Only after I woke up did I learn that Zhang Rong and the others had been calling me for ages without managing to wake me, and had thought something was wrong with me.
For a moment, I could not quite tell whether it had been Zhang Rong and the others calling me in the dream, or something inside that cave.
Fortunately, they had woken me up. Otherwise, if I had stayed in the dream, I might really have ended up being lured inside.
I did not think much of the dream. People said that what you thought about during the day was what you dreamed about at night. After experiencing strange things, it was inevitable that your dreams would sometimes be strange too.
It was already dark when I woke up. It was now nine at night.
It was bitterly cold outside, and with darkness having fallen, we did not go out to look for food. Instead, we took out the fish we had salted earlier, put the wild greens left over from the previous two days into the pot, and cooked a pot of fish soup.
Compared with those dry rations, the fish soup was not only delicious but also drove away the cold.
After dinner, we sat in a circle with a candle lit in the middle and chatted idly, feeling rather bored.
It had been more than a week since we fled into these mountains.
At first, it had felt like a novelty, but the longer we stayed, the duller it became. Everyday living in conditions like these, especially, was nothing like as comfortable as it was down the mountain.
More importantly, we did not know how much longer we would have to stay here. It felt as though there was no end in sight.
"When exactly