Not a Mockery, But a Reminder!

He sat down beside a rock, emptied the mud from his shoes, and wrung out his soaked socks. The wind in the valley blew in from the north, carrying the scent of wet wood and mushrooms. He sniffed, but couldn't make out anything from it, so he leaned against the rock and waited.

After roughly fifteen minutes, Ning Xiaohe finally emerged from the path on the right.

She walked more slowly than yesterday, and her complexion looked poor, her lips pale. More shredded leaves clung to her hair than yesterday. A large patch of her robe's hem was soaked, and the cuff on her left sleeve had been torn open, though there was no blood.

Lu Chi stood up. "What happened to you?"

Ning Xiaohe reached the rock but did not sit down immediately. She first braced herself against it, bent over, and panted for a few breaths before slowly lowering herself to the ground.

"The path on the right was different today," she said. "That cluster of mushrooms from yesterday is gone."

"Gone?"

"Something disturbed it." Ning Xiaohe rolled up her torn cuff, exposing part of her wrist, where several faint red rashes had appeared. "But it wasn't a person. It was probably something else. Half the mushrooms had been chewed away, and the ground around them had all been turned over, as if something had been rolling around on it."

Lu Chi crouched down to examine the rash on her wrist. "You touched them?"

"No. But when I passed by, the smell from that overturned cluster was at least three times stronger than yesterday. I held my breath, but I still got exposed to it." She pulled her wrist back. "It doesn't hurt. It just itches."

"Did you go around?"

"I couldn't. There's only that one narrow passage