Li Long looked in the direction of the footprints and said:
"They most likely came through in the last couple of days, and they were heading toward where those Gugu Chickens stay."
"Are we still going, then?" Tao Daqiang sounded a little disappointed.
"Maybe we should forget it?" Jia Weidong was not in very good health, and walking through such deep snow had already left him a little breathless.
"Of course we're going. Why wouldn't we? We're already here..." Liang Dacheng, who had first spotted the footprints, thought they ought to go and look.
Xie Yundong asked Li Long:
"Xiao Long, how much farther?"
"Three or four hundred meters," Li Long said. "We'll be there in no time."
"What do you think, then?" Rather than giving his own opinion, Xie Yundong put the question back to Li Long.
"Let's go. It's not far now. Since we've come all this way, it won't feel right if we don't take a look." Li Long also thought they needed to check. "Wei Dong, take it slowly and follow behind us. Just don't break trail up front."
"All right." Seeing that everyone else wanted to go, Jia Weidong went along.
The other four walked ahead, breaking a path through the snow and making it easier for him to follow.
The combined snowfall from the three storms had exceeded a meter, but the accumulated snow could not actually remain that deep. Snow was fluffy, and after falling, the flakes gradually turned into grains, decreasing in volume and increasing in weight.
So the snow layer was no more than fifty centimeters deep.
But the surface had melted a little in the daytime sun, then frozen again at night into a hard crust, while the snow beneath had turned into loose grains. That made walking difficult.
As