Daomu Biji: Restart

Fatty was in a hurry to put the fuse out, but the burning fuse was driven by gunpowder, so it was extremely difficult to extinguish. Seeing that he was nervous and disorganized, I stretched my head out and bit the burning point directly, trying to bite off the fuse head.

The fuse didn’t go out even when it encountered my saliva and just ended up burning my mouth instead. I spit it out, along with a big mouthful of sparks. My mouth was now full of blisters, but when I looked at the fuse again, I saw that it was still burning.

The top layer of my tongue tasted a little burnt and Fatty’s face was looking pale. The fuse I had just tried to snuff out with my mouth was almost to the detonator, so it was too late to bite it again. In an instant, the fuse burned all the way to the detonator.

Fatty let go—he still had a safety anchor higher up on the cliff— and kicked off of the cliff wall as he fell straight down, "Mr. Naïve, take care of Little Brother! You know your Fat Master’s love for you is like a firework! It shines brightly and then disappears in an instant!"

As his whole body swung out and away from me, I saw him turn around so that his back was to me. He was planning on using his body to block the direct blast from the explosion in order to keep me from being injured by the flying shrapnel.

My heart surged up like it was trying to claw its way out of my chest, adrenaline rushed through my body, and my hair stood on end.

At that moment, my throat tightened as I thought I saw him explode into pieces. It’s over! Fatty’s gone! I thought to myself.

But as it turned out, Fatty hit the cliff below, bounced off, turned around, hit it again, and then spun around once more.

The detonator was still smoking.

I felt my heart clench. Every time he hit the cliff, my heart twitched as I kept thinking that he was going to blow up. But in the end, he hit the cliff six or seven times before his whole body stabilized and the smoke slowly disappeared without anything exploding.

I looked at him and he looked at me; I spit out a mouthful of blood.

I touched my mouth, unable to believe it. It seemed that people really could vomit blood out of thin air. Fatty looked at the detonator and said to me, "Mr. Naïve, it's a dud! Mr. Naïve, it's a dud!!! Fuck me, my luck is amazing! It’s as awesome as my dick!”

"Get rid of it!" I shouted at him.

"But this is my lucky detonator!” Fatty said. “I’ll keep it as a good luck charm!"

"Lose it! Fucking get rid of it right now!" Feeling a huge wave of anxiety in my heart, I unfastened my safety buckle, climbed over the gap to Fatty’s side, and then headbutted him on the nose. As he sat there stunned, I pulled the detonator out and threw it directly below. It crashed into the rocks and then rolled down the cliff.

When I was growing up and would set off firecrackers, my dad took special care to teach me that duds were the most dangerous thing in the world, because you didn’t know what state the sparks inside were in.

Almost at the same time, Jin Xingsan was freed from my rope's stranglehold because I had unfastened my safety buckle. When we looked up, we found that all of the light around us had suddenly dimmed and we couldn't see anything above our heads.

"Is the light around here much darker than we originally thought?" Fatty asked me. I could barely see his face, but we were used to moving around in extremely dim light anyways.

I nodded and went to grab my flashlight, only to find that it wasn’t on my equipment belt. Did it get stuck in a crevice just now?

"Why did you spit up blood?" Fatty asked me.

"I—" I didn’t know how to explain it. My heart hurt so much that I felt numb as I thought to myself, it’s over. I just killed the bee man. Is there going to be some kind of chain reaction or something?

"What's the matter with you?” I asked Fatty. “Why are you doing things so roughly? If it weren't for that dud just now, you would’ve definitely died. Do you understand that? It’s such a low-level mistake to make."

This kind of low-level mistake was way too scary, and just thinking about it was enough to make me want to vomit blood again. I wanted to quickly go up and see what Xiao Hua’s people had to say, but at this time, something down below suddenly exploded.

A loud noise erupted about thirty meters below our feet, and a huge explosion of light flashed for a moment. The detonator wasn’t a dud after all! It was just slow to explode!

My mouth dropped open and my frightened mind buzzed, but in that brief flash of light from the explosion, I saw a strange face with eyes stretched thin by an elongated skull appear behind Fatty. It was peeking out directly from behind Fatty's ear and was almost pressed up against my forehead.

Fatty, who was completely unaware of this, turned his pale face towards me and said, "Mr. Naïve, thank you."

I immediately retreated, raised my gun to take aim, and fired three shots in an instant. The loud crack of gunfire reverberated with a huge echo as the thing was instantly pushed back four or five steps. Then, it immediately disappeared into the darkness.

Fatty was almost deafened by my actions, but I turned and shouted to Xiao Hua’s team above us, "Give me a hint! It's already like this, so say something!”

There was no response.

I forgot that I didn't have a safety buckle and jumped up against a rock protrusion, thinking that I could swing myself up. As a result, I almost fell down the cliff, but Fatty managed to grab me and stuck me back on the cliff.

I looked up again and saw that face come out of the darkness and appear beside Fatty's head once more. Fatty felt it this time, but he couldn't let go of me.

It was only at this time that I remembered how horrible dealing with zombie-like things was.

Fatty finally let go as I climbed the cliff on one side. The light was too dim here, so I could only vaguely see that weird face beside Fatty's head from this distance. As a result, I didn't dare shoot again.

The two of us remained silent as I strained my eyes to see. This thing’s mouth doesn't open very much, so how does it attack people? I silently asked myself.

At this time, I suddenly heard a “papapapa” sound coming from the darkness on the other side.

Seeing that the strange face was immediately attracted by that sound, I couldn’t help but wonder, is there another one?

As I listened to that “papapapa” sound getting closer and closer, I slowly saw Poker-Face's face appear from the darkness. It was very hard to make out since I couldn't see anything clearly, but I saw Poker-Face shaking his jaw quickly and making that “papapapa” sound.

The bee corpse slowly climbed towards Poker-Face, who didn't even look at me once as he slowly retreated into the darkness, the bee corpse following closely behind.

I was afraid to disturb the atmosphere, but it wasn’t long before the “papapapa” sound finally disappeared. "What’s going on with Little Brother?" Fatty asked me.

"That's not Little Brother," I said.

"It's so hard to see anything clearly. Are you sure?"

I nodded—my instincts were giving me a strong warning—and then started climbing back up to the place where I had unfastened my safety buckle before. Once we made it, I motioned to Fatty that we should climb up quickly.

As I crawled on my stomach and looked at the light shining down from above, I felt that the ambient light seemed a little brighter. We finally climbed back to the campsite, but as soon as I was about to speak, Fatty pressed my shoulder and motioned for me to look carefully.

I looked at Xiao Hua's camp and felt as if my brain exploded. Jin Xingsan was standing on a protruding rock as if nothing had happened. He looked at us and asked, "Little Master Three, what's going on? What was that explosion just now?"

Fatty and I looked at each other before I turned to look at Jin Xingsan and the people behind him. I found that nothing had happened here except that the light was much dimmer than before. The crowd behind him all had wooden expressions on their faces.

"What kind of haunted circle is this?" Fatty murmured.

I looked at Jin Xingsan out of the corner of my eye. It was still the same kind of corpse, but with my peripheral vision, I could tell that its clothes were different.

This was another bee man. In just those few minutes we had been gone fighting, it had filled in the gap.

As I pushed Fatty slowly back into the darkness, Jin Xingsan looked at us in confusion. My heart was full of despair; I really didn't expect this kind of situation.

I suddenly understood Xiao Hua's tiredness. How many of these fucking bee men did he kill? So that Shigou Diao guy’s gestures didn’t mean that this thing had anything to do with the censer above, he just meant that this thing was endless. If you killed one, then did another one appear immediately?

At this time, Jin Xingsan quickly climbed over to us. "Little Master Three, it’s dangerous. You should hurry up and join us."

My hands were trembling as I saw it climb over quickly, full of so much energy. My tired heart was aching and a huge wave of nausea hit me as I looked at his affectionate smile.

****

My face after Fatty almost dying, learning there are endless bee men, and fake Poker-Face (maybe?) helping them