Chapter 158 The Corpse is Gone

Stepping back into that deep forest, I saw that a vast majority of the dense eucalyptus trees had been hacked down, and dried black dog blood stained the ground everywhere. It seemed that Old Man Ma had gone to a great deal of trouble when he led the group into the mountains last time to deal with the remaining two-headed snakes.

Arriving at the edge of the snake pit, I could sense a heavy, oppressive yin energy from afar. Even after the formation was destroyed and so many days had passed, it had hardly dissipated at all. Remembering what had happened down in the snake pit previously, my scalp instantly went numb.

"Wait! Something's wrong!" Old Man Ma suddenly said with a stern expression.

I saw him frowning deeply, staring intently into the abyss with a dead-serious look.

"What's the situation?" I hurriedly asked.

Old Man Ma didn't answer. He walked to the edge of the pit, peered down, and furrowed his brows even tighter, which clearly indicated that things were looking quite ominous.

I walked over to the edge and looked down following his gaze. The pit was very deep. Now that it was broad daylight, looking straight down revealed only a chaotic mess of tree roots and pitted, uneven cave walls, accompanied by a heavy blast of malevolent yin Qi rushing straight at my face.

Unable to make sense of anything, I looked at Old Man Ma in confusion. His brows were knit together even tighter, and his complexion was extremely unsightly, bearing the expression of a catastrophic impending doom.

"Luo! Come down with me!" Old Man Ma suddenly commanded.

I shuddered involuntarily. Go down? Go down into the snake pit? Remembering the scene from last time made me shrink back in fear. I was naturally a magnet for evil spirits, and besides, how could I know if the snakes down below had truly been cleared out? What if one or two suddenly lunged out? Not to mention those as thick as an arm, even the smallest two-headed snake could easily claim my life!

The leg that had been bitten previously hadn't even fully healed yet. Exactly what had happened to make Old Man Ma this anxious?

Without saying much more, Old Man Ma turned to instruct the village chief and the others: "I'm going down to take a look. You stay up here and don't go anywhere! Slaughter the roosters you brought and smear their blood on your bodies. After I go down, unless I call for you, no matter what sounds come from the pit, do not pay them any heed! Do you understand?!"

These instructions were grave enough, and judging by Old Man Ma's tone, it sounded as if something might still be lurking down there. Could those corpses have "come alive" again?

Having settled everything, Old Man Ma beckoned me toward the edge of the pit.

"Master, are we really going down from here?" We had tumbled down from right here last time! There was no proper path down this place at all! Although Tu'e had caught me back then, just listening to the groans of the others told me this drop was no laughing matter!

"Stop chattering! Hurry up!" Old Man Ma snapped, cutting off any further nonsense.

His attitude made it clear that a truly critical situation had occurred.

I stopped talking. No one had actually fallen to their death last time, had they? The worst that could happen was a period of pain!

Borrowing two mobile phones from the villagers for illumination, I walked to the edge of the snake pit.

Tu'e followed closely behind. Old Man Ma looked at him and said, "You don't need to go down. Stay up here to look after these people so you can handle anything if something goes wrong!"

That was what he said, but I had a lingering suspicion that Old Man Ma was intentionally sending Tu'e away. My puzzlement deepened: what on earth had happened down in this snake pit?

Tu'e hesitated as he looked at me, then stepped back.

Looking at the deep pit below, I tried to take a deep breath to steel my nerves, but before I could finish inhaling, my back was abruptly shoved. My center of gravity lost, my body tilted forward, and I plunged downward!

My heart instantly leaped into my throat! You bastard of an old man!

The light above rapidly vanished into pitch-darkness, immediately followed by a brutal slam against the ground!

This fall was no light matter. Because I was completely unprepared and tumbled down at an angle, my bones felt as though they were about to scatter, and pain wracked my entire body. Gasping in agony, I couldn't help but groan. You damn old man, were you still holding a grudge about me destroying the formation eye last time and intentionally torturing me? I had already accepted a million-word self-reflection—even though it cost me some money to avert disaster—you didn't have to play with me like this!

This old geezer held grudges way too deeply! I would definitely have to guard against him carefully in the future!

A dull thud of landing echoed beside me, followed immediately by Old Man Ma's disgusted voice: "What are you playing dead for? Get up quickly! At my advanced age I'm fine, yet you're a young man and you can't even handle this height?"

You weren't the one shoved down here, you old bastard!

Groaning in pain, I climbed to my feet. The surroundings remained pitch-black, as if dense clusters of glowing, star-like red eyes might emerge at any moment.

Shivering, I quickly clicked on the rear flashlight of my mobile phone. Old Man Ma also turned on the light of his phone. The flashlights on these two phones weren't very powerful and cast a dim glow, barely illuminating a very limited radius around us.

The ground was littered with shriveled, desiccated corpses of two-headed snakes, packed so tightly together that it chilled the heart, making one worry that a stray fish or two might suddenly lunge out.

Aside from the snake corpses on the ground, nothing else could be found. A sense of foreboding suddenly gripped my heart.

Holding his phone, Old Man Ma paced rapidly back and forth in the surroundings with hurried steps. My heart leaped into my throat; disregarding whether there were any surviving snakes, I also grabbed my phone and began pacing around.

Nothing, absolutely nothing! Aside from the dense piles of dead snakes, there was nothing else!

Where were those human corpses? Where had they all gone? When the formation eye was broken, clearly only the two-headed snakes had crawled down; logically speaking, those corpses should still be on this level! Could it be that Old Man Ma and Old Man San Guo, who had stayed behind, did something? Or were they moved away later when people entered the forest to clear out the remaining two-headed snakes?

Old Man Ma's expression was grave to the extreme, and it was obviously not the case!

Those dense masses of corpses had completely vanished!

Old Man Ma's face turned as dark as ink. He walked to the edge and commanded without turning his head, "Down!"

With that, without bothering to push me this time, he leaped down first. I quickly followed, bending my knees as I jumped.

Unlike the previous time when I was kicked down, having mental preparation made jumping down much more manageable. Landing in the pool of water, the icy liquid soaked through my trouser cuffs and seeped into my shoes. I had no time to care and followed Old Man Ma toward the habitat of the three-headed giant snake.

The ground was densely covered with dead snakes, but not a single human corpse remained! Several underlings and A-Hao had died here last time, yet all of their corpses were gone!

The further we walked, the heavier my heart became. The earthenware jars marked with the character "Gen" still stood in their original places, and everything else remained completely unchanged—only the human corpses were gone! One or two bodies would have been one thing, but that had been a dense, massive patch of them! Even if they had crawled out by themselves in the middle of the night, they certainly wouldn't have left without a single trace! Moreover, without the two-headed snakes possessing them, they were mere ordinary corpses incapable of even the slightest movement!

When we reached the lair of the three-headed giant snake, its shriveled and withered gigantic serpent body still lay in its original spot, but the corpse of the long-haired woman was also gone.

It was as if human corpses had never existed down here at all; they had vanished cleanly without leaving a trace.

How on earth had those corpses managed to leave? Could it be that they had actually walked away under their own power?