Hearing the fat man say that he had found the entrance to the Worm Valley, Shirley Yang and I also raised our binoculars and looked in the direction the fat man said, only to see a large area of yellow and white wild flowers and trees under the hillside in the distance, and there were flocks of golden phoenix butterflies shuttling among the flowers. These butterflies are not small, and they fly 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 even rare golden-threaded butterflies, which are like the golden leaves blown by the sea breeze in the garden of the gods of the Aegean Sea in ancient Greek myths and legends. ”

I didn't know anything about butterflies, so I looked through my binoculars for a long time, but apart from butterflies and wildflower trees, I didn't see any valleys or valleys. The vegetation layer here is so thick that all the terrain and landforms are tightly shaded, and it is impossible to identify where is the valley and where the stream is.

As the saying goes: the wood is beautiful in the forest, and the wind will destroy it. 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 strong winds. And here is located in the two rivers and three mountains surrounded by the place, the middle of the basin valley is low-lying, in addition to Yunnan four seasons, there is no monsoon season, the lower the terrain, the more moisture breeds, the annual temperature is maintained at about 25~30 °C, the wind does not necessarily blow once a year, so all kinds of plants grow to their heart's content. Thick-stemmed vines, woody and grassy epiphytes in the forest grow differently according to their own characteristics, the height is different, uneven, 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 mountain recess is unique, and there are many Wangtian trees that stand on top of the sky.

Only a few relatively large pools are not covered by plants, and many places are shrouded in clouds and mist, making it difficult to see them from a distance.

You can't just rush into the forest with a few groups of golden butterflies, the environment here is too complex to figure out with common sense.

The human skin map was drawn in the Han Dynasty, and after 2,000 years to today, the topographic and geomorphological features marked in the map have long been unrecognizable, except for some specific markers and locations, it is no longer possible to use the human skin map for more accurate reference.

According to the blind man, a few decades ago, their group of Jieling Lux entered the Worm Valley with earthen explosives, and saw a large flock of butterflies in the Worm Valley, which is the section in front of the valley formed by the Snake River.

But who can guarantee that butterflies will not appear in other places outside the Worm Valley, so it is not yet possible to conclude that it is the entrance to the Worm Valley, and it is necessary to find the characteristic mentioned by the blind man——— there is a remnant wall in the Worm Valley. It is a remnant of an ancient wall built on the Snake River by manpower, it seems to be a dam, the water flow was cut off when the tomb of the king was built, and after the king was converging, it was demolished, and the "water dragon halo" in front of the tomb of the king was restored.

Only by finding the remnant wall can it be used as a basis for confirming the location of the worm valley, and the safest way is to go out of Shalong Mountain, like the gang of unloading wrestlers back then, not to enter the forest first, but to follow the direction of the mountain range, to the north to find the snake river, and then follow the snake river into the valley, you can ensure that you do not go astray.

The fat man said that there is another way, which is 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, various large and small waterways have become interconnected, which has become intricate, and may even be diverted into the ground, and the old river channel has long been completely covered by plants and soil, so the method mentioned by the fat man is not feasible.

The three of them deliberated for a moment and looked at the time, which was three thirty o'clock in the afternoon. We took a bamboo raft into Shalong Mountain from about 9 a.m., and we have not rested until now, so we decided to use it as a relay point, rest for twenty 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 found a slightly flat hillside and sat down, and took out some bait and beef to satisfy our hunger. When the fat man talked about the piranhas, he remembered the waterhole in the mountain, full of bright red blood, similar to the bloody pool in the legendary hell, and I lost my appetite. I suddenly felt a pang in my heart, 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.

"Don't worry, I used to be a photojournalist in a geographical magazine, and I've seen a lot of material about animals and plants, and the saber-toothed viper is found in India, Myitkyina, Laos in Asia, and in the waters of the Americas near the Tropic of Cancer and within the 20th parallel," says Shirley Young. ”

Among them, ancient India is the most, and the Buddhist scriptures record that during the reign of Emperor Ashoka in India, there was a year when the 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 ancestor of this saber-toothed viper can be traced back to the post-ice age 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 offspring, 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 near the Tropic of Cancer, only the cold waters in the caves are suitable for their survival, and there is a kind of hard-shelled shrimp without eyes, which is abundant, but it is still not enough for them to eat, so cannibalism often occurs. Only 1 percent of the saber-toothed vipers survive after September each year to survive to their final spawning period.

Every year during the full moon of the Mid-Autumn Festival, it is the spawning period of the sabertooth viper, and they cannot survive in areas that are too hot, but the reason why they live near the hot Tropic of Cancer is to spawn in areas with high water temperatures. After spawning, the sabertooth viper dies immediately, and the eggs hatch in the warmer currents and migrate to the cold waters to survive.

The peculiar living environment of the saber-toothed viper makes their numbers scarce and their living space narrow.

This is not the spawning season, so you don't have to worry about them swimming out of the cave, but you need to be careful when you get back. Due to the heavy rainfall, all the waterways of Mt. Jaryu have become interconnected, 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 Shirley Young's detailed explanation of the sabertooth viper, the fat man and I were slightly relieved. 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 Young: "How much can these stinky fish and rotten shrimp make a move, the reason why I think they are a little ...... That's because the old man taught us that we need to pay attention to the enemy tactically. ”

"The fish weren't a big concern, I just kept thinking that the figurines hanging upside down in the river wouldn't be as simple as feeding pythons," Shirley Young said...... But the scab technique is very weird, and it is really impossible to guess, but fortunately, there is a group of saber-toothed vipers that came out by mistake, otherwise what would have happened, it is really hard to say. We have already encountered so much trouble before entering the Worm Valley, we must be cautious and cautious. ”

Everyone's faces were solemn, this time the fight was a move related to life and death, there was no way back for the horse on the cliff, and it could only succeed and not fail.

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

The smallest branch of the Lancang River, is the snake river we are looking for, around the section of the Shalong Mountain, the flow is turbulent, the drop is very large, some sections of the flow pass through the underground or the quagmire in the jungle, and some sections of the river turn sharply along the mountain, one waterfall after another, the river is full of huge whirlpools, all kinds of boats can not pass guò, and because of its extreme twists and turns, so it is called the snake river, and the local Bai people call it "Jiela Luolu", which means "the evil dragon suppressed by the big snow mountain".

It is not difficult to find this snake river according to common sense, but the plan can't catch up with the changes, the vegetation under this mountain is too thick, and the river channel can't be seen at all, so I have to follow the edge of Shalong Mountain, groping and slowly moving forward.

I just realized that in this kind of ghost place, "Sixteen Characters Yin Yang Feng Shui Secret Technique" is completely useless. In order to distinguish the shape and rational qi, it is necessary to see the composition of mountains and rivers, and in this area, the top of the mountain is full of clouds and mist, and the bottom of the mountain is full of all kinds of trees and vines, just like the surface of the mountains and rivers is covered with a thick layer of green mud, and the top is covered with a cotton sleeve, and there is nowhere to start.

The jungle under the cliff is even more difficult to walk, after walking in, I didn't see a butterfly, all the big and small mosquitoes and poisonous ants, and there is no road, looking at a piece of green at a high place, only to find that the vines and vines are too dense to stand, almost unable to stand, so I had to use a sapper shovel and machete to open a road, and at the same time be careful to avoid those poisonous snakes and poisonous insects, which is hard, it is really unbearable.

Seeing that the sun had set behind the mountain, the earth was gradually engulfed in darkness, and the primeval forest was covered with a veil of darkness, and we did not go far, it seemed that it was impossible to find the snake river before dark, so we had to find a relatively safe place to spend the night temporarily. The night in the forest is full of dangers, and the air pressure can vary greatly between the mountains and rivers, so we have to find a slightly dry place without too many mosquitoes and light a campfire to spend the night.

Finally, I found a very flat bluestone under the two big trees, and shone it with a flashlight, and there was no snake and scorpion nearby. The three of them were very tired, so they hurriedly took out the fuel and made a fire, surrounded by small stones. Because the air is too humid, it is necessary to take a little fire to dry the bluestone, dry the moss and moisture in the cracks of the stone, and then spread the sleeping bag, so as not to sleep with moisture into the bones and fall on the root of the disease.

Shirley Young went to a nearby spring and fetched some water, which was filtered and ready to drink. I set up a small camping pot, boiled some boiling water, and boiled the somen noodles I bought from the Caiyun Inn in a camping pot, without any seasoning, so as not to let the aroma of the food attract any animals, and soaked a few bait cakes in the cooked noodles for dinner. I don't know how long I'll have to walk in the valley, so I don't bother to take out the canned food and eat it.

The fat man couldn't help complaining that the food was too poor, and the birds were about to fade out of his mouth, and when he talked about the birds, he grabbed the "Jianwei" and prepared to play some game, but it was already dark, so he had to give up, and sat down to eat again, while blaming me for cooking something that was not delicious and tasteless, and ate three large pots at the same time.

After eating, we decided to take turns to sleep, leaving people to keep watch, after all, this primeval forest is full of dangers, who knows what poisonous insects and beasts will run out at night.

I was on duty for the first shift, and I held the "Jianwei", filled the June Fourth bullets, pressed the fire into a dark fire, and then sat not far from the fire, humming the popular song to pass the sleepiness, and at the same time alert to the dark jungle around me.

The two big banyan trees opposite me are quite magnificent, the body of the tree is as thick as a stone pillar, the crown of the tree hangs low, heavy as a cover, the two thick trees grow like twisted flowers, twisted together with each other, four or five ways, forming a rare husband and wife tree, and there are many huge flowers and parasitic plants that cannot be named, like a large basket of colorful flowers in the forest.

I was looking at it intently, but I heard Shirley Yang lying in a sleeping bag suddenly say to me: "These two trees have not lived for long, and there are too many plants parasitic on the bodies of the two banyan trees, and the old banyan tree has absorbed more nutrients than it can make ends meet, and now most of the middle part of this tree is empty, and in three or five years at most, this tree will die." Some things have reached the most beautiful stage, but they are not far from ruining miè. ”

I heard her say something about the trees, as if she were talking about the curse we had received from the ghost cave on our backs. I didn't want to mention these disappointments, so I said to Shirley Young, "It's late at night, why haven't you slept yet?" Did you close your eyes and think of my majestic figure, so you tossed and turned, and couldn't sleep? ”

Shirley Yang said: "If only I closed my eyes and thought about you, now when I close my eyes, my mind is the figurines in the cave of Shalong Mountain, the more I think about it, the more disgusting I feel, I don't even want to eat, and I can't sleep until now." ”

I yawned and said to Shirley Young, "Since you can't sleep, carry forward the spirit of internationalism, replace my post, and wake me up when you are sleepy." ”

Shirley Yang smiled: "It's beautiful to think about, when you fall asleep with the fat man, you can't wake up with thunder." I can't sleep, and I won't rotate with you, lest you play dead in the middle of the night and refuse to get up to stand guard. ”

I shook my head and sighed: "You disappointed me too much, I thought that you had traveled thousands of miles from the United States to support our country's four modernizations, and they had worshiped you as Bethune, and from the bottom of my heart I thought that you were a moral person, a noble person, a person who was beneficial to the people, and a person who gave up low-level tastes, but I didn't expect you to be so selfish and selfish, and didn't care about the feelings of your comrades-in-arms at all, and the usual approachable attitude was disguised." ”

Shirley Young said to me, "You are very eloquent, but you like to talk too much, and you are not good at bragging." I can't sleep anyway, so you might as well talk to me, but you are not allowed to tell me anything about the quotes. ”

The forest was silent, there was not a hint of wind, all the animals and plants seemed to be asleep, and only occasionally a few strange bird calls came from a distance. I was so sleepy that my eyelids were fighting, and I looked at the fat man sleeping next to me, this guy had his head all in the sleeping bag, and he was sleeping, not to mention how fragrant it was. But Shirley Yang refused to be on duty for me, so I had to talk to her without saying a word.

I also don't know why, chatting and chatting about the big python in the forest, I talked about the comrade-in-arms I met in a company in Beijing before, and I heard him say some rumors about squatting on the front line with cat ear piercing. At that time, the war temporarily entered the stalemate stage, and on the front of both sides, there were dense cat's ear holes, which were actually infantry counter-shock bunkers, and when digging cat ear holes, they often dug out the big pythons in the mountains. They told me that the biggest python was as thick as the legendary dragon, and I didn't believe it at the time, but now I know that it wasn't built indiscriminately when I meet it in the mountain of Shalong.

However, most pythons do not actively attack people, they are lazy and sleep all day. Some soldiers couldn't stand the heat in the cat's ear hole, and they still felt hot bare-chested, so they had to find a big python sleeping on a tree and drag it into the hole, and a few people slept on the cool python, not to mention, it was more effective than installing an air conditioner.

Later, the python simply settled in the cat's ear hole, and every day someone fed it canned braised pork, and slept when it was full, and then one day the war suddenly turned fierce, and the shelling blocked the passage for our army to transport supplies. The artillery hit, sometimes the position of the bunker repair is not good, and when a cannon group is covered, the whole squad inside is gone. After a whole week of artillery fighting, there were no ants around the position. The canned braised pork in the cat's ear hole is gone, and in a short time, people can still hold on, but the python can't help it when it's hungry, it is used to living in the cat's ear hole, smelling the smell of soldiers smoking every day, and also getting addicted to smoking, how to drive it away, so hungry that his eyes are red, he wants to swallow people, and finally has to shoot it to death. Peel off the python skin and put it in the cat's ear hole, mosquitoes and mice dare not enter the hole. One day the enemy came to dig a hole in the dark, and the sentry soldier dozed off and did not notice the enemy. The enemy was about to throw the explosive bag into the hole, but suddenly he felt like he was entangled in a python, he couldn't move, and his bones were about to be crushed by the huge force, but his body was obviously empty, and there was nothing. The next day, the soldiers in the ear piercing found the python skin......

After I got to Shirley Yang Kan, I didn't even know what I was talking about, and I couldn't support the fatigue anymore, so I fell asleep with "Jianwei" unconsciously.