Free Web NovelChapter 346: Chapter 279: Losing Members Along the Way
The old man quickly chose to accompany them.
He said he had dodged falling rocks along the road and even encountered a severe aftershock midway, finding a relatively stable crevice to hide in for a while, which was no small feat to survive.
Inside Beichuan City, it was a disaster.
These past two days, the temperature rose again, and the relief centers on the streets were filled with the stench of decay and the smell of disinfectants being sprayed everywhere. He couldn’t sleep at all; aftershocks occurred from time to time, and he was too scared and restless to stay, so he thought of leaving.
A passing remark from the old man sent chills down their spines.
"You all smell too good; the people inside all stink."
The critical thing was, Fang Huai really did smell the stench on the old man, and up close, it was indescribable.
It was nauseating and dizzying.
This wasn’t a horror movie; it was the scent of naturally decaying bodies, viscous, and with a strong adhesive quality. If someone stayed in that environment for too long, even their clothes would become steeped in that odor.
Someone who had left that place a day ago still carried the scent of decaying bodies on them.
It was hard to imagine what kind of living hell that was.
The air was still muggy, but after chatting with the old man for a while, Fang Huai actually saw a young soldier beside them shivering.
This caused him some worry.
In Beichuan City, the People’s Liberation Army was chiefly present, and objectively speaking, when it came to being accustomed to death and conducting composed rescue operations, the firefighters were somewhat stronger. These young soldiers hadn’t been in battle and had not been exposed to many bloody scenes.
During the rescue at the school, the psychological issues among the soldiers were not great, after all, they were only children. The compassion in their hearts completely counteracted the fear, and because Hanwang had good transport links, there were people everywhere. Ultimately, there were significantly more living people than dead.
However, disaster victims do not die normal deaths. The death scenes of adults are mostly terrifying—those who suffocated, died of thirst, or were crushed, most of them with teeth bared in agony, scratches from their own hands on their bodies, and hardly a straight pose to be found, most bodies being twisted.
By today, the bodies might also be falling apart during extraction due to decay, dropping flesh and internal organs.
During the burial of corpses, they had to tidy up the appearances as well.
Conscripts were only eighteen or nineteen years old, and non-commissioned officers were just in their early twenties. They were the bodies of civilians, and terror was mixed with sadness. Furthermore, the troops that entered were not as numerous as the victims.
The psychological pressure that had to be borne under such rescue conditions was immense.
They speak of over a thousand people, but their combat strength was probably greatly reduced.
They really needed to go to support them as soon as possible.
...
Two hours into the mountains.
Night had fallen deeply.
There were no guard rails on the side of the road, which was so narrow that even motorcycles dared not drive on it. A small curve could send someone flying off.
But it was much better than the wild path they had just struggled through.
Everyone’s luck was not great—they experienced two aftershocks.
To dodge a large boulder, two soldiers had to jump down the slope beside them. Fortunately, there was a thicket of wild grass and bamboo below. They slid for more than ten meters before stopping; one of them had a leg lacerated to a bloody mess. After dressing and disinfecting the wound, he could no longer continue with the squad. They had to contact the Command to send someone for rescue, letting one person drag the two injured soldiers slowly back.
This time, two were injured, and three were reduced in number.
Luckily, there were no fatalities.
An hour earlier, they had encountered a group coming out with a cage on wheels, and inside the cage was a giant panda!
People along the way watched with amazement.
The fuzzy giant panda, covered in dust, had an obvious wound on its round, stubby leg, clearly also a victim of the disaster. They found out after asking that this was a giant panda that was being observed living in the wild and had been rescued by the Forest Protection Team. A local staff member and a zoo worker were escorting it to An County.
At this, the soldiers, who had wanted to reach into the cage to touch the national treasure, were promptly scolded by Fang Huai.
"This goods is an omnivorous animal. Although it doesn’t hold the status of a fierce beast as wildly claimed, it does have a few million years of history and only started eating bamboo a few thousand years ago—it used to be a carnivore." freewebnσvel.cѳm
Ancient records mentioning the ’metal-eating beast’ might not refer to the giant panda, but the giant panda truly can gnaw on metal. In ’79, a wild panda entered a farmer’s house looking for food, finding nothing, it gnawed on the farmer’s kitchen knife and a thermo pot; in ’83, at the Wolong Conservation Area feeding station, a panda shattered a tin feed dish into pieces with its teeth and ingested it, pooing out the fragments the next day, with some parts even digested.
With that kind of stomach, if it got really desperate, digesting two hands would be no problem at all.
Fang Huai took off his backpack and gave them two bottles of water, along with some ham sausages and compressed biscuits.
However, those escorting the panda said they had encountered many aftershocks while coming out and, being deep in the mountains and forests, were quite frightened. They asked if they could have some of their people to escort them.
Fang Huai informed Major General Jin, who eventually made the decision to send two people to escort them back.
This time, no one was injured; two were reduced in number.
Twenty minutes earlier, a soldier was bitten by a snake.
This had everyone a bit worried; even the three military doctors who were with them couldn’t identify the bite.
The soldier described the snake as a soil-colored flower snake with a triangular head but very small, at most thirty to forty centimeters. The bite felt very light. He felt the bite and kicked it reflexively, then the person ahead stepped on the snake, and it ran away.
But nobody dared to take it lightly.
This time, Fang Huai had no choice but to spend two military merit points to exchange for a "Snake Encyclopedia."
After repeated inquiries with the soldier and examining the wound, Fang Huai determined it was likely a species of viper called the short-tailed pit viper.
It was venomous, extremely so, capable of paralyzing respiration, though it took time to take effect.
Fang Huai quickly called over the soldier who had stepped on the snake. After inspection, no bite marks were found.
But to be cautious, they still sent back both men. The injured soldier was carried back in turns by two others.
Following this incident, once more one person was injured, another suspected injury, and four were reduced in number.
Major General Jin marveled how Fang Huai could even identify the type of venomous snake, making the accompanying firefighters invaluable assets in his eyes for the rescue mission, commanding the soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army to protect their firefighter comrades well.
The Special Duty Team, caught between laughter and tears, cursed Fang Huai for being a freak who knew everything.
Fang Huai quietly looked at the system’s remaining 44.8 military merit points, feeling immensely heartbroken.
Spending money is easy; earning it is hard.
Everyone continued their difficult journey, their numbers diminishing. The moonlight was decent, but the deep mountains teemed with various dangers.
But everyone seemed optimistic, enjoying the scenic mountain breeze and the moonlit landscape, chatting away into the night as they walked.
After a while, Fang Huai suddenly spotted a nest of rabbits ahead.
They were white, and with his night vision, stood out starkly against the yellow mud at the side of the road.
Fang Huai went up and grabbed one, and surprisingly, it didn’t even move before it was firmly in his grasp.
It wasn’t until it was actually in Fang Huai’s hand that it started to struggle slightly.
Fang Huai had no intention of eating spicy rabbit head, so after observing it for a moment, he tossed it back to the side of the road.
But once back on the side of the road, the rabbit again became motionless, its head tucked inward.
Fang Huai suddenly felt something was wrong and quickly turned to shout:
"Be careful! There might be aftershocks!!"
No sooner had he yelled this than three seconds passed.
Suddenly, the earth shook and the mountains trembled again.
"Watch out! Rolling stones! Rolling stones!"
The entire team was once more thrown into chaos, and although there weren’t many large rocks this time, there were indeed a lot of small stones.
Fang Huai, pulling the old man leading the way, dodged left and right, narrowly escaping a wave of falling rocks.
The aftershock was terrifying, especially when combined with the mountain road. Had they not been troops, the confusion could have easily led to casualties from being pushed over the edge.
Fortunately, there had been many aftershocks over the past two days, and many unstable rocks had already been shaken loose.
"Are there any casualties! Any casualties!"
Fang Huai shouted as he walked back, calling for help to relieve the injured.
This time, when they counted the casualties again, a dozen people were injured.
There were no extremely severe injuries, with the worst being a leg injury, limping but without any intention of stepping back from the frontline.
Among the injured was Wen Jingsong.
His arm had been hit, causing him so much pain that he grimaced, but he said nothing. At this point, he looked like a real man, and a few people from the First Squadron came to help relieve him of his burden.
Even Major General Jin had been hit in the head by a small stone, squatting on the ground holding his head as a medical staff member bandaged him.
"Hiss... Let’s go, let’s go!"
Major General Jin, not wanting to delay any longer and having reduced the number of men, actually got up and started walking forward, asking the medical staff member to keep bandaging him as he moved.
Everyone didn’t want to be delayed.
Staying in these deep mountains for three days could deplete their detachment substantially.
As a chatty non-commissioned officer joked:
"Damn, this mountain could grant us at least 100 ways to die."
Because of the constant reduction in the team’s numbers, some people were now carrying loads of sixty to seventy pounds.
Moreover, they hadn’t walked much farther when they saw a remarkable sight.
On the edge of a large slope, less than three meters above the ground, a three-meter square boulder was firmly wedged.
Closer in, there was less than one meter and six centimeters of space left on the road, forcing people to stoop down to get through.
The rock looked as if it had been pounded into the side of the mountain; half of it was visible outside, yet it didn’t move an inch, not even when the recent aftershock hit.
"Damn... This rock didn’t come down from the mountain, did it?" one soldier exclaimed in shock.
The old man leading the way looked up and said:
"After we pass here, we’ll be reaching the top of this mountain. Then there’s the downhill path. It’s hard to climb the next mountain! There’s no path there, all ruined. We’re forced to traverse the top, through all the woods!"
Everyone’s heart sank.
Climbing this mountain was already difficult enough with its narrow paths and the danger of rolling stones from aftershocks; how could there be worse ahead?
The soldier who had been surprised earlier was still staring at the boulder and asked, "Locals, was this rock thrown up there?"
"It was!" The old man pointed towards a high mountain at least a kilometer away horizontally and said:
"I heard people saying when I left that during the earthquake, it was ejected from over there! It flew over and hit here with a boom! The entire mountain shook, and that’s how it ended up this way!"
Damn.
Everyone was stunned, almost in disbelief.
But the position was high, and below were fields paved with stones. The only other mountain was directly opposite, making it highly unlikely the boulder came from somewhere else.
However, had the old man not mentioned it, no one would have dared to guess this.
At least a thousand meters!
A three-meter square boulder, howling from the opposite mountain!
How terrifying was the energy?
At the time of the earthquake, was there any safe place here?
They probably were indeed doomed to numerous ways to die.
The story of this rock quickly spread through everyone as the entire team passed by.
"Major General, the local leading the way in front said this rock was ejected from a mountain during the earthquake! At that time, the mountain on the other side cracked open and closed again!"
Major General Jin also stared at the large rock, speechless for a long time.
Mountains crumbled, landscapes changed.
He remembered Fang Huai’s words again.
In nature, there is great terror.
