Today felt somewhat strange. On the shortcut she had walked countless times before, Baili Weibu got lost.
She led Cen Kaiwen back to the same spot multiple times. No matter which direction they took, they kept ending up in the irregular clearing surrounded by uneven spruce trees, sandwiched between a karst cave and a small lake.
Baili Weibu clearly remembered that every time she walked to this clearing, if she continued east for twenty minutes, she should be able to see the rooftop of Dati’s Restaurant.
But today, why were they going in circles? Moreover, every time they walked a certain distance, the fog in the forest grew thicker. Initially, it was as thin as gauze, but then it gradually became as thick as smoke. Standing by the lake, they could barely see within a ten-meter radius.
"I mean...did you perhaps take the wrong path?" Cen Kaiwen stopped and awkwardly cleared his throat.
Baili Weibu frowned and scratched her head in puzzlement, saying, "No way! I've walked this route countless times." She took a couple of steps forward and said doubtfully, "There shouldn't be such dense fog at this time. This is really strange."
"We're dead." Cen Kaiwen said with a helpless look at his watch, "It's already half past six." He raised his head and looked around, his face darkening before he suddenly lowered his voice and said to Baili Weibu: "I heard that there may be evil spirits or monsters that go against people in the forest after sunset. They use their powers to trap people in the forest, making them keep walking in circles and unable to get out."
"There's a vampire version too," Baili Weibu replied, turning around and pulling a face while deliberately showing her little tiger teeth, "This Romanian specialty likes to trap people in the forest and then sneakily bites their necks."
"Aren't you afraid at all?" Cen Kaiwen stared at her, raising an eyebrow.
"Not at all," she nodded earnestly. "I was born unafraid of these so-called ghouls and bogies. Strange, isn't it?" She rolled her eyes. "You boys just like to scare girls with these stories. Boring."
Cen Kaiwen looked into her crystal clear eyes, smiled, and didn’t say anything.
"But now I'm really stumped," Baili Weibu took a long breath. "No matter the reason, we're indeed lost now. After dark, the forest is full of dangers. You've just arrived and don't know how serious it can get here."
"So what should we do? Should we try to backtrack?" Cen Kaiwen looked at the dimly lit path that seemed to stretch endlessly into the dense forest and pulled out his phone as he spoke.
"You don't happen to want to call for help, do you?" Baili Weibu waved her hand at him. "There's no signal here."
Cen Kaiwen ignored her, tapped his phone a few times, then held it high and walked back and forth in the open area, saying, "I'm using the GPS on my phone to determine our current location. Hopefully, it will help."
However, he walked back and forth for a while and eventually lowered his hand in frustration, shaking his phone while muttering, "Shit! Can't even pick up a single signal bar."
"Don't bother searching anymore. Let's try another path," Baili Weibu picked up a few small black stones from the ground and arranged them into a triangle under a tree on the left. She turned to Cen Kaiwen and said, "Make a marker so we don't walk in circles. Let's go."
But thirty minutes later, they found themselves back at the lake.
The sky had turned completely dark. The forest at night was as dark as the abyss, and a pallid moonlight on the horizon made everything in front of them eerie and cold, unlike the human world. Cen Kaiwen was breathing slightly heavily, and he struck a nearby tree trunk with his fist, unable to conceal his frustration.
Baili Weibu sat down her butt under a tree, totally exhausted from their repeated rapid attempts to move forward.
"Are you still not afraid?" Cen Kaiwen leaned against the tree trunk, observing Baili Weibu's exhausted yet composed profile under the moonlight, with a hint of a deeper meaning in his eyes.
"I don't have time to be afraid," she stuck her tongue out at him and said straightforwardly, "I led you into this forest, so it's my responsibility to get you out."
"You've got quite the spirit," Cen Kaiwen smiled faintly. "But what can you do now? We've almost explored every path in this forest."
The eerie howls of wild beasts echoed, sometimes far, sometimes near. In this forest, they were not grand humans who dominate everything but potential prey in constant danger of losing their lives.
Baili Weibu stood up and looked up at Cen Kaiwen, who was a head taller than her. Something moved in her eyes and she seemed to have made a major decision, abruptly asking, "If I had a bow and arrow hidden in my hands, do you believe it could lead us out of this maze?"
Cen Kaiwen stared blankly for a moment and then responded with a smile: "Are you reciting poetry from some poet?"
Baili Weibu didn't respond. Instead, she fished out an exquisite and compact Swiss Army knife from her school bag, and opened it with a snap...
A glint of gold suddenly flashed in Cen Kaiwen's eyes.
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