1668 Chapter 57

6. Even if it kills me, I have to go

The胖子 (Fatty) exchanged a glance with me, and I said to him, “I don’t know anything, and I don’t know why this blood is useful. Just follow me and rush out to the courtyard.”

I kept my bloodied hand low to the ground, and we moved forward. All the bugs avoided us and didn’t swarm onto us. We smoothly made it to the entrance of the courtyard, only to find that there wasn’t a single bug outside.

Fatty turned around to close the courtyard door and said, “Damn, I need to put up a sign on the door to warn others that there are evil bugs inside. These bugs are really disciplined; they just like to stay in the courtyard.”

I replied, “Stop being annoying; we need to find a place to rest. Otherwise, I’ll bleed out,” I said. The cut I made earlier was too deep, and we had a long way to go down the mountain. If the bleeding didn’t stop, I would definitely die halfway down.

Cutting oneself is an art; someone like Xiao Ge (Little Brother) could do it so stylishly, he must have suffered quite a bit in the past.

Fatty looked at my hand, which was dripping with blood, and exclaimed, “What a waste! You really don’t know how precious resources are until you’re in charge! Where to now?”

I said we still needed to go to Xiao Ge’s courtyard. Fatty asked why, and I said, “I don’t know. I just feel that wherever Xiao Ge is should be safer. If he’s not here, at least having his statue is better than having no statue at all.”

Fatty said, “You’re so superstitious!” Saying that, he moved ahead of me. Suddenly, I had a thought: why should we erect a statue of Xiao Ge? Was it because he had once driven back the bug soldiers here?

In my heart, I believed that the place where Xiao Ge’s statue stood should be somewhat different.

We continued forward, and there were no bugs anywhere else in the entire lama temple. We ran all the way to Xiao Ge’s statue. Because it was dawn, Fatty saw the true form of the statue for the first time and curiously remarked, “Damn, why does this Xiao Ge look so tragic?”

I said, “Don’t worry about that; first, check how badly I’m hurt.”

We entered a room that was completely abandoned. There was no charcoal stove, and we were freezing, our faces turning pale. I quickly checked both my and Fatty’s bodies and found that the bugs hadn’t done much damage to us. Their heads, though sharp, could penetrate our skin, but they didn’t seem to want to drill in completely; they just wanted to suck a bit of blood. Fatty had a few bugs that had already gorged themselves on blood, which I swatted off, leaving my hands covered in blood.

All the bugs on me were already dead. I didn’t have time to clean them off one by one, so I just pulled off the most bothersome ones directly. I was sure there were many more on my back, but there was nothing I could do. As I dealt with it, I thought, “Damn it, that lama is really malicious, making us take off our clothes so the bugs can suck our blood more easily.”

Fatty helped me tend to the wounds on my hands. My hands were almost unrecognizable, blood plasma stuck to my palms, and blood kept flowing out. Fatty tightly bound my wrist with his belt and then pried open my wound, saying, “Why don’t you just chop off your hand? Look, you almost cut to the back of your hand. This needs stitches. Although I’m good with needlework, there’s no equipment here, so we’ll have to use a rough method.”

“What’s your plan?” I watched as the fat guy took out a handgun, opened the magazine, and began to bite it with his teeth. “Are you going to try that fire method again?”

“Trust me, it works,” he said, unscrewing the bullet and setting the gunpowder aside. First, he used his pants to wipe away all my blood and pressed down on the wound, then poured all the gunpowder on top.

I still remember that pain; it was definitely beyond just salt on a wound. It was worse than salt—pouring gunpowder on the wound felt like fire.

After he finished, I was almost about to faint. The fat guy asked, “Got a lighter?” I pulled out my lighter and handed it to him. He tried to ignite the gunpowder but found that it wouldn’t catch fire. “Hmm, this gunpowder is of poor quality.”

I was sweating cold from the pain and looked at my palm, realizing that the gunpowder was completely soaked with blood. At least the bleeding had stopped, I thought. It really was hard to rely on the fat guy for anything.

At that moment, the fat guy said, “We’re safe for now. Are you okay? Do you want to take a break and see if we can get out?”

I replied, “In this situation, there’s no time to be okay. Even if it kills me, we have to leave immediately.”

The fat guy gave me a thumbs up and helped me walk out. We didn’t encounter any other bugs along the way. The journey became incredibly monotonous, and I had no idea how long we walked—stop—walk—stop. All I felt was excruciating pain in my knees, my muscles were strained, and we didn’t cross the temple gate until dusk.

There was still a long stretch of mountain path ahead. I was completely exhausted, and all the skin on my body was turning purple from the cold. I knew that if we continued like this without food, even without bugs, we would freeze or starve to death.

We huddled together, gritting our teeth and rubbing our hands together as we slowly made our way down the mountain in the near-freezing wind. If it weren’t for the training I had undergone in the past few years, which had greatly strengthened my body and solidified my will, we would never have been able to finish this journey.