Searching for someone in northern Myanmar, and you call that earning tuition fees?

The mud was cold and had a pungent, fishy stench.

This is a mud pit left by wild boars rolling around, mixed with rotting leaves and animal droppings.

Jerry felt like a turkey pickled in a sewer. He wanted to vomit, but dared not open his mouth for fear of swallowing a mouthful of stale mud. To make matters worse, a small insect was crawling into his nostril, making him so itchy he wanted to jump up on the spot.

"Achoo!"

Jerry couldn't hold it in any longer and let out a sneeze that sounded muffled by the mud. It wasn't loud, more like a muffled fart.

Su Ming suddenly grabbed Jerry's head and shoved his face into the mud.

Two seconds later.

A beam of red laser light swept across the back of Jerry's head, which had just been exposed.

"Over there!"

The fang's voice pierced the rain, filled with hysterical killing intent: "Mud pit! Spray!"

"Da da da da—"

Bullets swept in densely, scattering mud everywhere with a splattering sound.

"run!"

Su Ming let out a low growl, grabbed Jerry by the collar, and pulled him out of the mud like he was pulling out a giant radish.

Ling Qiao followed closely behind, carrying the medicine girl on her back. The four of them tumbled awkwardly from the other side of the mud pit into the dense bushes.

"My ass! I've been shot in the ass!" Jerry yelled as he ran. "I'm going to die! I'm going to bleed to death! Brother Su, I have money, I have Swiss bank drafts, you have to get my body back..."

"Shut up." Su Ming didn't even turn his head, using his folding knife to cut through the thorns blocking his path, and said coldly, "That was from a leech bite."

"Leech? Those things suck blood!" Jerry cried even louder. "This is worse than being shot! What if they crawl into that...that place?"

Ling Qiao's head was throbbing. Was this guy's mouth rented? He could talk so much.

She couldn't take it anymore and kicked Jerry in the fat butt: "Run! Fang is only fifty meters behind us!"

The gunshots behind us grew closer.

Venomous Fang clearly didn't want to play the cat-and-mouse game anymore, and he even ordered the use of grenade launchers.

"boom!"

A grenade exploded on the left, and the blast wave overturned a tree as thick as a bowl.

The woman who was carrying the medicine was jolted awake on Ling Qiao's back.

She struggled to open her eyelids, her eyes glazed over. Rain pelted her face, streaming down her sunken eye sockets, indistinguishable between tears and rain.

"Sister..." Her voice was faint and weak, her chapped lips barely moving, "Put me... down..."

Ling Qiao slipped and almost fell, but she held on tightly to the girl's thigh and gritted her teeth, saying, "Don't talk nonsense."

"I'm so heavy..." The medicine woman looked at Ling Qiao's bleeding shoulder. "With me, you can't escape... I'm useless... I'm a broken battery..."

A faulty battery.

This is how these beasts brainwash these children.

Su Ming's hand, which was clearing the way ahead, suddenly stopped.

He turned around and glanced at the woman who worked with medicine.

"You're not a battery," Su Ming said, enunciating each word clearly. "You're proof of being alive, worth more than a truckload of gold. I want to do this deal, so you can't die halfway through and leave me with a loss, understand?"

The woman was stunned; for the first time, a look of bewilderment appeared in her previously empty eyes.

Jerry, panting, chimed in, "Bro! Let's not talk about money now! How much does this girl weigh? I'll carry her! I'll carry her, okay? Even though I have a herniated disc..."

"No need," Su Ming interrupted him. "The valley is just ahead. Judging from the sound, the water is rising."

The rain poured down, the sky seemed to have a gaping hole, and the downpour intensified suddenly, as if water was being poured down.

At this moment, Venomous Fang also caught up to the edge of the mud pit, his face grim as he looked at the trampled bushes ahead.

"Boss, there's a dead end ahead," the subordinate reported. "That's the river channel of Wild Elephant Valley. With this heavy rain, the river must be swollen. They won't be able to cross."

"Give me the RPG." Venomous Fang stretched out his hand.

His subordinate handed him a rocket launcher.

Venom slung his RPG over his shoulder, aimed at the swaying shadows in the woods ahead, a cruel smile playing on his lips: "Can't get through? Then send them to hell."

"call out--"

The rocket, trailing a long plume of flame, roared out.

"Lie down!"

Almost instinctively, Su Ming kicked Jerry away and grabbed Ling Qiao at the same time, and the two of them rushed behind a boulder.

"BOOM—!!!"

Flames shot into the sky.

The massive shockwave snapped the surrounding trees in half. Jerry rolled on the ground like a ball seven or eight times before crashing headfirst into a banana tree, his face covered in mud and his eyes glazed over.

"Not dead?" Su Ming patted the dirt off his head and asked.

"It seems...it seems I'm still alive..." Jerry touched his face, then suddenly screamed, "My nose! This was a nose that a fortune teller paid a fortune for, and now it's crooked! I'm going to lose money!"

"It's better off tilted, it's more breathable." Su Ming stopped talking nonsense, picked up Jerry, and said, "Let's go! Down to the river!"

They rushed out of the dense forest.

Before me lay a rushing, roaring river. The once-dry riverbed had now turned into a murky yellow dragon, and the water level was rising at a visible rate.

"How are we supposed to cross this?" Ling Qiao looked at the rushing river, her face pale. "With this current, we'll die if we go in."

Behind them, the figure of the fanged man had already appeared at the edge of the treeline.

Su Ming pressed Ling Qiao and the medicine girl behind a huge rock, turned around and looked at the bamboo forest, a crazy glint in his eyes.

"Fatty, do you want to live?"

"I want to die... Ugh, I want to live!" Jerry clutched his head and huddled in a crevice between the rocks.

"Then get to work." Su Ming pulled out a folding woodworking knife from his waist. "Help me carry those bamboo poles over, quick!"

"Are you crazy?" Ling Qiao looked at him in disbelief. "You still want to do crafts at a time like this?"

"If you don't do handicrafts, you'll have to become a ghost." Su Ming suddenly rushed out, like a nimble monkey amidst the hail of bullets, heading straight for the bamboo forest.

"I have a plan!" Su Ming roared, "but whether it will succeed depends on whether God will give us time!"