There was a lot of wind and snow in the canyon, but in the falling snowflakes, there were some dark shadows standing in the distance.

The squad leader stared at the immobile black shadows and kept swallowing saliva. Li Chuang took out a cigarette from his pocket, and he didn't know if he was too nervous or the temperature was too low, so he didn't light it a few times.

I couldn't get any better, standing in the wind and snow, my body shivering. Looking back behind him, the wind and snow obscured the view, and the fog couldn't see clearly even if he chased it.

Shen Guojun and Liu Tiande, the two old professors, had exhausted their physical strength and were paralyzed on the ground, not caring about what they encountered, the two little soldiers and Shen Xue squatted beside them, talking and encouraging them.

Li Chuang lit it a few times and didn't light it, angrily crushed the cigarette and threw it on the ground, knocked the ice slag on the Bayi bar hard, and said fiercely: "Lao Tzu wants to see what kind of cow, ghost, snake and god it is." ”

I stretched out my hand to pull him, but the squad leader pressed my shoulder and didn't let me go up, and my heart suddenly became uncomfortable.

Now there are many people who suspect that the soldiers have been at peace for too long, have not experienced war, and have lost their combat effectiveness. But I can say for sure that a soldier is a soldier, and even in peacetime, what we learn every day is about war.

When the ape was chasing, I stayed behind the pad, it was not blood, but a habit, the quality of a soldier. No one is not afraid of death, and soldiers are also human beings, but in the face of desperate situations, we think of using our own sacrifices to let our comrades survive as much as possible.

It's something in our bones, and it's a habit.

The squad leader stopped me because in this case, it is better to test it alone than to go up in a swarm.

Li Chuang's burly back slowly sank into the wind and snow, cautiously approaching those black shadows.

"Get up, keep up!" The squad leader turned around and shouted at Shen Xue, and then ignored it. The five of us formed a square team and followed Li Chuang about ten meters behind.

Seeing that we continued to move forward, Shen Xue cooperated with the two little soldiers to drag Liu Tiande and Professor Shen Guojun up, and followed behind with support.

In the face of danger, we are powerless to take care of it, and whether we can persevere or not depends on our personal perseverance.

Just after walking a short distance, Li Chuang, who was already close to the black shadow, suddenly stopped, and at the same time raised his hand to signal us not to go over. After a few seconds of pause, he suddenly picked up speed and walked towards the shadow.

Something went wrong?

I chuckled inwardly, and my hand tightening the trigger. But at this moment, Li Chuang's excited voice came from the wind and snow: "It's okay, it's some stone piles, you can come over." ”

My tense nerves suddenly relaxed.

"Let's go!" The squad leader shouted, I hurriedly went back to help support Shen Guojun, he was already in a semi-comatose state, I am afraid that he will not last too long in the low temperature environment, I have to find a leeward place to rest as soon as possible.

But now it is impossible to stop, a small soldier cooperated with me to set up Shen Guojun and quickly followed behind the squad leader.

On the way, I asked Shen Xue where the previous route of the expedition was. There are three passes outside the canyon, in an inverted T shape, and we enter the canyon directly ahead.

Shen Xue walked a little hard, panting and not answering immediately, the little soldier next to him accosted: "We are walking on the left." "He noticed the human head hanging from my backpack, reached out and touched it, and asked me curiously what it was.

I would say that hanging a human head will probably frighten people, and now is not the time to pursue that matter, so I simply didn't talk.

The squad leader stopped when they caught up with Li Chuang, and Gao Chuan, Chen Hu, and Xu Peng were on guard. After we caught up, the squad leader called me over.

In the wind and snow, the black shadows standing were indeed piles of stones, densely covering the entire canyon, and under each such pile of stones, there was an ice corpse sitting cross-legged.

Because Professor Shen Guojun's situation was not good, Shen Xue couldn't pull away, but Liu Tiande was helped by a small soldier and walked over, touching the stones piled up into square pillars with his hand, and I hurriedly took out the sapper shovel to pat the ice shell on it, and blocked the wind and snow by the way.

Stones are irregular, naturally formed, but with smooth edges and corners, and if they are rounded by wind erosion, they are at least 1,000 years old.

There are also totems carved on the stone.

Professor Liu Tiande carefully observed the totem, and after a while, he seemed to have a clue, and said: "They should be the martyrs of the past dynasties, and they were buried by the descendants after death. ”

Ice burial is almost lost now, and only a few Eskimos still retain this tradition, but the climate of the Western Regions is complex, and the glacier-covered area is only partial, and the custom of ice burial has never been heard.

Professor Liu smiled and said, "Xiao Chen's knowledge is very rich! In this situation, Professor Liu still retains the style of a professor when he speaks.

I scratched my head in embarrassment, not daring to get an axe at the class gate, but Professor Liu did not ridicule me, and continued: "You are right, these corpses in front of me are indeed not complete ice burials, but rather a sacrificial act. You look at these stones, they all have tips in the same direction, and I guess there's something they worship in that direction. ”

On top of the stone pile, there are indeed inclined stone bars, and the stone piles that can be seen clearly around all point to the depths of the canyon.

"Martyrdom, what kind of religion is martyrdom?"

In the major sects of the Western Regions, there is no such custom of sacrificing the dead. The veteran who drove the car also said that the martyrs' cemetery mentioned by the Uyghurs was not their sect. Liu Tiande did not answer, but bent down to check the corpses, trying to determine the origin of these corpses through clothing.

But at this moment, there was a sudden "click" sound on the corpse, and the ice shell on the head cracked. I dragged Professor Liu up and took a few steps back, and almost at the same time, the same sound was heard all around, as if the ice shells on all the corpses had cracked, and the sound of convergence even drowned out the sound of wind and snow.

"It's not good, it's a corpse!" Zhang Hu exploded in a flash, and Shen Xue was so frightened that their faces changed.

Professor Liu's face was not good-looking, and it was obvious that he had never encountered this situation, but it could be seen from his eyes that he was very disdainful of Chen Hu for saying this kind of thing.

This makes me feel that he and Shen Guojun are not all the way, when Shen Guojun was talking nonsense before, he chose to be silent, and he didn't dare to agree.

At this time, the squad leader still maintained his composure, and when he saw that the ice shell on the corpse's head was shattered, the corpse did not move, so he stopped Zhang Hu from talking nonsense, and gestured for me to go over and take a look, and they slowly dispersed in the open space. Shen Xue and another soldier set up Shen Guojun and were ready to escape.

I exhaled, drew my dagger and cautiously walked over it, picking the thin ice off the face of the corpse in front of me, and I gasped at what I saw.

The corpse's face had no facial features, but was covered with bloodshots, and there was a blood-red eye in the middle, which was slowly agitating, as if the corpse was breathing.

After the shock, I quickly reacted, looked sideways at the countless stone piles in the canyon, and my scalp was numb and I retreated: "The corpse's face is covered with flying skin!" We're afraid we're in that thing's lair! ”

As soon as I said this, everyone was too scared to move. We know best what happened to Gao Chuan, if this thing comes out and controls us, there will be no one to rescue us in the ice and snow, and then we can only turn into a walking ice corpse.

"Don't disturb them!" I retreated cautiously, where could I still care what religion they were martyred and what age they were.

Shen Xue heard that it was a flying skin, so she helped Professor Shen Guojun over, looked at me and said, "I heard that squad leader Zhang said that you know some Taoist skills, is there any way to stabilize our consciousness?" ”

She meant the fixing of the soul, just to say it euphemistically. Grandpa taught me, but I didn't have anything I needed. Just as I was about to answer her, the corpse that had been picked open of the ice shell suddenly fell to the ground, a bloody shadow flickered, and I immediately felt something stuck to the dagger, and I didn't have time to look at it, and the cold feeling was instantly transmitted to my wrist, and then I didn't feel anything.

But I knew from Xu Peng that this thing was stuck to my body and I couldn't notice it at all, so I hurriedly let go of the gun with my left hand, grabbed my right arm, and pinched it together with the sleeve, and there was a struggling force in the sleeve, trying to break free.

"Little Taoist!" Under the panic of Shen Xue, even the name was changed. I didn't have time to pay attention to her now, so I asked the squad leader to tear off my coat, pull out the amulet and stuff it into my mouth, and directly bite the wrapped red cloth with my teeth, and my teeth touched the things inside, and a warm current suddenly came out of my body.

The flying skin hidden in my sleeve immediately became agitated and wanted to break away from me, and as soon as I let go, it flew out with a "whoosh" and flew towards the squad leader.

I don't know what's in the amulet, but my grandfather told me that when I encounter an unsolvable danger, I just need to break the red cloth, and now it seems to be true, seeing that the flying skin is about to fall on the squad leader's shoulder, I took out the things in the red cloth with my hand and pressed it on the squad leader's chest with my backhand.

My idea is very simple, the amulet can drive away the flying skin from me, and the squad leader should be able to touch it, but the next scene, even I was so shocked that I couldn't close my mouth.

Before the talisman touched the squad leader, a faint golden light emitted from it, and the flying skin was illuminated by its light, and a puff of smoke came out of its body, and after screaming, it fell to the ground, curled up into an eyeball and quickly melted, and in the blink of an eye, it became a pool of fishy pus and blood, and the surrounding ice and snow were melted into a hole.

"This ......," I was so shocked that I didn't know what to say. Li Chuang and the others were all stunned, and they were not afraid of the flying skins that were about to come out of the broken corpses around them, and looked at me incredulously.

I quickly came back to my senses, and I was secretly happy that my grandfather had told me some bizarre things since I was a child, and I thought it was all stories, and if it weren't for my hobby, I wouldn't want to touch those things.

I just didn't know how to explain it for a while.

"Don't be stunned, let's keep walking, the flying skin is about to come out!" Shen Xue was the first to come back to her senses, it should be said that she was not shocked, her eyes flashed with excitement.

As soon as she reminded her, she found that many of the flying skins had broken away from the corpse, flew to the stone pillar, and stared at us with eyeballs, not knowing if they were afraid of what I had in my hand, and they didn't dare to attack rashly.

"Keep moving forward, get closer to Chen Xiu, don't stay too far away." The squad leader immediately made arrangements after coming back to his senses, and he didn't say anything that he couldn't mention.

I also understand that what I am showing now is like saying that there are aliens, which will not be recognized by authority without conclusive evidence, but when there are real aliens one day, it will no longer need to be justified and disguised.

Shen Xue helped Professor Shen Guojun to move closer to me first, and before I could see what the amulet in my hand was, she reached out and pulled off my clothes, and whispered: "It's really you, I haven't seen you for a few years, and you've grown so big!" ”

I frowned slightly, her words were a bit clueless, but it sounded like she knew me. When I remembered the mention of my father when she gave me the box, my heart was even more confused.