Testing the Valley Entrance

The ink-like night was even heavier than the previous night, with low-hanging clouds that seemed ready to press down heavily onto the mountain peaks. The wind howled from the direction of the sea of trees, carrying a humid, hot aura and a pungent, foul stench—a smell like someone had mixed fresh blood into water, enough to make one want to vomit.

The fog outside the valley mouth piled up thicker and thicker, completely obscuring the moonlight so that you could not see your hand in front of your face; even at such a close distance, you could barely make out a half-arm's reach. The campfire had been covered and extinguished early on to prevent detection by distant enemies. The grass and dead wood in front of the defense line looked eerie and terrifying in the endless darkness, standing there quietly like a row of silent shadows.

I walked slowly along the defense line, carefully inspecting every corner. Suddenly, I noticed that the tripwire on the right side of the first cordon was somewhat abnormal; what should have presented a natural, curved arc had now become straight, as if something had gently brushed it aside along the ground. I squatted down, observing the muddy ground closely, and sure enough, I found several slender indentations. They extended all the way from the outer circle to the valley mouth, evenly spaced and not shallow in depth, clearly the traces left by some heavy object being dragged.

My heart tightened, and before I had time to examine these traces closely, a very faint frictional sound suddenly came from the left side, as if something was moving quietly through the grass. I abruptly raised my head to look, only to see three dark shadows vaguely emerging at the edge of the fog. Keeping their bodies