I was momentarily stunned, wondering what was happening—how could my face crack like that? How could my skin be so dry? But before I could examine it closely, the creature gripping my ankle suddenly exerted its strength, pulling me off balance. This thing was incredibly strong; I had no choice but to go along with its force and jump down. I quickly grabbed a nearby bronze branch with one hand and pressed my other hand against the creature’s throat, firing a shot that went “bang” and blew its head off.

The shot was fired with great effort, and the tremendous recoil nearly threw me off the branch. I gritted my teeth to ensure I didn’t lose grip on the gun. The decapitated body was lifted away from the bronze tree by the force of the shot, but its hand still clung tightly to my foot, dragging me down with it.

I couldn’t support the weight of two bodies with one hand, so I gritted my teeth and looked down for a branch to step on to stabilize myself and find a way to shake off the corpse. Just then, the creature that had cracked my face suddenly flipped over and clawed at my neck, lifting me upwards. My neck felt like it was wrapped in a tight band, and I couldn’t breathe at all. My face turned red from the lack of air, and in desperation, I swung my weapon wildly at its head.

I was using all my strength; if those blows had landed on a human face, they would have surely been crushed. The creature was disoriented by my strikes, its head shaking wildly as it tried to evade me. A powerful blow landed right on the crack in its face, and it let out a shriek, suddenly releasing its grip and jumping onto a branch above my head, frantically clawing at its own face.

I lost my support, and all the weight came crashing down on my hands. I couldn’t hold on and fell more than a meter before desperately grabbing a protruding bronze branch to stop my fall. Looking up, I saw that the creature’s face had completely shattered, breaking into small white fragments that began to flake off like curds.

Soon, all the white fragments fell away. I caught one piece, and to my surprise, it was made of stone. Could these beings be statues? Looking up again, I saw that beneath the stone face, there was actually a face covered in yellow fur.

As I examined that face closely, I suddenly realized and shouted down, “Old Yang! I know what these damned things are! They’re a bunch of monkeys, big monkeys!”

Old Yang, unable to see what was happening in the darkness below, shouted back, “What the hell! How can there be monkeys with human faces? That would be a spirit!”

I yelled, “That’s not a human face! It’s a mask! These monkeys are wearing stone human face masks!”

Old Yang had climbed up from the darkness below, his clothes almost torn to shreds, and shouted at me, “Whatever they are! So what if they’re monkeys? Can you fight them?”

Looking down, I saw shadows swirling below; I didn’t know how many of those masked monkeys were chasing after us. I climbed up a few more meters, opened the magazine, and saw that I had run out of red bullets, leaving only a few blue ones. They were likely not iron sand bullets but large steel ball bullets. While they had decent power at long range, they weren’t as effective as iron sand. Seeing the monkeys closing in, I gripped the gun tightly with both hands and fired two shots downward.

The steel ball bullets scattered out, significantly reducing their power, but they still managed to cause widespread destruction. The closest monkeys were left bloodied and bruised, and quite a few others in the distance were also hit. If I could fire five shots in a row, I could probably take them all down.

It seemed the power of the shots had intimidated the monkeys, causing them to slow their approach and turn around to follow the old man Liang in pursuit of the cool master. The monkey that had broken my mask saw us and surprisingly began to show fear, baring its teeth at us before retreating rapidly to the side. Old Yang looked at me in confusion and asked, “Damn, they really are monkeys. What’s going on?”

I also felt very strange. Who had put masks on these monkeys? And why? The masks had no eye holes or mouth holes—how did these monkeys survive day to day?

The cool master had already pulled ahead of us by more than ten meters and was now lying there, panting. We quickly caught up to him and found that he appeared dazed. Fortunately, the area where he was resting had dense branches, so he was propped up and wouldn’t fall. The torch had fallen beneath him, wedged between three branches.

Old Yang went over to pick up the torch with one hand and raised the other to knock down the monkey that was unmasked. The bullets in his handgun had been completely exhausted, and as he casually considered smashing the gun down, he hesitated halfway and instead tucked it back into his belt. He then raised the torch and waved it below, trying to drive the monkeys back with the flames. Some of the monkeys indeed appeared to be fearful; wherever the torch swept, they all shrank back. But as soon as the torch moved away, they quickly pressed forward again, giving us no chance to catch our breath.

Old Yang waved the torch for quite a while, but instead of driving them away, the encirclement grew tighter. I tugged at the cool master, who was as immobile as a lump of mud. Old Yang shouted, “Forget him! We can’t hold on any longer—retreat!”

I was so frustrated that I really wanted to kick the cool master off, but he wasn’t a vicious person, and at that moment, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I lifted him up and pulled hard, but instead, his backside slipped between two branches, making the situation worse.

Old Yang scared off a monkey with the torch and cursed at me, “Damn it! What are you doing? This guy isn’t one of us! If things had gone smoothly, he might have already killed you. Stop treating him like a prisoner of war!”

I loaded bullets into my gun again and fired two shots, the loud bangs knocking five monkeys away and pushing the horde back nearly six meters. I then switched to the last two bullets, just as I was about to finish it off. Suddenly, the cool master grabbed my hand weakly and said, “These things are afraid of fire… signal flares…”

Hearing this, I suddenly realized. Old Yang reacted quickly, pulling out the signal gun and aiming it at me, asking, “How do we shoot it? Just shooting it down won’t work!”

I grabbed the signal flare gun and fired a shot at the rock wall across from me. The flare shot out like lightning, hitting the rocks several dozen meters away and bouncing back to strike the bronze tree. It rebounded like this two or three times before suddenly exploding in the midst of the monkey troop, the intense heat causing the monkeys to scatter in a frenzy. Without waiting for the first flare to extinguish, I fired two more shots, and the entire space was illuminated by blinding white light.

Old Yang was dazzled by the light and nearly fell off. I turned his head to the side and shouted, “Don’t look! It’s too close, a hundred times more intense than welding; it could burn your retina!”

The three of us closed our eyes simultaneously, but we could still feel the light piercing through our eyelids. The monkeys went wild from the bright light, and we heard a commotion below, accompanied by the stench of burnt flesh.

I don’t know how long it took, but the intense light finally dimmed. I squinted and looked down; the monkeys were gone. My eyes felt scorched and painful, and everything was extremely blurry. Old Yang was crying tears nonstop, desperately rubbing his eyes, while Master Liang had completely fainted. If I hadn’t been holding onto his collar, he would have fallen off by now.

Seeing that the monkeys were gone, I sighed in relief. I didn’t know if they were scared of the high temperature or the bright light. If they had stared directly at the flare, they would have likely gone completely blind. It would take them at least ten days to recover. I felt relieved and tried to wake Master Liang, propping his arms up and straightening his body, wanting to drag him up. But he was really too weak, and I could only help him sit upright. I had no way to move him from his original position.

Once he was stable, I moved aside to check on Old Yang. He squinted his eyes, cursing while spitting, but at least he could see now. He asked me, “Why the hell didn’t you give me a heads-up before doing something like that? If you had blinded me, I would have fought you!”

I retorted, “Damn it, you still have the nerve to say that? I saved your life, you know? Besides, you’re not blind, are you?”

Old Yang looked down and said, “I have to admit, that trick really worked. Did the monkeys run away or get burned to death?”

I told him it was unlikely they were burned to death; they probably just retreated for the time being. They might come back, but now that we had found a way to deal with them, we didn’t have to be afraid anymore. We still had a few flares left, enough to handle several encounters.

The masks the monkeys wore were finely crafted, almost lifelike. Could they be related to the realistic statue we saw on the cliff? But why were they attacking us?

I remembered reading a novel where an ancient civilization trained gorillas to guard their mines. After the civilization was destroyed, these gorillas passed down their training to the next generation, and thousands of years later, their descendants still guarded the ruins of the mines, slaughtering any exploration teams that came to investigate.

But these were monkeys, clearly not as intelligent as gorillas, and they shouldn’t be capable of such complex behavior. I wanted to ask Master Liang, but seeing his expression, I knew it would be pointless. He was completely on the verge of collapse, and if he didn’t rest soon, he might not make it.

We stayed in that place for over ten minutes without seeing any monkeys peek out from below, and finally, we let out a sigh of relief. Lao Yang took out some food and tried to get us to eat, but we all refused. It wasn’t that we were hungry; it was a lack of rest. Even if you gave me glucose directly, I wouldn’t be able to move.

I leaned against a few branches, resting my head on my backpack, and before I knew it, I started to doze off. Lao Yang and Liang Shiye were also a bit drowsy and didn’t stop me. Just as I was about to fall asleep, a series of loud crashing noises suddenly came from above, and the entire bronze tree began to shake violently, as if a giant monster was climbing down.

I thought to myself, “This is bad. We just dealt with the monkeys, and now we’ve disturbed some big creature. Could it be that ‘King Kong’ is coming down?” Just as I was wondering where to hide, a black shadow suddenly fell like lightning, crashing hard between three branches, splattering a foul liquid all over my face.

The impact was tremendous, shaking the entire bronze tree and nearly knocking me off. The three of us were scared half to death and took a long time to react.

Lao Yang was the first to calm down. He raised the torch and called us over to see what had fallen. As we approached, we discovered that it was actually a person, wedged between the branches of the bronze tree, their body twisted unnaturally, eyes wide open, covered in blood, with ribs protruding from their body. It was clear they had died from a fall from a great height.

Lao Yang held the torch closer to illuminate the person’s face and suddenly exclaimed, “Damn it, it’s that bastard Uncle Tai! This old guy was in front of us all along; no wonder we never saw them!”

Liang Shiye trembled as he leaned closer, looked up, and pressed on Uncle Tai’s chest. A stream of blood gushed from the corpse’s mouth and nose. He sighed and said, “Falling from a height, his insides must be shattered. How could he have fallen? What a careless mistake!”

I looked at his feet; the bones were already sticking out, and his whole body was twisted in an unnatural way, likely due to the repeated impacts with the bronze branches during the fall. Liang Shiye pressed on his limbs and gasped, “You two, it seems like it’s not just a regular height up there. Look at Uncle Tai; all his long bones are broken. He wouldn’t have ended up like this from a fall of less than a hundred meters.”

I couldn’t help but groan inwardly. We had just scrambled up for a while and had only climbed about fifty or sixty meters, and we were already this exhausted. If it was really that high above, how could we possibly climb? Even if we made it to the top, we would probably have no strength left and might end up like Uncle Tai, shattered into pieces.

Thinking of this, both Liang Shiye and I showed expressions of pain.

Lao Yang, however, did not feel the future was bleak. Seeing us like this, he hurriedly patted my shoulder and said that even if it was a few hundred meters, we could run sideways for a bit and it would be done in a few seconds. Now it was just vertical; what was there to worry about? I retorted, “Get lost, you old fool! By your logic, Mount Everest is only 8,848 meters high, and if you rode a bike for half an hour, you’d get to the top. We’re not dealing with friction here; we’re fighting against gravity, you know?”

Old Yang waved his hand at me, indicating that he didn’t want to argue. He then went to untie Uncle Tai’s backpack, rummaging through its contents to see what we could use. To our delight, we found that Uncle Tai and a young man named Ermazi were carrying most of the essential equipment in Liang Shiye’s team. Most of the items were there: pistol bullets, several detonators, a flare gun, and some ropes. The happiest find was a flashlight. Damn, just thinking about how scared I was in the Qian Guandong cave, fearing the torch would go out, I wanted to kiss the flashlight a few times. High technology is just great!

Old Yang changed the magazine, organized the other items, and strapped the backpack onto himself. He said to us, “Those monkeys are definitely still down there. We can’t stay here long. Let’s rest for a bit, and then we have to head up. Everyone here has climbed Mount Tai, right? Thirteen hundred meters, isn’t it just a round trip in a day? No problem, just think of it as a sightseeing tour.”

Liang Shiye’s expression improved slightly. He forced a smile, made a walking gesture with his fingers, and said, “Brother Yang… Mount Tai is climbed on foot, using your legs. But we are going straight up and down now. How can you compare that? Plus, Mount Tai has the beauty of the Five Great Mountains, with its sea of clouds and strange rocks. What do we have to look at here?”

Old Yang kicked the bronze tree trunk beside him and said, “I was just making an analogy. Although this bronze tree can’t compare to the scenery of Mount Tai, it’s still impressive, right? You two should indulge me a little. Victory is right in front of us. Don’t lose heart. Let’s hurry up and get ready. We just need to grit our teeth and push through to the top. The view will definitely be great.”

I knocked on my already swelling calf and told him that it wasn’t that I didn’t want to push through, but I really couldn’t anymore. If I pushed any harder, my teeth might pop out of my jaw. I could still muster a bit of strength, but Liang Shiye was already half dead. Rather than rushing for a few minutes, it would be better to rest a bit for better effect.

Liang Shiye looked at me gratefully, and Old Yang sighed, saying, “Alright then, but we need to get Uncle Tai’s body down. It’s uncomfortable to leave him here.”

When I saw Uncle Tai’s distorted face, his eyes wide open in death, I didn’t feel anything particularly special, but his bulging eyes were indeed a bit frightening. At that moment, I didn’t want to get all moralistic. Together with Old Yang, we carefully tried to lift Uncle Tai’s body from the branches.

Falling from this height would inevitably mean crashing into several protruding bronze branches. It would be lucky if we didn’t land directly and turn into a mess. When I lifted Uncle Tai’s body, I found that Liang Shiye was right; the body was incredibly soft, as if all the bones had shattered. As we moved, a large amount of blood gushed out from his broken body, flowing along the branches into the grooves of the bronze tree, and then down the channels in the middle of the grooves.

Liang Shiye and I both noticed this phenomenon and paused for a moment. Liang Shiye immediately told us to stop, turned on the flashlight, and shone it into the grooves. After looking at the bronze branches, he said, “Gentlemen, I think I have an idea of what this bronze tree is for!”