Chapter 7 - The Mysterious Wooden Bridge
“Our things were all in the bag, so we lost them,” Fang Xue revealed, explaining with a red face that it was her fault that she and Yu Mu were in this predicament.
Di Jiu frowned, but stopped himself before he could ask how Yu Mu and Fang Xue had ended up there.
When she saw Di Jiu frown, Fang Xue quickly explained, “Yu Mu and I, along with two other friends of ours, were heading to the Wang Chuan Temple to play, when I suddenly saw a bridge I had never seen before. I’d come to the Wang Chuan Temple quite a few times in the past, but I had never seen this type of bridge. I thought it was a new attraction, so I stepped on it. Little did I know that the moment I stepped on it, a number of gray wolves would appear, frighten me out of my wits and make me run for my life…”
When Fang Xue was done, Yu Mu broke in and said, “When I saw her run, I ran too. She said that there were some gray wolves, and although I couldn’t see them, I felt that she was telling the truth. On the way, we lost our bag, which contained our cell phones, so we got completely lost. We only survived the past few days by eating wild grass and a few bars of chocolate.”
“Are you sure that the creatures you saw were wolves?” Di Jiu was unconvinced. Technically, the Wang Chuan Temple was an attraction, so wolves could not have showed up there.
Fang Xue seemed hesitant as she replied, “At the time, I was very sure, but later I started to suspect I might have seen something else. The temple is located at the border of the Wang Chuan mountain range, and all the dangerous parts of the border have already been closed off, so how could there have been wolves there?”
“How many days have you two been here?”
“About two or three days. We have been on the run, so we are not sure exactly how many days it’s been…” Fang Xue hesitated before she asked Di Jiu, “Are you lost too, Big Brother?”
Di Jiu nodded his head. “That’s right, I have lost my way too. My name is Di Jiu. You can call me by my name from now on. There is a lake not too far from here. Let’s stay there for a while and make some food. We will find our way tomorrow morning.”
Yu Mu and Fang Xue, who sensed that Di Jiu was not interested in talking, did not say anything else either. As the moonlight seeped into the forest, the whistling sound of the trees moving in the wind was the only sound they could hear.
Even though his stamina was much better than it used to be, Di Jiu was slowly starting to find it difficult to continue.
The three of them walked and stopped repeatedly, but thankfully nothing happened during the night or until the next morning. They basked in the rays of the morning sunshine as they walked out of the forest and found themselves on a mountain peak.
“We still can’t see anything from here,” Fang Xue said worriedly as she peered through the fog in the distance.
Yu Mu could not see anything either, so they waited for Di Jiu to say something. Even though they knew the way to the temple, they had never travelled that route before.
Suddenly, Di Jiu realized in shock that he had the ability to see further than normal people. He could see some buildings faintly in the distance that Yu Mu and Fang Xue could not. He was sure that his eyesight had never been this good. It must have been the lightning strike that was responsible for these changes.
The news Qu Xiaoshu had shared with him had left him in shock and made him run away from the Ji Nation just as he had found out about these changes.
…
Once the three of them left the forest, their feeling of discomfort disappeared without a trace.
“We can rest here for half a day before we continue on our journey.” After a night of continuous trekking, Di Jiu was tired beyond words.
“Thank you, Brother Di Jiu. If it weren’t for you, I would have died at the Wang Chuan mountain range.” Yu Mu had rested on Di Jiu’s back for one night, so she could manage to walk a little now.
Di Jiu smiled. “I just happened to study a little medicine, so I knew how to remove the toxins from your body.”
“Have you graduated from medical school, Brother?” Fang Xue asked him expectantly as she looked at him. Both she and Yu Mu were medical school students, but they had been helpless against this type of snake venom. Still, Di Jiu seemed to have removed it really easily.