Chapter 14 Chapter Thirteen

The bullets whizzed past my ears, and before I understood what was going on, I heard Ling Zhijie shout loudly: "This shot, He Ning is dead!" Then, I saw him turn the muzzle of the gun to the back of his temple, and then fired another shot. After the shot, he continued to shout: "This shot, Ling Zhijie is dead!" He gave me one last look and walked towards the gate without looking back. I froze on the spot, not knowing for a while, did I do the right thing, or did I do it wrong?I just feel that everything is terribly suppressed. This feeling is more uncomfortable than death, hundreds of times more uncomfortable.

But my instinct told me that I had to catch up with him.I tried my best to support myself to stand up again, but after I took a step forward, the world began to spin. I couldn't bear it anymore, my consciousness was pulled out, and my body collapsed... I don't know how long it has passed, but I seem to smell the fishy smell of water, drifting over from that distant lake of memory... "Hey! Ah Ning, wake up! Wake up!" A young voice accompanied by the sound of roaring water rang in my ears. I opened my eyes and saw the brilliant stars, as if they were close at hand, but also as if they were far away in the sky, and a bright full moon hung high in the night sky, dreamy and lonely.From the afterglow of the moon halo stretched out an equally dreamy hand, and I held it, feeling the real power, pulling me until I sat up.

I rubbed my head and looked in the direction of the sound of roaring water not far behind me, then I turned my head and smiled wryly at the green face next to me: "Hehe, I didn't expect to be alive..." The owner with a green face patted me on the shoulder, turned around and packed his hiking bag, and said in the same tone of teasing: "I don't have time to make you laugh now, we have to find a safe place quickly, otherwise this night But it’s hard.” I nodded, picked up my backpack from the side, and started walking down the river bank with him. "A'Ning, come out with me this time, do you regret it?" He suddenly asked.

"Regret! Extremely regret! Every time I follow you, there is nothing good. If I don't die, I will peel off my skin. My intestines are almost green!" I replied pretending to be serious. He turned around in front, punched me in the chest, and said, "You boy! There will be opportunities for you to regret it in the future!" After he finished speaking, he laughed, and I laughed too. In the summer vacation of my senior year, Ling Zhijie and I walked through the primitive jungle on the Sino-Vietnamese border, made simple bamboo rafts, and traveled along a tributary of the Lancang River.Two days later in the afternoon, we fell from a nearly 20-meter-high waterfall and survived the catastrophe. Fortunately, we were not injured, and we continued to move downstream.

That night, we caught a small boa constrictor and lit a bonfire on the river beach, but we did not expect that the smell of the meat would attract animals that forage at night.It was Ling Zhijie who first noticed the movement in the bushes not far away. When I looked back, I happened to see a huge black shadow coming out of the bushes and heading straight for my back. Ling Zhijie picked up a firewood stick and threw it at the black shadow. The black shadow seemed to be scalded by the fire, stopped, looked at us for a while, and charged again. Ling Zhijie and I took advantage of the bright moonlight to see clearly its size and the 30 cm long tusks protruding from its mouth—an unusually large wild boar.

We started running wildly.The wild boar knew what was going on, and didn't chase after it any more. It just lingered by the campfire, staring at the piece of python meat in a daze.It seemed to be seeing fire for the first time, curious and frightened, and never dared to approach it. Ling Zhijie and I hid on a rock not far away to observe.The wild boar tried to push its nose into the campfire, and was obviously burned.It was so angry that it slammed into the bonfire for a while, but it still couldn't do anything about the bonfire, and it couldn't extinguish it no matter what. Instead, it became more and more angry and let out a hurried humming sound.Ling Zhijie and I almost couldn't laugh out loud. Finally, the wild boar seemed to understand that he was not the opponent of the campfire, so he took the piece of snake meat and ran into the woods.

"It seems that it's not our turn for dinner today?" Ling Zhijie heaved a sigh of relief, put the field knife in his hand back into the scabbard, and smiled helplessly. "Haha, at least they didn't become someone else's dinner, so it's pretty good..." We walked back to the river beach, looked at the pile of charcoal fire that had not been completely extinguished, and began to look for dry firewood to light it up again. But what makes people laugh and cry is that when the bonfire was lit again, I heard the humming sound not far behind me again—the wild boar came back again.

Without saying a word, Ling Zhijie pulled me up and ran towards the original rock.I looked back and saw that the wild boar did not continue to chase us as before. It just went to the bonfire again until the open fire was extinguished. At this moment, Ling Zhijie and I were dumbfounded. We thought that only rhinos were nature's natural firefighters. Unexpectedly, this wild boar also changed jobs.So, unfortunately, we're not going to have another bonfire tonight. We spent the night in a tent set up by the river beach, and there were no other predators harassing us until the early morning. It seemed that the territory of this big wild boar was quite stable.

I washed my face with clear stream water, turned around and saw Ling Zhijie staring blankly at a pendant on his neck, which Ling Yu hung for him before leaving. I called him and sighed: "Brothers and sisters are deeply in love... Brother and sister are deeply in love..." After I sighed, I made a meaningful smile, and was immediately attacked by Ling Zhijie. "To tell you the truth, did you think about anything when you rushed down the waterfall yesterday?" After making a fuss for a while, he suddenly became serious. Thinking back to the few seconds when I fell from the waterfall, I thought of death, my family, him, and Xin Jie... I thought of too many things...

I immediately covered up the short but long thoughts, and replied: "I didn't think about anything, how about you?" "I, I thought of Xiaoyu, and I was afraid that I would never see her again..." "Hehe, are you also afraid sometimes?" "Nonsense, at that moment, I thought we were both finished." "What are you afraid of, look at the present, I know I won't die." "Are you that sure?" "Nonsense, you are not dead, I can die?" "Fuck you!" He paused, then added softly: "One day, we will still die..."

One day, we'll still die... Ling Zhijie's words crossed the long river of time, pierced through layers of fog of memory, and echoed in his ears all the time, and they were even more clear at this moment. I woke up in the air-raid shelter, but I was still unable to get up, limp on the ground like a puddle of mud, and I don't know how long it has passed. It wasn't until there were clear footsteps behind me that I felt the biting cold, and finally felt that my mind began to recover. "Now, it's finally just you and me." An unusually abrupt and magnetic voice followed the footsteps from behind my head. I opened my eyes, and immediately saw a face looking down, that face still kept a weird smile.