiyi’s entire figure came into view.
He was baring his teeth, leaning forward with his upper body, a low growl rumbling from his throat as if facing a great enemy.
Then suddenly, Xiao Hu and Tingyun’s cries came from the grass in front of him.
Our hearts lurched, and we sped up again.
As we got close, we saw Tingyun lying on the ground, screaming and crying, while Xiao Hu crouched beside her, desperately trying to pry something off, crying out over and over, “Sister… sister…”
Uncle Gazi was about to rush forward, but Shen Feng grabbed him back.
Zhou Wen and Shen Feng exchanged a quick glance, then split to either side and charged in.
Each of them grabbed a child—when Zhou Wen lifted Tingyun, I finally saw that her calf was being gripped by a badly decayed hand!
And the source of that hand… was the patch of bare dirt behind them—the one without any grass.
Zhou Wen stepped on the hand with one foot while lifting Tingyun upward with both arms.
It didn’t take long before he managed to free her.
When they carried the terrified children back to us, Han Xue and Lili quickly stepped forward to take them and comfort them.
But they were far too frightened—neither of them could listen to anything, just pointing at the arm buried in the dirt and the exposed hand still twitching, crying uncontrollably.
Uncle Gazi couldn’t bear it.
Seeing the scene, he frowned deeply, then turned and told Han Xue and Lili to take the children back to the car first.
The rest of us stayed behind, staring at the ground for a moment.
Zhou Wen turned to Shen Feng and asked, “Dig it up and take a look?”
Shen Feng nodded, picked up two medium-sized stones from the ground, and was about to start digging with Zhou Wen.
“Wait.” Xu Shu stopped him.
She pulled out the dagger she carried with her, opened it, handed the sheath to Zhou Wen, and gave the blade to Shen Feng. “Use this.”
Shen Feng thanked her, then motioned for us to step back as he and Zhou Wen began digging.
Starting from where the arm was exposed, they first dug cautiously a few times.
Noticing that the arm didn’t react much, they relaxed a bit and started digging faster.
Before long, the entire arm was uncovered.
It was in a severe state of decay, riddled with small holes.
It looked as though, before death, the person had been repeatedly injured by something round.
The sight made our scalps tingle—each of those circular holes was missing a chunk of flesh…
Xu Shu and Taozi turned to look at me, and we exchanged glances.
None of us looked good—we all knew we had probably run into something bad again.
As the digging continued, the shape buried in the soil gradually revealed itself.
Shen Feng and Zhou Wen’s brows knit tighter and tighter, while our expressions grew increasingly grim.
When the entire pit was finally dug open, Taozi couldn’t hold it in anymore—he turned around and vomited.
I covered my mouth and endured it for a while, but in the end, I couldn’t take it either.
When I came back to myself, I was throwing up just as badly.
Shen Feng and Zhou Wen stepped back from the pit, probably overwhelmed by the stench rising from it.
Yangyang walked over from a distance.
He must have already heard something from Uncle Gazi and the others, because he was calling out before he even got close, “What happened? What’s going on?”
But the moment he got closer and saw what was inside the pit, he froze in place.
After a long moment, his expression twisted oddly, and he turned away and started dry heaving…
The pit wasn’t very big—about a meter wide and long, and not too deep.
A meter in length definitely couldn’t hold a whole person…
The thing inside, if you insisted on calling it a person, would be a stretch.
Strictly speaking, it was just a pile of severed limbs.
There was only the upper half of a body, and the abdomen had already been cut open.
Inside, apart from a black, disgusting mass, there were barely any organs left.
The skeleton was exposed through the split belly.
It had already mutated into a walker—the arm that had been sticking out of the soil earlier belonged to this very corpse.
Beside it lay several severed limbs, which, if we were right, should have been its thighs and lower legs.
The most disturbing part was that inside its ripped-open abdomen were two pairs of hands and feet, already rotted beyond recognition.
In the heat, buried under the soil, the entire pit now emitted a nauseating stench that was almost blinding.
Shen Feng and Zhou Wen had stronger tolerance for the smell than we did.
After a moment, they were able to face what was in the pit again.
Xu Shu, tough as she was, also took a look and frowned. “This walker’s hands are intact—so where did the hands stuffed in its belly come from?”
Hearing that, Shen Feng turned to look at her. “Not just that. Those two feet in its stomach aren’t his either. The walker is male, but those are clearly female feet.”
After recovering a bit, Yangyang handed Taozi and me each a bottle of water to rinse our mouths.
Then, forcing himself to turn back, he asked Shen Feng, “What do you think is going on with this walker?”
Zhou Wen answered, “Well, it definitely didn’t eat a couple of hands and feet, then cut open its own stomach and come here to bury itself.”
Even though it felt a bit absurd for him to joke at a time like this, he wasn’t wrong.
This buried walker couldn’t have done all this itself.
And whoever could do something like this… could only be a living person.
I rubbed my throbbing temples.
Who would do something this twisted? And they had cut open the walker’s stomach and buried it without finishing it off—was it intentional, or did that person simply not know how to properly deal with walkers?
Xu Shu pointed at the walker in the pit, which was still moving slightly, and said to Shen Feng, “Deal with it first.”
Shen Feng responded, stepped forward with his blade, and easily pierced straight through the nearly skeletal, rotting head.
“What now?” Yangyang asked.
I looked back at the people relaxing in the distance, then glanced again at the pit.
“Bury it for now. We’ll talk about it after we get back.”
Shen Feng and Zhou Wen hesitated for a moment, but seeing no better option, they turned back and began filling in the pit.
Xu Shu and Yangyang joined in, kicking dirt back into the hole.
This place was relatively remote, with tall grass, so there was little risk of others discovering it.
After filling and packing the soil down firmly, we didn’t linger and immediately turned to leave.
Uncle Gazi had already packed up everything from the outing and taken it back to the cars.
We waded across the stream and hurried off.
We hadn’t stayed long before leaving.
Some of the other picnickers watched us from afar, probably wondering why this family had just arrived and then left so quickly.
We kept our heads down, quickly got into the cars, and sped off without stopping.
Such a nice place—what a pity.
Even if we came back in the future, it would probably carry a psychological shadow.
And just like that, no one noticed that among the crowd of picnickers, there was one person quietly watching us—observing our arrival, our discovery in the grass, and our departure—hidden among the others the entire time.
— The end of the Chapter–
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