My own first rule: When faced with difficulties, seek help from friends immediately. Seeking help is actually the most important skill in the world; those who possess this skill can accomplish almost anything. The prerequisite for activating this skill is to be shameless.
After I yelled, I heard a series of clattering sounds, the signal from Xiaohua. It seemed that Xiaohua was much more cautious than I was; the signal came from the left side of the shaft. I lifted Wang Meng with one hand and started to run like crazy.
All around, there were sounds of claws scratching against the brick surface. After the flashlight emitted a brief electric shock, the light dimmed significantly. I didn’t dare to shine it around the shaft, fearing that the light would attract all the monkeys.
Everyone knew what Xiaohua’s clattering signal meant. The sound grew stronger, and suddenly a figure came rushing out from a corner. It was Kanjian, his face covered in blood, with injuries all over. Seeing Wang Meng beside me, Kanjian directly shoved him aside. “You’re dead!”
Wang Meng stumbled back and tried to charge at him, but I jumped up and slapped him on the back. The three of us fell over, and as I got up, I heard the clattering sound behind me, clearly coming from behind the wall. I turned around but saw nothing.
In the darkness, the sounds of countless monkeys scratching against the wall grew closer. We dared not make any noise and slowly crawled toward the darkness.
I heard breathing. I pressed the flashlight to illuminate briefly and saw Xiaohua and Wang Meng’s subordinates huddled in a corner, using wine jars and broken bricks to create a barrier. This barrier blocked the entire passage, essentially forming a wall, with many gaps resembling shooting holes in a bunker. Wang Meng’s subordinates were armed with homemade guns, standing ready.
I approached, and as one jar was moved, I noticed a small dog hole in the corner. We carefully spread out and crawled into the dog hole, arriving inside the “bunker.” We discovered that their lair was an opening to a well, where someone was taking down wine jars one by one from above and stacking them toward the direction of the monkeys, completely blocking the passage. This way, they could defend themselves while also creating an exit.
“There are birds above,” I mouthed, implying that going out would lead to a quicker death; they had aerial power. Xiaohua replied with a gesture, “Huarong Road.”
I understood immediately; we weren’t trying to escape but rather to get into the vertical shaft and block the well opening below. The monkeys would need time to dig through the wine jars to climb up. Even if they managed to squeeze through, it would be impossible for all the monkeys to swarm up like they could in the shaft; we could take them down one by one.
And the man-faced birds couldn’t climb down from the well opening; their wings wouldn’t spread. If we could hold out until dawn, we would be safe.
Just then, I thought of one of Wang Meng’s guys who had already fired a shot. The gunfire was deafening, and everyone shrank back. I peered through the shooting hole of the bunker and saw countless green lights flickering in the firelight—all the eyes of the monkeys. They must have accidentally fired in panic.
“How many bullets do you have?” I asked urgently.
“Seven shots!”
“Ten shots!”
“Four shots!”
“Nine shots!”
I looked at Wang Meng, “Since you brought guns, couldn’t you prepare more bullets?”
“Originally, we brought a lot, but later when we were hunting wild boars in the forest, we found that they were all fakes and couldn’t be fired at all. The only real ones were the bullets from the first package they let us try,” Wang Meng said, feeling aggrieved. “So we just split that package.”
“Awesome,” I said, both amused and exasperated as I looked at Kanjian. He nodded, then turned around and flipped his vest inside out to wear it. Inside was a specially designed portable compartment filled with all kinds of ammunition. “More than 2,000 rounds, that’s enough. If it’s really not enough, we can use shards of porcelain as well.” As he spoke, he raised the bow of his slingshot, which surprisingly had stainless steel reinforcement. Then he pulled out a red rubber band from his belt, untied the previous yellow rubber band, and wrapped the red one around.
Kanjian came from a family of slingshot experts and had been practicing since childhood, boasting incredible arm strength. Their slingshot rubber bands came in three colors: yellow was for bird shooting, with moderate power; red was so powerful that an average person couldn’t even pull it back, capable of shattering a human skull with a single iron pellet. The black rubber band, to this day, I had never seen him use, indicating it had a special purpose.
With my knife and Little Flower wielding a stick in front, I didn’t know when I had become a meat shield; how the world had changed.
“Boss, help me hold the light,” Kanjian said, occupying a shooting hole.
I moved to a shooting hole, pressing my palm against the flashlight to direct its beam into the hole, then suddenly removed my hand.
Instantly, the well was illuminated, and the first monkey was almost within four meters of our bunker. Everyone behind the shooting holes raised their guns, and halfway up, we heard a “whoosh” like a plane breaking the sound barrier. The monkey’s head exploded in a mist of blood, completely shattered.
Everyone looked at Kanjian, who, in a fluid motion, let go of his hand, and a steel ball slipped into his grip. The rubber band snapped back, and he caught it effortlessly, pulling it back with his chest open, each shot accompanied by a whistle. The bullets zipped through the shooting hole, shaking the nearby cans like a whistle, followed by a distant scream from a monkey.
But that didn’t help much, as we then saw at least hundreds of monkeys charging towards us from the ceiling and walls.
I can’t describe the scene; in an instant, everyone started shooting. The first wave of monkeys was knocked back, rolling into the pile of monkeys, yet it didn’t slow their advance at all. In a flash, dozens of monkeys rushed within four meters of us. The second round of gunfire sent them all flying. Almost simultaneously, we couldn’t even see their bodies hit the ground before more monkeys surged forward.
All the guns began to fire wildly. The monkeys crashed against the bunker walls, and the external cans started to break and fall.
Almost all the bullets were spent within 30 seconds. Blood and flesh flew everywhere; there was no need to aim. Kanjian grabbed three pellets at once and fired them simultaneously, pushing the slingshot’s frequency to its limit. As I watched the barrier sway precariously, I shouted at Little Flower, “We can’t hold them off!”
发表回复