Here, apart from the distant rumble of water flowing, there was almost no other sound. The sudden voice was extremely jarring; when it rang out, I was caught off guard and broke into a cold sweat. My first reaction was to wonder if it was someone from my uncle’s group. Could there still be survivors here? I was certain that the voice I had just heard belonged to a person. I hadn’t expected to encounter another living being, and just the fact that it was a person eased my mind a little. I stopped moving and leaned forward to look behind the fat man. However, all I could see were piles of dry branches, tangled and unclear, and the poor lighting made it impossible to see anything.

It must be someone from my uncle’s group, I thought. There couldn’t be anyone else in this forest. If I suddenly came across another person, it was most likely one of my uncle’s. Perhaps it was the same person who had just called out to me and had been washed here by the water before I fell into the muddy pit. From what I heard earlier, it seemed like he was talking to someone else, which meant there might be more than one person.

“Who’s there?” I called out, squinting and straining to see in that direction. If I ran into someone from my uncle’s group here, it would truly be a blessing from heaven, as I could learn about my uncle’s whereabouts and experiences.

However, after waiting for a moment, there was complete silence behind the fat man, with no echo at all. The beast’s mouth hidden beneath the branches was as still as if it had frozen, without a sound.

I immediately became alert, feeling a sense of foreboding. I reached for a long wooden stick nearby, picked it up, and slowly approached the area. But after taking just a few steps, I heard a faint voice coming from deep within the pile of branches: “Little Third Master?”

The voice was very strange and spoke quickly, but it was definitely a person speaking, and he was calling my nickname. My heart relaxed instantly; it had to be someone from my uncle’s group, and he definitely recognized me.

I let out a sigh of relief: “It’s me!” I hurried over, clearing a gap in the pile of branches while asking, “Who’s in there? Are you trapped? Don’t worry, I’ll come to rescue you right away!”

“Little Third Master?” the voice asked again from deep within.

“It’s me!!! It’s me!!” I shouted, digging out a hole in the branches and peering through the gaps to find the person inside.

After clearing a considerable distance, I didn’t see anyone. The inside was full of decaying branches, and the person had stopped talking. I found this strange and cursed in Changsha dialect, saying, “Damn it, who’s in there? What the hell is going on? Speak up and tell me where you are.”

I called out several times, but there was still no response. I began to feel something was off. The person’s voice didn’t sound like someone who was injured or unable to move. If they heard what I said, they should have come over by now. Why had they remained unresponsive for so long? Or could it be that they couldn’t hear me clearly? Or were they also in a daze?

As I pondered this, I suddenly realized that although I hadn’t been affected, there had been a lot of dark energy in the swamp earlier, and there must be some here too. This person might have been bitten by a snake. If they were deeply poisoned, they would definitely be disoriented. Even if they hadn’t been bitten, they might have hit their head due to the rushing water earlier, making it difficult for them to hear what I was saying.

Thinking that I wouldn’t call out anymore, I gritted my teeth and dug in vigorously, hoping to reach him and talk; if the other party was indeed poisoned as well, it would be a huge problem, as I couldn’t take care of two people alone. However, I couldn’t pretend not to know either.

This pile of branches was about six or seven meters high; it didn’t look big, but digging a hole to find something inside was quite difficult. I endured the intense pain, using my hands to claw at the branches. After two or three minutes, I finally managed to clear out a space. I immediately leaned in to look toward the source of the sound.

I had expected to see someone leaning against it, but to my astonishment, there was nothing in the pile of branches—no one at all. Behind it was just the mouth of a beast.

“What’s going on?” I cursed. Before I could finish my words, a faint, ghostly voice suddenly came from the edge of the hole I had dug in the pile of branches.

“Young Master San?”

The voice seemed to be right next to my ear, and I was so startled that my scalp tingled, nearly causing me to fall off the pile of branches. I quickly turned my head and saw that on the side where I had dug the hole, in the darkness between the crossed branches, there was actually another person lying there, with a pair of blood-red eyes peering out from the gaps, staring intently at me.