Hearing the fat man say that he had discovered the entrance to the Worm Valley, Shirley Yang and I also raised the binoculars hanging on our chests and looked in the direction he said. After adjusting the focus, I saw a large field of yellow and white wild flowers and trees under the hillside in the distance, and flocks of golden phoenix butterflies shuttled among the flowers. These butterflies are not small, flying around in flocks, never leaving the flower tree.

Shirley Yang exclaimed: "Those flowers should be phalaenopsis, I didn't expect to attract so many golden phoenix butterflies...... There is also a golden-banded butterfly...... There are also rare golden-threaded butterflies, which resemble the leaves of the golden trees blown by the sea breeze in the garden of the gods of the Aegean Sea in ancient Greek mythology. ”

I didn't know anything about butterflies, and I looked through my binoculars for a long time, but I didn't see any valleys or valleys except butterflies and wildflower trees. The flora here is so thick that all the terrain is so tightly shaded that it is impossible to tell where there is a valley or where a stream is. From above, you can only see the ups and downs, all of which are unique dense plants near the Tropic of Cancer, and the higher ones are not necessarily the terrain is high, because the plant growth is uneven. The primeval forest here is very different from the primeval forest of the Daxing'an Mountains that we are familiar with.

As the saying goes: the wood is beautiful in the forest, and the wind is more devastating. The canopy height of the trees in the Great Khing'an Mountains is about the same, and the trees can work together to resist the high winds. It is located in the place surrounded by two rivers and three mountains, and the basin valley in the middle is low-lying, and because Yunnan has the same four seasons and no monsoon season, the lower the terrain, the more serious the moisture breeds. The temperature is maintained at about 25~30 °C throughout the year, and the wind does not necessarily blow once a year, so all kinds of plants grow to their heart's content. The abundant water resources and humidity of the air allow plants to grow as much as they want, which leads to the growth of thick-stemmed vines, woody and grassy epiphytes in the forest according to their own characteristics. The highest is the famous Wangtian tree in Yunnan, originally this kind of big tree is only in the south of the Tropic of Cancer, but the environment in this col is unique, and there are many Wangtian trees that stand up to the sky.

Only a few large pools are not covered by vegetation, and many places in the deep secluded places are shrouded in clouds and mist, and it is difficult to see them from a distance, and you can't rush into the forest from there with a few large golden butterflies. The environment here is so complex that it is difficult to figure out with common sense.

The human skin map was drawn in the Han Dynasty, and after 2,000 years, the topographical features marked in the map have changed greatly from today. With the exception of a few specific markers and locations, it is no longer possible to use a human skin map to make a more precise reference to the forest beneath Mount Shalong.

According to the blind man, a few decades ago, their group of unloading wrestlers entered the Worm Valley with homemade explosives. A large flock of butterflies was seen in the front of the Worm Valley, which is formed by the Snake River, but who can guarantee that butterflies will not appear in the rest of the Worm Valley. Therefore, it is not yet possible to conclude that the entrance to the worm valley is over there, and it is necessary to find another location as mentioned by the blind man. There is a remnant wall in the Worm Valley, which is an ancient wall built by manpower on the Snake River, as if it is a, used to cut off the water flow when building the tomb of King Xian in the lake, and the king is demolished after being buried, and the water dragon halo in front of the tomb of King Xian is restored.

Only by finding the remnant wall can it be used as a basis for confirming the location of the worm valley. The safest way is to be the same as the group of unloading wrestlers back then, do not enter the forest first when they get out of Shalong Mountain, but follow the direction of the mountain range, look for the Snake River, a tributary of the Lancang River, to the north, and then follow the Snake River into the valley, so as to ensure that they will not go astray and be foolproof in the direction.

The fat man proposed another way, which was to re-find the artificial canal in the Shalong Mountain and look for the Snake River along the ancient river channel. However, due to the heavy rains in the upper reaches of the Lancang River, the waterways in the mountain have become intricate, and they may even be diverted into the ground. The old river channel has long been completely covered by plant soil, so the method that the fat man said is not feasible.

The three of them deliberated for a while, looked at the time, and it was 3:30 p.m.; We have not rested since we entered Shalong Mountain on a bamboo raft around 9 a.m., so we decided to use it as a relay point, rest for 20 minutes first, and then head north, trying to find the entrance to the Worm Valley before sunset, and then set up camp there and enter the valley early tomorrow morning.

We sat down on a slightly flat hillside, and took out some bait and beef to satisfy our hunger, but the fat man talked about the piranhas, and remembered that the mountain pool was full of bright red blood, similar to the blood pool in the legend of hell, and I lost my appetite. I suddenly thought to myself, what if those fish with teeth faster than knives and saws also swam into the Snake River? With those guys in the water, we can't get into the tomb of King Xian from the water.

Shirley Young said: "There is no need to worry about that. I used to be a photojournalist in a geographical magazine, and I read a lot of material about wild animals, animals and plants, and the saber-toothed viper is found in India, Myitkyina, Laos, and the waters of the Americas* near the Tropic of Cancer in the 20th degree area. ”

Among them, ancient India has the most, and it is recorded in Buddhist scriptures that during the reign of Emperor Ashoka in India, there was a year when a saber-toothed viper caused a catastrophe. During the once-in-a-century flood of the Ganges, an underground river in the Eastern Ghats poured into a nearby city, killing countless people and animals.

The ancestors of this sabertooth viper can be traced back to the post-ice age of the water tiger tooth mackerel. The fish lives in the ocean and has a luminous device on its body, and a large school of tiger tooth mackerel can bite and kill the overlord dragon whale in the ocean in an instant. Later, due to the great floods of the sub-ice age, these creatures were gradually cruelly eliminated by nature, and their descendants, the saber-toothed viper, also evolved into freshwater fish.

Although sabertooth vipers are very powerful, they have a huge weakness. These fish can only live in relatively cold water, and only the cold waters of the dissolution caves near the Tropic of Cancer are suitable for their survival. There is a kind of hard-shelled shrimp without eyes, which is very abundant, but it is still not enough for the saber-toothed vipers, so cannibalism often occurs. Only 1 percent of the sabertooth vipers survive to their final spawning period after September.

The full moon of the Mid-Autumn Festival is the spawning period of the sabertooth viper. They themselves cannot survive in areas that are too hot, but they live near the hot Tropic of Cancer in order to spawn in large numbers in areas with high water temperatures, after which the sabertooth viper dies immediately. The eggs grow into fry in warmer currents for a period of time, and then swim back to the cold waters to survive. It's the end of June, and it's the most active time for saber-toothed vipers, and it's rare to see such a large number of them.

In addition, due to the high requirements for the living environment and the large demand for things, there have been signs that it will gradually become extinct in recent decades.

The best thing is that this season is not the spawning season, so there is no need to worry about them swimming back out of the cave. However, you need to be cautious when you go back, as the waterways in Mt. Shalong have recently been turned into a network of interconnected water due to heavy rainfall, and if you go back the way you came, you may encounter them in a certain section of the river in the cave.

After listening to Shirlley Young's detailed explanation of the sabertooth viper, the fat man and I were slightly relieved, and we would leave the matter of going back to the time when we went back. The fat man felt that he was a little timid just now, hoping to get his face back, so he said to me and Shirley Yang: "How much can these stinky fish and rotten shrimp make a move, I just think they are a little ...... That's because the old man taught us that we need to pay attention to the enemy tactically. ”

Shirley Young said: "These fish are not a cause for concern. I just kept thinking about the figurines hanging upside down in the river, and it didn't seem that their role was as simple as feeding pythons...... But the trick is very weird, and it's really hard to guess. Fortunately, there is a group of saber-toothed vipers that came out by mistake, otherwise it is really hard to say what would have happened. We have already encountered so much trouble before entering the Worm Valley, we must be cautious and cautious. ”

I nodded and said, "This fight is notoriously not easy to lose, since we are here, we have to use what we have learned in our lives to compete with it." I patted the back of my neck and said, "Even for this, I have to put my life on this big one." ”

Shirley Yang and the fat man also had solemn faces, and this time the fight was a move related to life and death. There is no way back for running on the cliff, only success, not failure.

We rested for a while, took out the map with the contour line of Shalong Mountain, this map was extremely simple, the error was very large, the compass was cleared, the altitude and bearing were redetermined, the map was corrected, the direction of the exit was marked, and the three of them continued to set off in search of the Snake River.

The Lancang River basin is extremely wide, from north to south, running through the whole territory of Yunnan and flowing directly into Vietnam; However, in the Vietnamese basin, known as the Mekong River, these contents are not a problem, and in Yunnan alone, the smallest branch of the Lancang River is the Snake River that we are looking for. The river bypasses a section of the Shalong Mountain, rushing and turbulent, with a very large drop, some of which pass through the mire of the underground or jungle, and some of which go straight down the mountain, one waterfall after another; The river was full of huge whirlpools, and all kinds of boats could not pass through; And because of its extreme twists and turns, it is called the Snake River. The local Bai people call it "Jiela Luolu", which means the evil dragon that was suppressed by the Great Snow Mountain.