My 1995 Small Farm.

"Also, Fenglei Town is so far away, how did you manage to get here!"

"The snow has been so heavy these past few days, and the mountain roads are so difficult to travel..."

"Have you been traveling for days and nights?"

Chen Ling was also quite puzzled; these foreigners didn't seem very bright.

For them, to find the right path in this remote mountain valley after a snowfall, they should be grateful.

Not to mention the long journey from Fenglei Town to Chenwangzhuang and Lingyun County.

Chen Ling really didn't believe that they could achieve their goals so easily and smoothly on their own.

"No no!"

The elderly overseas Chinese inside hurriedly explained, "We paid for a guide to take us to the village. As for our mode of transport, Eva found some villagers in Mr. Chen's village to piece together a sled, and we were pulled here by pack horses and donkeys..."

"Once we get to the village, we'll figure out the rest of the way ourselves."

"Oh."

Chen Ling nodded and said nothing more.

It wasn't that he was being nosy; he was worried that these foreigners would cause trouble in the countryside. After all, they had guns and came in under the guise of an expedition, which would be a real destabilizing factor.

This era was already somewhat chaotic, and there wasn't even any surveillance.

In the countryside, when the corn stalks grow tall and the green stalks block the view, there are plenty of people who rob people on the road, let alone these foreigners who are completely untrustworthy.

"Daddy, it smells bad."

At this moment, Rui Rui cried out, tugging at Chen Ling's sleeve, her little brows and nose furrowed, looking as if she had been choked by the smell.

"Ah Ling, let's go. These foreigners smell really bad. Since you don't want to help them, let's not talk to them anymore."

Wang Susu also whispered, "They're all from abroad, who knows if they're good people or bad people?"

"Then let's go."

Chen Ling also couldn't stand the smell of the foreigners. It was actually not so bad in winter, but this group of people hadn't bathed for a long time since they entered the mountains, and now they were in a panic and sweated a lot, so the pungent smell on their bodies came out immediately.

That stuff, the first whiff of it can really knock you over, it's no exaggeration.

"Mr. Chen, wait, wait!"

"We'll pay for it, we'll pay for the consultation, please help us again, please, for Eva's sake, give us some more assistance!"

The elderly Chinese man hurriedly stepped forward and pleaded with the man.

“Our group encountered something very bad in the mountains. It was very frightening and did not conform to any scientific common sense. We would like to ask Mr. Chen to answer our questions.”

"Oh?"

Upon hearing this, Chen Ling, who originally didn't want to get involved in their affairs, immediately stopped.

Having experienced the wolf and the mountain yellow, he is now highly sensitive to these kinds of things.

At the same time, I am also highly interested.

"Then please tell me in detail."

Seeing that Chen Ling was interested, they were all excited and quickly stepped forward to tell him about their experiences.

However, due to the language barrier, Chen Ling could only understand English.

He knew absolutely no other languages; they were less comprehensible to him than bird or animal language.

"Let him speak, let him speak. I can only understand English, I don't understand anything else, and your translation isn't accurate either..."

Chen Ling pointed to another old man who spoke English.

"Okay, okay, okay, let him tell you about what happened to us. It was truly terrifying."

The elderly Chinese man wiped his sweat and stepped aside, letting the tall, white elderly man next to him come forward.

“Mr. Chen! My name is Jackson! We…we’re camping on the mountainside, thinking…thinking about hunting some game!”

The old white man's face was scrunched up, and his cloudy blue eyes were filled with lingering fear.

"We were very lucky that day; we shot several squirrels, a deer, and many rabbits."

"I never knew rabbits could be so terrifying in my country."

"It was clearly noon that day, but it was very dark in the mountains. We were basking in the joy of our bountiful hunt as we headed back to camp..."

"On the way back, we would hunt any prey we saw."

"Actually, whether we follow the advice of the hunters in the mountains or our own experience,..."

"Three days after it snows, the animals in the mountains will come out to forage for food on their own because of hunger. At this time, you can just follow the tracks in the snow."

"That's how the bumper harvest on this day came about."

"But when we got back to camp, we found that there were more animal tracks in the snow, which excited us greatly because it meant there was plenty of prey in the mountains that we could enjoy for a long time."

"Moreover, there's nothing else to do on snowy days, so some of the younger team members can't resist following the tracks of wild animals to find prey."

"At first, nothing happened; everyone was very excited."

"However, the more we followed, the more something seemed amiss. The tracks of wild animals were too chaotic, containing tracks of all sorts of animals."

"But despite having so many clues, we ended up finding nothing."

"We were very confused at the time..."

"We kept chasing them, but we didn't catch any prey except for some rabbits. We ended up with more and more rabbits in our hands."

"I really don't know why there are so many rabbits in the snow." "When we returned to the camp in the afternoon, we encountered another grayish-yellow rabbit. We all agreed that our misfortune was brought by this rabbit. It was simply a devil among rabbits, a vicious monster from the Middle Ages."

As he spoke, the fear in his eyes was almost overflowing, and he couldn't help but tense up and start breathing heavily.

The elderly Chinese man quickly stepped forward, patted his back, and added:

"Mr. Chen, this is very strange, extremely strange. We were fine at first... then... we were haunted!"

He gestured, as if racking his brains for a way to describe it:

"That rabbit is... right at the edge of the woods, lying in the snow, not moving much! It's big and fat!"

"It's grayish-yellow, running right in front of us... not very fast, about two or three meters away! Yes, just two or three meters away!"

"Thinking back on it, it was like they were waiting for us on purpose, or leading us there..."

At this moment, the elderly white man interrupted again, holding up three fingers and waving them excitedly:

"William is our team leader."

"He...he's a sharpshooter, young enough, but very experienced and highly skilled..."

He raised his gun, so close, bang! He missed! The rabbit was still slowly scurrying forward!

"He fired another shot! Bang! Missed again! It was like...like the bullet went right through and didn't hit anything! It just kicked up snowflakes, and the rabbit was still there!"

"William panicked and fired a third shot... but still missed!"

"Bang! Bang! Bang!"

He mimicked firing a gun, his voice trembling.

"It's all William's fault. He missed all three shots, then went up and used his clothes to catch the rabbit and brought it back to camp..."

"Later, the mountain people said that no matter what it is, whether it is a rabbit or something else, if you get close, you can't shoot it with three shots, especially when many people are shooting at the same time. If you can't hit it, then you can't shoot anymore."

“William has broken a taboo.”

“We didn’t know about this; we had no idea before.”

The elderly white man's face turned deathly pale, as if he were recalling something extremely terrifying.

A middle-aged Chinese man in the crowd, who spoke with difficulty, couldn't help but speak up at this moment, his lips trembling:

"This is a terrible thing. Ever since we shot that rabbit, we've been having a run of bad luck!"

"The wind and snow suddenly intensified at dusk, sounding like ghostly wails... and the compass started spinning wildly!"

“There were always strange noises outside the camp at night, like claws scratching at the tents… The next day at dawn, William and Hans… they went to check the area, and… they never came back!”

After hearing this, Chen Ling's heart skipped a beat.

Good heavens, isn't this exactly the same principle as what those anglers in later generations kept saying, "When a fish is dead and in the mouth, reel it in and leave"?

"If you catch a dead fish with the hook in its mouth, pack up and leave." This means that if you catch a dead fish while fishing and the hook is caught in its mouth, you should quickly pack up and leave, because something might be about to happen.

This is something that's truly terrifying to think about.

Dead fish won't bite, but if you do encounter a dead fish biting the hook, it will bite right in the mouth.

It's like something deliberately hooking a fish onto a fishing hook in the water—it's terrifying.

Similarly, there are just as many strange things happening in the mountains as in the water.

If a certain sign appears and you stubbornly refuse to move on, or insist on going against it, you're sure to be in trouble!

The rabbit was so close yet we couldn't hit it. According to the old folks, it must be the mountain spirits playing tricks on us, or maybe they were just in disguise!
This is a warning!

These foreigners, of course, were unaware of the rules and taboos of the mountains, and strange things happened to them. Coincidentally, something really did go wrong.

"Fugui, Susu, is something the matter...?"

"Mr. Chen, what's wrong?"

What happened to you?

At this moment, because the foreigners were all crying out in alarm and gesturing wildly around Chen Ling, the people around them thought that something had happened to Chen Ling's family.

Some were familiar with them, and some were not, and they all swarmed around them in a great roar.

It was very dark at night, even though it was the Lantern Festival today and there was a lantern festival.

But these days, the absence of streetlights makes a big difference.

Upon closer inspection, the group discovered that those surrounding Chen Ling were a group of foreign devils.

Everyone was surprised and hurriedly asked what was going on. They said that if the foreign devils dared to cause trouble, they would definitely tie them up here and not let them leave, and teach them a good lesson.

Chen Ling quickly said no.

They then recounted what they had encountered in the mountains near Fenglei Town.

"What's the matter?"

The villagers who were watching the commotion couldn't help but gasp in surprise.

"Can't hit the rabbit right under your nose with three shots? How inept can your hands be?"

"What a load of bull! Three meters? You could hit that with a pee, how could you miss?"

"This is weird! Doesn't this sound like the 'ghost wall' that people talk about?"

"What nonsense about walls? You don't know anything. It's something in the mountains giving a warning, or rather, trying to 'keep people here'."

"Those foreign devils are so stupid! They stumbled upon something so eerie in the mountains, why don't they run away? They're just asking for trouble!" (End of Chapter)