This hole was like a bottomless pit, or a man-eating devil's cave. Two living people fell in without even hearing a sound.
Following closely, Old Diaoye kicked Xiao Zhebie in as well.
I was at the entrance of the cave and looked down, but it was dark and I couldn't see anything.
Old Diaoye was like a man on fire, urging the three of us to go down behind me. Brother Yaozi and I looked at each other and hesitated. In this moment, Old Diaoye simply left us alone and jumped down by himself.
Aww!
The terrifying roar of the beast came again, deafening.
Undoubtedly, the other party should be not far from us at this moment. With a roar, the snow on the branches of the surrounding trees was shaking off.
"Oh my god, I'm going to die. How can I run into something like this just by entering the mountains?"
Lao Bai's legs were shaking: "Why are you still hesitating? Jump!"
He shouted to jump, but he pushed me up. I was wandering on the edge of the hole, so I fell down without any suspense.
It was pitch black all around. After rolling down from above, I quickly landed firmly on the ground. This seemed to be a not very wide corridor. The ground was a slope of soil, but it seemed to have been rammed by humans. It was very solid and very smooth. When I fell on it, it was like sitting on a slide and sliding all the way down.
Not long after, I slid out of the corridor. Due to inertia, I rolled a long way and finally stopped when I bumped into someone. When I looked up, it was Zhang Xinya?
The few people who had come down earlier gathered together at this time and had already turned on their flashlights to illuminate the surroundings.
In front of me was a hollowed-out mountain belly, more than a hundred square meters in size. There were a lot of firewood scattered on the ground, but more of them were some scattered bones, and the air was filled with a strong fishy smell.
Old Diaoye asked Zhang Xinya to hold the flashlight, and he walked in front, walking and stopping in the cave, as if looking for something.
At this time, Lao Bai and Brother Yaozi also came down one after another. Perhaps because of his excessive weight, Lao Bai turned into a rolling gourd after coming down, and finally plunged into the firewood in the cave. Then he screamed, and after pulling out his head, there was a big bump on his forehead. He said that he hit something sharp. He reached into the firewood and took out a huge animal tooth.
To be honest, I have never seen such a big animal tooth in my life. It was like a small bamboo shoot. If it really bit a person, I am afraid that the bones would be broken.
"Tiger tooth!"
Brother Yaozi recognized the thing and gritted his teeth and said, "It should be an adult Siberian tiger. How could it be killed like this? What on earth is this thing!"
Unfortunately, Old Diaoye didn't have time to answer. Qiye was already scared and followed Old Diaoye with his head shrunk, not daring to breathe.
This group of people went around in the cave, and finally Old Diaoye stopped at a position on the edge. He took the flashlight from Zhang Xinya and illuminated the place. Only then did he see a crack on the wall.
"Found it."
Old Diaoye leaned sideways and crawled through the crack, waving at us from inside.
Behind the crack, there was a narrow space of only two or three square meters. The seven or eight of us squeezed in, wishing we were piled up on top of each other.
The smell here became more and more unpleasant, with a spicy smell that made people cry uncontrollably. There seemed to be water on the ground, and it felt like there was mud and some scattered animal bones under my feet.
As soon as we entered here, Old Diaoye immediately asked Zhang Xinya to turn off the flashlight, and then picked up the mud from the ground and smeared it on us.
Perhaps because it was too dark, Old Diaoye couldn't see anything clearly, and he slapped a handful of mud directly on Lao Bai's face. Lao Bai immediately spitted and said angrily: "This is shit!"
"Shut up!"
Old Diaoye roared: "If you don't want to die, smear it on your body quickly."
At this time, we really didn't care whether it was dirty or not, and picked up those pickled things from the ground and greeted ourselves.
Only after the work was done, I heard Qi Ye panting and whispered: "Diaoye, is this the kind of red bear that our ancestors said hunts tigers for food?"
Old Diaoye sighed and nodded a little heavily: "I haven't seen it for decades. I thought there are more people now, and this thing has long been extinct, but I didn't expect it to still exist."
Red bear?
I searched through my cognition and memory, but I couldn't think of what kind of beast it was. It seemed that there was no such thing in the world.
"Grandpa, didn't you say that I couldn't tell you?"
I whispered, "It said that as long as you think about it, it will definitely come."
"It's already here, why bother about it?"
Old Diao sighed, "Now it's already in someone's nest, there's no point in being so particular."
Zhang Xinya asked, "What on earth is this red bear?"
"A kind of bear?"
Seventh Master hesitated for a moment, and then said, "No, it's not. Some people say it's the mount of the mountain god, who hunts tigers for a living. There are many stories, but no one has ever seen it!"
Old Diaoye said, it's not that no one has seen it, it's just that this thing has not appeared for decades. Some people in the old society had seen it, but no one could tell what species it was. Anyway, so far, no one has ever been really caught. In the past, when the ginseng gang went into the mountains, they were not afraid of wolves, tigers and leopards, but they were afraid of this red bear, because this thing can follow people's breath. If you think about it in your heart, it can feel your general direction. If you really meet this thing, whether you can escape depends on your luck.
Eighty or ninety years ago, Old Diaoye saw it once in Changbai Mountain. At that time, he was still a fellow running with the ginseng gang. Twenty or thirty people formed a group and entered the old forest. They were hit by the red bear. He just looked at it from a distance and said that the thing was very big, at least two or three brown bears. He had never seen such a monster on land, and its roar was like thunder.
The old leader of their ginseng gang gave him a few old mountain ginsengs and told him to run as fast as he could and never look back.
Except for him, there were 20 to 30 people in the gang, and no one else came out.
"I couldn't let it go, so I went back to take a look after eight or nine days."
Old Diaoye sighed, "They are all dead. Many were beaten to death, but many were not dead at all. They were held down by the red bear. I found marks of strangulation on their bodies, holes as thick as two thumbs on their skulls, and their stomachs were ripped open. The hearts inside were long gone. Judging from the way they died, they should have been held in the arms of the red bear, and two fangs were inserted into their heads from the top of their heads, just like you use a straw to drink beverages now, sucking out the brain marrow, and then cutting out the heart and eating it.
Tell me, how can this be a beast eating people? It's clearly an evil demon!"
Afterwards, he said that before entering the mountain this time, he found some clues at the foot of the mountain. A few days ago, not far from his wooden house, there were many large footprints, which sank deep into the soil. The footprints were at least twice as big as the bear's paw prints. It seemed that the weight must be more than 3,000 kilograms.
3,000 kilograms, that is one and a half tons.
As far as I know, the largest male brown bear weighs only 800 kilograms. This is at least as big as two brown bears. Where in the world is there such a thing? This is not prehistoric times!
Lao Bai's teeth trembled when he heard it. He guessed that the scene of the red bear eating human brains was imagined in his mind, and he immediately became timid: "Even the old Zongzi with golden armor and bronze corpse is not so powerful. Are we really hiding here?"
"This is also an old method I heard. I don't know if it works."
Lao Diaoye said that experienced mountain people know that if they are caught by the red bear, it is impossible to run away. They can only take risks and do something dark under the lamp.
Because the red bear lives under the tree, so from the moment the red bear's cry is heard, within a hundred miles, wherever the tree is the largest, there must be a red bear's den. This animal is very clean, and there is usually a hidden horn in the den, which is used to bury feces, just like the toilet in our human society. If you can get into this "toilet" and smear the red bear's feces on your body, you may be able to get away with it, because the red bear's feces are very spicy and can cover up all odors, and the red bear may not really notice it.
Lao Bai asked, how likely is this method to survive?
Lao Diaoye said, one out of ten will survive.
Lao Baimian immediately collapsed, saying that there are eight of us here, and if one can get out, that would be a big deal?
Lao Diaoye did not respond, and he was not sure whether seven or eight people could get away with it in someone else's den.
"This year's snow came too early. People were not prepared, and neither were animals..."
Old Master Diao sighed, "I guess the animal will keep hunting tonight, dragging it back to the cave and waiting for hibernation. Don't think there will be any living creatures within a hundred miles. If you are outside, you will definitely die. As long as you survive tonight, you will have a chance. The red bear hides during the day and comes out at night. When it sleeps during the day, we will definitely have a chance. Those who ran away after encountering this thing in the past all survived this way."
Brother Yaozi thought for a while, and suddenly asked, "Master Diao, where did you meet this red bear when you were young?"
"South of the foothills."
Old Diao thought about it carefully and said, "Calculating the location, it should be not far from Ji'an City and the Yalu River. There are many tigers in that place, so there must be red bears. Many people have seen them. Red bears specialize in catching tigers and sometimes bears. They eat wolves when they are hungry, but they don't eat rabbits. They eat anything ferocious, but their favorite... is to eat people!"
"That's right..."
Brother Yaozi sighed lightly, "It seems that this kind of thing is indeed related to ancient tombs. Wherever there are tombs, they appear there. There are traces to be found!"
After nagging for a long time, Brother Yaozi also had some guesses.
He said that the place where Old Diao met the red bear last time also had an ancient tomb group, and it was an extra-large ancient tomb group called the Donggou Ancient Tomb Group.
That tomb is not very peaceful. It is said to be a group of tombs of Goguryeo nobles. In the 1930s and 1940s, the Japanese excavated it, but they didn't finish it because they encountered a big weirdness and many people died. It is said that even the Japanese Yin-Yang family moved here, but there were still a lot of deaths. Finally, they had to retreat. Otherwise, the Japanese would have dug it up completely and not a hair would be left.
"I suspect that if there is a big tomb somewhere and something strange happens, this kind of thing will appear!"
Brother Yaozi said: "Once a tomb is in chaos, the surrounding ground veins will also be in chaos. To put it bluntly, the yin and yang are in chaos, and anything can appear!"
"You mean..."
Lao Bai doubted: "This is actually a spirit."
Brother Yaozi shook his head and said that it may not be a spirit. The chaos of yin and yang is, in a sense, the chaos of heaven. Rabbits will bite people, sows will climb trees, and nothing can be predicted. This red bear may also be transformed from other ordinary animals. When others talk about it, it can come here. It is obvious that it has connected yin and yang. It is not an ordinary thing. It must be related to these supernatural things.
To put it bluntly, maybe we are very close to the ancient tomb now, otherwise this kind of thing would not appear.
Old Diao thought about it, slapped his thigh, and said that it was true. They encountered the Russians not far from here, at most half a day's walk!
Aww!!
Suddenly, a deafening roar came, and we put out the fire in an instant. Old Bai's legs softened and he leaned on me. If it weren't for the narrow place, this coward would probably have sat down.
However, it's not his fault. My legs were a little weak too.
Because... this beast roar sounded very clear, just like exploding in my ears...
Listening to the sound, it was obvious that the red bear was back! !