Daomu Biji: Restart

My efforts were quite effective, and I managed to climb more than a meter up until the female corpse was hanging below my feet. "Fatty, let's kill something!” I started shouting. “Run! I got into some trouble at the top!"

But as it turned out, I couldn't say anything at all. Instead, all that came out of my mouth was a "gegegege" sound. When I touched my chin, I found that my whole mouth was numb.

That kind of numbness was exactly like taking an anesthetic after dislocating an appendage. I squeezed my mouth hard and pinched my tongue to see what was going on, only to find that something was moving on my tongue. I could feel my hands touching my tongue, but I couldn’t feel my tongue touching my hands.

I immediately realized that the thing on my tongue was one of those little white snakes. Since I couldn’t feel my entire chin, did that mean that this thing was poisonous?⁽¹⁾

I shouted as hard as I could, but my tongue was completely out of my control. All I could do was make that "gegegege" sound as saliva involuntarily flowed from the corners of my mouth.

Almost at the same time, all the bee corpses above responded with a "papapapa" sound. I would "gegegege" and they would "papapapapapa", which was starting to make me angry. What, are you pretending to be velociraptors or something? I thought to myself.

I raised my gun to break the other chains, telling myself that I would destroy at least half of them first, but at this time, something suddenly grabbed my hand. I turned my head and saw that it was the female corpse’s hand. She had climbed up the pipa chain and was practically crawling on top of me, the strong smell of rancid water hitting me directly in the face.

When I turned and faced her directly, I saw that her face had gradually changed from that sinister expression to a more normal one, and the smell had disappeared.

But her head was completely unsupported and was lying horizontally across her shoulders. This kind of movement wasn’t something that people with normal necks could do. Plus, the female corpse’s face was pale and appeared even more bizarre.

I figured it was because there was a one-way metal lock in her neck and some kind of special snake—maybe the king snake here—had entered this human body cage and couldn’t get out. When the other snakes controlled corpses, their heads were usually just attached to the cervical vertebrae. Since their necks were hard, the snakes could even control the rotation of the corpses’ heads. But this king snake could only attach itself to the part of the spine in the middle of the neck and shoulder blades. Plus, there was a mechanism in this female corpse’s neck, so it was the only thing supporting her neck. The spine had weakened after the cartilage decayed, making it difficult to support the neck, but it seemed that this snake still had a way to open and close the female corpse's mouth and eyes.

The female corpse didn't make any kind of noise, but I could feel a vibration coming from her stomach. Then, I saw her eyes slowly glance at the pipa lock chain behind her.

If it was a zombie movie before, then it was most definitely a ghost movie now. The female corpse's eyes were pale and murky like the inside of a lychee fruit⁽²⁾ and all of her hair was stuck to her face.

A bee corpse started to climb down, disturbing the safety rope that I was hanging on, but the female corpse abruptly jerked and made an extremely unpleasant sound.

All of the bee corpses immediately retreated. The female corpse didn’t attack me but continued to glance at the pipa chain.

It still had a firm grasp on my hand so I couldn't move at all, but it wasn’t moving either. Instead, it just continued to look at me and kept "glancing" behind it.

I couldn’t say anything. Any time I tried, all that came out of my mouth was that "gegegege" sound. It almost sounded like the mating call of a long-horned grasshopper. I was wondering what this female corpse was trying to do, but there was nothing I could do besides maintain this state.

After about six or seven minutes of this, I suddenly realized that it wanted me to break its chain.

Fuck!

I looked at it and said to myself, this thing has a very high IQ, at least on the level of a border collie.

I quickly analyzed the situation. According to the common practice in novels, I felt that I definitely shouldn’t let this evildoer live even if it meant that I’d die here with it. It would be better to let this stand-off continue. If she was patient, then I could be patient too; maybe I could just wait until Poker-Face came to fish me up. But if she was impatient, then she’d surely kill me after a while. Or, if it was a situation where all three of us were patient, Poker-Face might come to find me and discover that I had turned into a Jin Xingsan.

But I definitely wasn’t that kind of person. After thinking about it, I decided that as long as this female corpse could understand what I meant and let go of my hand, then I could shoot. After that, I could quickly break the two pipa locks and kick it down into the abyss.

So, I also used my eyes to glance at my hand that was holding the gun.

With it glancing at the pipa lock and me glancing at my hand, one person and one corpse began to silently communicate with our eyes.

If others were to witness this scene at this time, they definitely wouldn’t believe that I was looking for a way out. But there were many things that occurred on the surface which were completely different from what was actually going on below.

At this time, it suddenly let go and my gun hand could finally move. I took a deep breath and, without giving it a chance to react, immediately gave it a hard kick and raised my gun to break one of the pipa locks. In an instant, its center of gravity tilted and its whole body began to spin. I raised my gun and directly broke the rope-entwined chain that was attached to the censer.

I fell straight down and crashed into the cliff. The censer was even more tilted now, so the female corpse was spinning like a top, revolving around and around in a small orbit. The two of us passed each other like flying trapeze artists as I drew a huge arc, hit the cliff again, and spun three or four times before stopping. I looked up and saw the female corpse spinning like a yo-yo while many of the bee corpses above it were shaken off the chain. Then, the bee corpses began to climb down the cliff on my side, heading right towards me.

I raised my gun and fired again. It wasn’t so easy to hit the pipa lock chain at this distance, but I finally managed to break it after finishing off my remaining bullets.

The female corpse quickly plunged into the darkness below, but at this time, at least three or four bee corpses had already descended upon me.

Not willing to give up, I clenched my teeth and started reloading my ammo. But those three or four bee corpses completely bypassed me and jumped into the void.

I looked up again and found that all of the bee corpses had jumped into the void, heading in the direction that the female corpse had fallen in.

Ah, love makes people do pitiful things, I said to myself before immediately taking out my cell phone and using it to look at my tongue. Fuck, there's obviously a little snake on my tongue and it's still fucking moving!

At this time, I was at a loss as to what to do and felt completely miserable. After Mute Zhang, there may be a Mute Wu.

Wushanju can live off subsidies in the future.

I rearranged my climbing rope, climbed back down to Xiao Hua's camp, and saw everyone looking at the bottom of the cliff. Jin Xingsan was no longer there.

When I climbed over to Fatty’s side, he looked at me and said, "Shit, that guy jumped down."

I nodded and tried not to make a "gegege" sound, lest Fatty think I was another Jin Xingsan and kill me directly. In the end, I could only make an "aba aba" sound and have Fatty look at my tongue.

Fatty turned on his flashlight to take a look and then shouted to Xiao Hua's team, "Doctor!"

When someone came up, Fatty had me lean against his knees. I lay down on my back, opened my mouth, and heard a burst of exclamations.

I looked up at the top of the cave and found that the morning sun was shining down. It was dawn outside, but I was so sleepy that I soon drifted off.

When I woke up, I saw that Fatty was alone in the camp and the sunlight was shining down brightly from the top of the cave. It was so bright, in fact, that I immediately started crying.

We had been oppressed for so long.

There had to be a god behind this light.

Fatty told me that I had slept for more than an hour, by which time the sun was completely up outside. Everyone else became crazed and immediately went outside. My tongue had been treated and I could speak, but it was better if I kept it to a minimum. There also shouldn’t be any residual effects. The snake on my tongue had been taken out, and since the tongue was considered epithelial tissue, it had a very fast metabolism. As a result, it should be almost fully healed in about three days.

I asked him about Little Brother and Xiao Hua, but Fatty just shook his head and said that there was no one to help investigate since everyone had gone up and never came back down. He also had to look after me, so he couldn’t check himself.

The two of us began to climb up the cliff, being very cautious during the last stretch. We searched carefully along the way, but didn’t see any clues pertaining to Xiao Hua and Poker-Face.

Finally, we climbed to the entrance of the hole, the fresh air outside enough to make me feel drunk. Fatty and I finally crawled into the hole and climbed up.

The moment I left the hole, I felt as if a huge wave of bright colors smacked me in the face. There was the blue sky, the highly saturated sunlight shining down, yellow grass, and green trees as far as the eye could see. I knelt at the entrance of the hole and started laughing uncontrollably. With these colors hovering before my eyes, I stood up and walked a few steps, fell down, walked a few more steps, and fell down again.

Finally, I stopped getting up and just lay there stroking the grass on the ground, hearing nothing and smelling it all greedily.

****

TN Notes:

(1) I know snakes are usually referred to as “venomous” but in this context, the author used poisonous and I feel like it fits (since Wu Xie ingested it rather than got bit). Fun fact, there are some snakes out there that are both venomous and poisonous.

(2) Tropical fruit native to the Guangdong and Fujian provinces of southeastern China.