Qin Luming had seen plenty of bizarre phenomena involving wild animals, but this was the first time one had actively attacked him.
A snake whose head had been chopped off yet could still flee with its bloody stump, the skin and flesh of its neck dragging its huge head along—that was bizarre enough, right?
But Qin Luming had seen things even stranger.
Many years ago, when Qin Luming was fourteen or fifteen, he saw a palm-sized crab clamped tightly onto a black dog's leash with its large claw. The black dog ran and leaped wildly, dragging the crab along as it bumped into everything, getting snagged on branches one moment and smashed against rocks the next. Yet the crab held on to the leash as though it had given up on living, never letting go.
The bizarre part was that the crab actually did not die. It finally released the dog, extended its two tiny eyes, gave itself an energetic shake, then spat bubbles all over the ground... It was probably a little dizzy.
Even stranger, after Qin Luming watched the crab wander around in circles for a while, it spiraled up into the air like a helicopter and flew away!
Qin Luming stood there in a daze for ten minutes without moving. A flying crab?
And that was not all... A while later, Qin Luming saw a faint silhouette in the sky. It was also a crab, except this one was unimaginably huge. A little girl holding a plush toy stood majestically on its back!
Qin Luming had been wearing binoculars around his neck at the time. Otherwise, no matter how good an ordinary person's eyesight was, they would have assumed it was merely a kite with a broken string flying wildly through the sky.
Having seen strange things like that since childhood, Qin Luming had developed some resistance to them. His worldview would not collapse at the slightest provocation, but neither would he be like ordinary people, filtering out things they could not understand or readily believing the supposedly authoritative explanations of experts.
Qin Luming thought that if he encountered more mutated creatures like this later, he could visit this place often and investigate its unusual phenomena, treating the area around the dam as an alternate world to explore.
The snake from earlier had escaped without being killed, which left Qin Luming slightly regretful. If its enormous body had been left here, he could have cracked open its head to see whether it had something like a "spirit core," then cut off some snake meat to bring home in a cooler and taste... As for the gallbladder, the gallbladder of such a mutated giant snake might be good stuff. He could have taken it to Uncle Tian, who loved eating the things said to be "nourishing" in traditional health circles.
Snake gallbladders contained plenty of parasites, but they would be fine after proper treatment. Qin Luming regretted that he could not bring one back for Uncle Tian.
Qin Luming slowed down and continued forward, cautiously using his entrenching shovel to push aside grass and brush. Whenever he came across slightly more complicated terrain or an unusually dense patch of woods, he would carefully observe it before deciding whether to pass through or go around.
After another half hour of walking, he could no longer see the mountaintop where he had set up camp behind him. The terrain became somewhat more open. Qin Luming took out his phone and checked it, but there was still no signal.
Qin Luming glanced at the sun overhead, then opened the compass on his phone and checked it. He was immediately startled to discover that the compass was completely wrong. He quickly adjusted his position and tested it with the phone, only to find the needle shaking violently before pointing toward his front right, rather than the correct direction he had deduced from the location of his campsite on the mountaintop and the sun.
The phone's built-in compass used a Hall-effect magnetic sensor and was easily affected by the surrounding magnetic field. This was the only electronic device Qin Luming had on him, so such an abnormality in the compass meant there was a strong magnetic field nearby.
Qin Luming put away his phone, bent down, and used his entrenching shovel to slowly clear a path, inching toward the front right.
He maintained his guarded posture as he advanced. Twenty minutes later, Qin Luming had finally gone completely around the dam and reached the blocked river channel and the heart of the valley.
His view suddenly opened up. The mountains on either side still bore the marks of excavation and chiseling. This place had originally been intended to store water as a reservoir. Standing beside the riverbed and looking around, he saw mountain walls everywhere. Lush aquatic plants grew thickly, and he could even see enormous fish drifting through the clear river water. Qin Luming could not help recalling the saying: "Knock down a deer with a stick, scoop up fish with a ladle, and pheasants fly straight into the cooking pot."
On one side were the remnants of human civilization; on the other, nature's recovery. Qin Luming felt somewhat moved. He remembered a documentary depicting Earth after humanity had vanished. What lay before him probably felt much like one of the scenes it described.
The shallow river channel no longer had anything close to the flow needed to build a dam. Qin Luming took two steps along it when he heard a series of pig squeals.
Qin Luming immediately lowered himself, used his entrenching shovel to part the waist-high grass, and stealthily moved toward the sound.
The Big Black Pig he had seen last night had not made any noise, but pigs had a distinctive call, always seeming to come with a snorting sound and the sensation of fat jiggling all over their bodies. Qin Luming wondered whether it was the same Big Black Pig from last night. Was it with companions? Fighting with another animal? Or just squealing for fun?
After rounding a bend in the river, the weeds ahead gradually grew shorter. On a concrete patch whose original purpose was unknown, a group of pigs had gathered!
Qin Luming was startled. There really was more than one Big Black Pig here. Counting them, there were four Big Black Pigs and three Big White Pigs!
These pigs were not all the same size. The Big Black Pig Qin Luming had seen last night was the largest; all the others were much smaller, though they still looked to weigh around a thousand pounds each.
So this fellow was a pig king.
Pigs weighing around a thousand pounds were already huge. Carrying an adult on their backs while walking freely would not be difficult at all.
What surprised Qin Luming most was that the Big Black Pig looked somewhat different from the one he had seen last night... It had an exquisite, luxurious saddle on its back and was clad in armor.
This was a mount!
Who had raised such a Big Black Pig as a mount?
The sight before him clearly proved that people lived near the dam. A pig that had grown up in the wild would never put a saddle on its own back.
What was more, the pig saddle was inlaid with countless gemstones, decorated with gorgeous tassels, and had an embroidered belly wrap encircling the Big Black Pig's abdomen.
Although the saddle on the Big Black Pig's back showed that it was merely a mount, it looked immensely imposing right now. The other three thousand-pound black pigs lay trembling nearby. One Big White Pig was mating with it, while the other two Big White Pigs seemed to be waiting for their turn, letting out soft, breathy snorts from time to time.
Seeing this scene of a winner in pig life, Qin Luming instinctively took out his phone and recorded it. There was no signal, the compass was inaccurate, but the camera still worked.
Hm? Qin Luming was about to look for a better angle when he suddenly noticed a pile of clothes and backpacks behind the pigs. Phones, trekking poles, water bottles, Swiss Army knives, cameras, and other items were scattered around them.
Qin Luming looked at the belongings that seemed to belong to Yang Xiaoyan's group and remembered that there had apparently been six of them when they came here: three men and three women.
Besides the Big Black Pig he had seen last night, there were six other pigs here, three black and three white, three males and three females.
My God!
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