sbdcsierra Chapter 1: People in Laoshan, Beasts of the Past
Chapter 1: People in Laoshan, Beasts of the Past
The feeling of mating in the cold—no, the feeling of cold combined with hunger—is like stomach acid dominating the brain, saliva controlling the limbs, and a handful of cumin and chili powder seemingly thrown directly into the brainstem, stinging you to the point of instant reversion to your primate past. You almost recall the glory and prestige of being a primate in your past life, when you beat up Homo sapiens and tore apart chimpanzees. This is just like love.
The fire burned ever brighter, and the wood of the black birch branches possessed a gentle sweetness with a slightly distant and lingering charm, mingling with the sizzling aroma of mutton that was especially hot and pungent in the frosty breath, gradually becoming more vigorous, more wild, and more extravagant.
Three large dogs, blue, white, and gray, each XXXL/XXL/XL in size, sat obediently and properly in their respective snow nests. In reality, they were all talkative and harboring their own secrets, their tails wagging with extra force. The snow mist was like smoke from a hidden cave, ready to pounce at any moment and attack everything in front of Chuangfei on equal terms.
"Would you starve to death if you were a second later?"
"The traitor!"
"Sit down, all of you, and let me eat first!"
Lu Chi has only been in the mountains for six days, but he is already quite adept at talking to himself.
The biting wind, carrying snowflakes, seemed like a collapsing mountain range, slicing down from above like a slanted guillotine. The sounds of branches breaking and trees cracking echoed like the faint roars of monsters all around, reverberating and resonating with the running and howling of birds and beasts, creating a mysterious resonance that rapidly awakened and expanded the ancient instincts etched into our DNA.
Suddenly, this resonance seemed to materialize, and the mountains burst forth with a series of roars like glaciers shattering without warning.
The snow-capped peaks are as fiery as volcanoes.
The hard, tough snow fragments that had already crystallized into clumps were blasted apart by brute force, spreading outwards in all directions. The ice blades and snow swords, dozens of meters high, converged into a rolling wave like a battering ram, overturning the entire mountain ridge.
Lu Chi waved his fur-lined gloves a few times in mid-air, only managing to catch a wisp of wind before flying sideways, lost in his own dance, oblivious to the world around him.
Three to five minutes later, the three dogs dug him out of the almost completely compacted snow crust. He rolled on the ground, panting heavily with his face up, blood and foam coming out of his mouth.
"Damn it! Is he even human? It's always like this?"
The air was filled with a strange smell, faintly bloody. There was not a trace of snow on the top of the mountain ridge. Trees, fallen leaves, humus, and soil had all been overturned, and the dark blue-green rock surface was exposed, starkly like a huge and hideous scar.
Down feathers fluttered above, and a tattered polar suit lay shriveled on the ground, its wet, blood-red hue tinged with frost and snow. Wisps of white mist slowly rose, and the colors reflected on the cold rocks were visibly refined into a seamless whole by the extreme cold.
If nothing unexpected happens, the reclining silhouette beneath the polar suit will appear somewhat anthropomorphic.
emmmmm...
people?
To be honest, even someone like him, who came into the mountains during the Lunar New Year specifically to hunt the legendary beasts, seemed remarkably human compared to this. Lu Chi, who had guaranteed his success with twelve years of social security contributions, had been welcoming and seeing off people in this small area for so long, and this was the first time he had ever seen someone who had been exported and then re-imported. Didn't he understand the principle that eagerness doesn't make a sale? You're being incredibly presumptuous!
"Howl~"
As Lu Chi was pondering what was going on, a piercing roar suddenly burst forth from the side. The dirty snow layer was churned up, creating a dangerous, undulating arc. A massive creature rampaged through the snow crust, and the snow, mixed with mud, rocks, and deadwood, could not stop it from accelerating. It headed straight for that tattered, blood-stained patch of polar clothing.
After a fierce internal struggle, he stomped his teeth and gritted his feet.
Lu Chi reached behind his back and pulled out a thigh bone from under his clothes at the lower back, grabbed it, and charged forward while cursing.
In an instant, a muffled thud resounded, shattering metal and splitting stone. The snow at the point of impact was plowed open like a cannonball, shooting wildly in all directions. Lu Chiren flew dozens of meters away, almost like a paper kite. As he spoke eloquently, blood continued to splatter on his face. His bones, broken into more than a dozen pieces, scattered in all directions. Finally, in the snow crater-like depression, a separate image coalesced: a monster with bloodshot eyes and its body covered in dark green mold.
Its lower jaw had completely disappeared, half of its face was gone, and its entire body was pitted and peeling, like a dead, rotting, mutated mountain lord that had risen again. The whole thing was still connected and intertwined, as if a skin had been draped directly over an empty skeleton. The broken thigh bone that Lu Chi had used as a weapon was embedded between the flesh and bone of the other side. The exposed wounds and cracks had no flesh or blood, only soft, sticky mycelium filling the shell, which was constantly swelling and writhing and twisting in a nauseating way, even simulating jagged teeth, eyes and the entire facial contour.
The tiger's gait resembled that of a sick man, its expression ferocious and angry.
A low, painful, and frantic wail vibrated the surrounding air, and the sticky mold stains all over its body trembled precariously.
It glanced at it with disdain. In fact, Lu Chi could almost see resentment and bitterness in that one remaining eye. The three dogs' jumping and barking seemed like pathetic clowns in front of that thing, their red noses falling to the ground.
Ha, don't make your Tiger brother laugh.
To be honest, Lu Chi's legs were cramping, his heart was pounding, and he was even missing a beat occasionally.
Given the size, mutated form, and aura of this Nian beast, how should one describe the scene when it faces him? Hysteria and hysteria seem to be not much different, but in reality, the positive feedback is collapse and the negative feedback is delicious. His ideal action right now is to bring out the professional ethics and courage of someone who has paid social security for twelve years at the age of eighteen and slide tackle him. That way, he can die with a bit more dignity.
But as the saying goes, "beauty fades with age, heroes meet their end," and "the most beautiful things in the world cannot be kept forever." The merciful worldline tide did not give Tiger a chance to continue laughing.
A heart-wrenching roar echoed through the mountains and forests. The tattered and broken body began to melt like wax figures. First, a blood-red mist spread around, then it transformed into a visible blood-red shockwave that exploded instantly. Scarlet flesh, pale bones, and dark green slime, along with shimmering light, swept away everything within hundreds of meters like a cluster bomb.
Lu Chi was covered in unevenly moldy, thickened sauce. He swallowed a mouthful of bloody saliva with difficulty; it tasted sweet and metallic. He shivered for a while in excruciating pain before realizing that he had been thrown right next to the almost frozen polar suit in the explosion. Chun Chun instinctively reached out and ruffled it a couple of times: "Holy crap! This thing is still breathing?"
Just live on. This guy is living longer than me. You're tough, but you're living like a year in a day.
There are no human settlements, no machinery can get in, cell phones can't be charged, and there are no satellite phones.
This area is far from being a true deep mountain forest, but the mountain ridges leading back are already rugged and steep. It's -33 degrees Celsius here, and the winter tiger's backside is probably even harder to touch than that Nian beast from before. Let alone this person in his current state, even if you left a lively and energetic sports student here, under normal circumstances, he would probably have to wait until the proper spring to go out.
Lu Chi composed himself, clasped his hands in a fist salute, and bowed slightly to the person in the polar suit. In reality, he hadn't even raised his head; his eyes were already darting around, searching for something convenient to shovel snow and see the guest off...
To be dignified, and to help her be dignified.
To be honest, at least burying him would leave him with a whole body; otherwise, the various heroes who come and go from this mountain ridge would eat his piece and leave him with bits and pieces, making it an ugly sight.
"White...is it...brother..."
"What?"
"Tongue...goose goose goose...and...your...hat?"
"What??"
"If I go with you... can I kiss you...?"
"What???"
"save--"
"ε=(´ο｀*)))" Lu Chi couldn't quite describe just how stunning this woman was, but her phoenix eyes, brimming with unspoken words, were like a unique, exquisite piece of music, so captivating that one hesitated to finish reading for fear of being caught off guard by an unexpected abrupt ending. Finally, he let out a long, desperate sigh: "Help! Fuck you, help!"
Reaching out, I felt the other person's body from top to bottom and inside out, all while they were smiling. The good news was that I was lucky; it was probably just a fracture and dislocation. The bad news was that the person was going to die, physically.
The sack of balls...
Did that little vixen laugh just now?
Due to physiological reasons, people who die from hypothermia usually pass away smiling. Besides being a cause of death, freezing weather can also help accumulate some useless and unfunny trivia.
The other party's decent-quality tattered polar suit finally came in handy. He deftly tore it open and used the attached rope to tie the person to his back. He then wrapped the person in several layers of thermal blankets that the dog had dug out from under the snow. Lu Chi's movements were skilled and fluid, as if he had rehearsed it hundreds of times in advance.
Throughout the entire process, the other party did not react at all.
The blood loss wasn't much, and the person was so frozen that they could barely feel any pain. Aside from the heat, they were probably just going crazy. Theoretically, the probability of being taken away by Lu Chi's simple, brutal, and powerful actions was far lower than dying from hypothermia. In short, under these circumstances and in the person's physical condition, saving them was undoubtedly an extremely unwise option. It would be a gamble that would most likely result in a waste of energy and a complete loss.
"The benevolent god of canned yellow peaches is fooling every kid in Northeast China: 'Just two mountain ridges, don't die yet!'"
Lu Chi reluctantly glanced back at the direction in which the monster disintegrated, gave one last symbolic instruction, and then strode through the gullies, ravines, snowdrifts, and slippery beaches as if walking on flat ground.
He climbed two mountain ridges, some 800 to 2000 meters above sea level, in an hour and a half, amidst the snow and ice.
On the sunny side of the third mountain ridge, a waterfall cascading down hundreds of meters was steaming and making a rustling sound. Beyond the waterfall, there was a wall and door made of logs and stones, built against the mountain. Seeing that there were no signs of damage, Lu Chi tore off the chain and quickly crawled inside.
The cave was extremely narrow, barely wide enough for one person to pass through. It was over ten meters deep and shaped like an inverted gourd. At the entrance, there were two stacks of logs and three boxes of emergency rations. Inside, there was a simple, narrow rattan bed, separated by a fire pit in the middle. Then there was a small pool of steaming natural hot spring. The winding crevice in the cave ceiling led all the way to the rock wall on the other side. The wind howled, and snowflakes swirled in.
Without hesitation, Lu Chi, panting heavily, began to strip, his eyes inevitably glazed over. It turns out, people are really busy when they're embarrassed or doing something wrong. He swallowed hard, rambling incoherently, "Three generations of hard work just to save you, a traitor. It's a good thing you were born in Yanchuan, a place blessed with kind hearts. But to be honest, if it weren't for this chest, this waist, these legs, this face—"
Her face was smooth and her skin warm and smooth, and a warm fragrance wafted towards me.
All I can say is that when it comes to Nuwa creating humans from clay, her techniques are quite remarkable. Some people are made of autumn water and jade, while others are just made of mud.
cough.
Yanchuan, as the name suggests, was originally called Xianshuihezi.
The usually icy-cold mother of the ball appears to be full of passion here. There are many springs and mountains, but the water temperature of only thirty-seven or thirty-nine degrees Celsius, which is not suffocating, is actually very rare. Most of them are highly gushing springs or even boiling springs.
In no time, they slid the smooth-skinned man into the hot spring pool, propped him up on their backs, leaving only their head above the water. They then soaked a cloth in water and wrapped it around his head. After thirteen moves, Lu Chi collapsed to the side, exhausted. He felt as if he were surrounded by flowing stars and the rising and setting of the sun and moon – a truly magnificent sight.
He was completely dazed for a few seconds, then struggled to his feet. He rummaged through a wooden box behind him, and when he turned around, he had a fluffy thing that looked like a catnip lollipop in his hand. It was covered in a thick layer of dust. He gave it a perfunctory blow, pried open the woman's mouth, and shoved it in. He held the lollipop by the bottom with one hand to prevent her from choking, and with the other hand, he tore off a towel, soaked it in water, squeezed it, and reapplied it to her.
It was crude and straightforward throughout.
But since she's already frozen like this, instead of worrying about whether the waste in her blood vessels will flow back to her internal organs or cause blood clots, it's more worrying about what to do if she shatters and dies.
This is what living is like.
Coming back to life is just a matter of a blink of an eye, but waiting to die requires a lot more consideration.
Fortunately, the vascular water heating system works quite well. The time it takes for the whole body to circulate once is measured in seconds. During the long wait, it feels like a lifetime has passed, and the other party's scrolling message has gone through several times, but in reality, it may only take a few minutes.
"Although we didn't read you any emergency rescue and rescue regulations or anything like that according to the rules and regulations—you wouldn't hear us anyway and you can't withdraw your agreement—let's make this clear first: if you're still alive, don't even think about trying to extort me for anything, from missing a finger or a piece of skin to losing an arm or a leg. That's all we have for now, just make do..."
With a few clicks of the flint, the birch bark was ignited, and the warm light of the flames quickly spread to every piece of wood in the long fire pit, bursting into clusters of plump, rich sparks.
Lu Chili held a small, unearthed earthenware jar, its condition beyond recognition, beside him. He forcefully scooped out a lump of something that looked like some kind of calcium-based lubricating lipid, grayish-black in color with clear millimeter-level color demarcation lines. He picked up a leg and began scraping putty, working his way up from her feet. The pale skin revealed a startling pink undertone and bluish vein patterns to the touch, and the muscles rebounded so slowly they seemed unnatural.
After being cooped up in the mountains for a whole week, barely seeing any bird droppings, Lu Chi's life-sustaining tractor started up without warning, churning out another round of revving gunfire at this unfortunate pretty woman: "Gas's on, water's added, if it blows up again, that'll be your fault, you know? Let me tell you, these things are really expensive, you have to spend money, you know?"
"I..."
"What the hell?"
Lu Chi, who was holding the baby's head with tender affection and giving it plenty of emotional value, accidentally let the other person's face go limp and fall into the water. The bubbles that rose up shattered the oily sheen that was slowly spreading on the surface of the water. He grinned and hurriedly scooped the other person's head out. If this timi was saved and then choked to death again, there would be no way to deny it.
"Bo... Cai... Cai Cai Cai Yan..."
"What dish? Oh right, right, don't say anything, suck it in, it's sweet!"
Bo Caiyan took a while to react, her eyes rolling back incredibly slowly, and her blinking frequency was different for each eye, one after the other. According to medieval Western terminology, she must be a succubus or witch who had fallen to earth, definitely top-grade firewood, to be burned and served in a bright and glorious way.
She obediently opened her small mouth slightly, and the catnip lollipop she had been holding, which was now wet and fluffy like it had been licked by a cat, stretched her thin lips, which had just regained some color, open them again, and her rough teeth parted, finally landing on the tip of her tongue.
"It's not sweet at all...you bad...you bad guy..."
"You know yourself, um, well, can you still remember where you are?"
"Yakutsk..."
"where??"
"The crew was filming... I fell... slid down the mountain... the sky... the sky cracked open... the mountain collapsed... I saw... I saw lots of strange things... and... and penguins?"
Oh my god...
That unlucky woman actually went inside?
Maybe we should just give up on saving it and take a few grams off to analyze the material first!
Lu Chi clicked his tongue in disbelief, forcing a polite smile that conformed to societal expectations, and retorted irrationally, "Didn't I ask you if you wanted to buy QQ coins?"
"I'm not lying... I have... a GoPro on me..."
"No, you didn't!"
Something seemed to explode in the fire, suddenly bursting into a burst of intense flames, with shattered red embers sizzling as they fell into the water.
Bo Caiyan remained silent for a long while before asking, "You...don't recognize me?"
"Celebrities, you know!" Lu Chi sighed, seemingly lamenting the tragic fate of either of them. "You just mentioned a production crew. I mean, what kind of legitimate production crew would come to that godforsaken place like Yakutsk in the dead of winter to film a show? We'd rather not work that kind of job!"
Bo Caiyan's eyes lit up, like ripples spreading across spring water. She tried to nod but failed, muttering indistinctly, "Whoever loves someone in Class B can have them!! Ouch...it's so...numb...it hurts so much...am I...am I going to die...?"
Lu Chitou, without raising his eyes or opening them, kept poking at the fire, pushing several tin cans next to it to warm them. To be honest, this scene of flesh hanging like a pool while a jade-like body lay prone was enough to make any clear-headed adult's emotional intelligence regress to that of a corncob. His heart, which had been hanging in suspense, finally relaxed, and the tension naturally shifted to specific parts of his body, tactically shifting gears, saying, "Knowing pain is a good thing; what's truly worrisome is when the person isn't dead but their nerves are—that's when life really becomes unbearable!"
A true man is one who is both humble and strong; a great man is born between heaven and earth and can bend and stretch.
Upon hearing this, Bo Caiyan burst into tears: "Then, my chest and butt don't hurt at all... Oh no, I... I feel like I can't even feel them anymore!"
Lu Chigan fell silent: "Fat is generally a bit more resistant to cold than the extremities..."
Bo Caiyan fell silent for a few seconds, then started yelling again, "Ouch, oh, I'm in so much pain! My whole body hurts!"
"I advise you not to touch it! Or I'll tie you up! And I'll take off your other arm too!"
"It hurts so much..."
The voice wasn't loud, and it sounded weak, but the tone was ridiculously high. The cave amplified the sound, so Lu Chi's head was buzzing with various high-frequency vibratos. He endured it for a long time, but finally couldn't take it anymore: "Want some? Canned beef stew with canned vegetables, and canned yellow peaches. And maybe I can fulfill a vow?"
"eat!"
Finally, it quieted down a bit, replaced by a low, intermittent murmur that seemed to build up before slowing down, which made Lu Chi, feeling hot and irritated, suddenly have a bright idea.
It moves again.
It even moves.
This is what an innocent 18-year-old male high school student is like: he sees a hairy, double-eyed sow and thinks it's a beauty. His stats are weird and he doesn't care about the system.
Temperature loss is a type of continuous damage that reduces the maximum amount of health within a certain threshold, and it may even become a permanent debuff.
Frostbite is extremely unpleasant. During the recovery process, numbness, itching, pain, and a persistent burning sensation may occur, along with cramps and bone-chilling pain. Moreover, it is a random and disorderly attack that can be applied to one or more areas of the body. Lu Chi has never encountered other humans with frostbite as severe as this, but based on his professional experience, he can already tell a thing or two from the almost frantic behavior of those animals during the healing phase.
"Looks like she's delicate and precious, tsk, she's quite good at enduring pain..." Lu Chi placed the heated can of beef on the ground, carefully mashed the meat chunks with a spoon, and brought it to Bo Caiyan's lips: "Do you remember anything else?"
"I...I don't remember...I was terrified..." Bo Caiyan took a sip of broth, her mind starting to clear: "Where...am I right now?"
Lu Chi gestured for her to finish the soup in the plastic spoon. He hadn't even had a chance to eat the grilled lamb skewers. His current resentment was enough to feed a reinforced company of evil sword immortals. In a few gulps, he shoved the entire can of beef, soup and all, into his stomach, and with a bland, salty mouth, he uttered two words: "Yanchuan!"
Bo Caiyan's eyes flickered, and she took a long time to react before hesitating to speak: "So, will I be silenced, or will my memory be wiped clean like in the Men in Black?"
"Sister, although you didn't import it through official channels, everything here is legitimate, okay? You can get a few hundred confidentiality agreements or something, and that should be enough."
"Taking away the young master??"
"Your team, well, the production crew, they're a real handful. I've never heard of anyone being able to conjure up a living person like that before. It seems like I've run into all sorts of trouble!"
"..."