Chapter 5: The Cave
For a while, the sky whirled, stumbling and falling, for several minutes, and I didn't know where I fell, if it was normal, I would have been completely blinded. But today I am so awake for some reason, but fortunately, there are two pieces of insect corpses sandwiched between my sides, only my head and feet are exposed, and the body fluids are strangely sticky, almost sticking to me.www.biquge.info And my sobriety at the moment allowed me to consciously protect myself with this soft insect corpse, and I fell all the way down without any injuries! In a blink of an eye, the cave was getting wider and wider, and at first I was still sliding down the sloping cave wall. Later, I was about to fall into free fall for a while and was cushioned by the cave wall, and after a few times, I finally lost the cave wall, and I became completely free fall!
I don't know how long it has been, but there is a whirring wind in my ears, and flying insects are constantly hitting me everywhere. It had been more than half a minute since it fell, and I thought it was really over, but my consciousness was very clear. I've heard that if someone jumps above the twentieth floor, they'll die before they can hit the ground. But I've fallen from a height of twenty floors now, but I'm not dead at all, and I feel quite leisurely, as if I didn't fall at all, and I don't feel a little frightened! Maybe I'm used to it as a ghost!
At this time, I was already thinking, so it was!
This deep cavern is the bubble I observed, and the space where the ghosts move outside the bubble is the earth!
I was thinking wildly, and I was enjoying the feeling of falling, and in the darkness, I couldn't see with my eyes, but I was observing my surroundings with all the senses I had given to my body. I suddenly realized that in a dozen seconds, countless insects the size of matchboxes had gathered around me, and the insects gathered more and more, and became denser and denser, and finally gathered together under me, giving me a force to lift upwards like a wave surging upwards, and I slowed down my fall, and finally almost stopped. The insects beneath me were finally slowly dispersing, and I felt like I was falling on a soft object. It was not land, it looked like the body of a mollusk, the size of three or four houses, and it trembled for a while under the last smash of my fall, like a wave that was several times slower to react, and flickered and rippled for a while.
I let out a sigh of relief, "Thank you!" I pushed away the worm corpse wrapped around my body, and simply cleaned up the slimy and disgusting bodily fluids on my body, which would have been unimaginable in normal times. I was wrapped in such a slimy thing, and I fell down for so long, and I was saved by an unprecedented number of large flying cockroaches, and I fell on a soft and unknown animal! I can only say sorry if my fall disturbed my brother's good dreams below. Although people didn't say anything unhappy, whether they were comfortable or uncomfortable, they just enjoyed it, and I slowly found a place to climb down. I reached the edge of the slope, and then slipped out unprepared, until I slipped out until I was caught in a crevice! It was evidently a gap between the bodies of two animals, and I struggled to try to move my position, and suddenly it occurred to me that if the animal was awakened by me, would it eat me as a snack, or jump up and trample me to death? For a moment I did not dare to struggle vigorously. But the animal didn't move except for its soft body and the parts that touched me that shook for a while. I moved them hard and they didn't respond, it seems that my thanks are in vain!
Seeing that they didn't mean to move at all, they let go of their hands and feet and tried to break free from the predicament. Below, there was another animal, and I understood, it was a group of cascading animals, all crowded one after the other, I don't know how many. Now I'm a little hairy, I'm just sinking deeper and deeper, and when will I get out? Will I be able to get out? I'm afraid I'll suffocate to death before there is no air! I'm in a hurry, and I stab these fellows with the dagger in my hand, and I think they'll think they're in pain, and they'll think they'll think their companions did it, and maybe they'll fight. As long as they are moving, I have air to breathe! But these guys were indifferent, and they were silent except for a few sudden shakes!
After thinking for a moment, I had no choice but to be unreasonable, and used a dagger to dig holes in these guys! I dug up with a dagger of mucus that spurted out like blood but was not red, and the soft skin was still quite thick, like cowhide, but the meat inside was very soft. In fact, there was no place to put the meat that had been dug up, so I could only dig out the pit of my feet and look up and up step by step like climbing a mountain, but fortunately, these fellows were honest to this point, and none of them were unhappy! There were a lot of cockroaches there, and I wondered how they were so friendly to me.
Then I suddenly remembered something, it seems that the big white worm is not the mother of these cockroaches, or the queen of worms, because my body is soaked in the body fluids of the big worms, and these little insects think that I am their mother to protect me because of the smell. Otherwise, if they come and eat me, I'm afraid that in less than five minutes with so many cockroaches, I'll be left with a pile of white bones! He slowly crawled between the two fast insect corpses, cleaned up the cockroaches, and wrapped himself again with the insect corpses without caring about the disgust. Actually, I didn't feel much nausea, and I was very strange myself, including the pain of the bumps and bumps I had experienced, it felt like I was tickling through my boots, and even the sounds I heard seemed to come from a long distance. Looking at the light, it is even more wonderful, there are many glowing insects in the space, although they are not so exaggeratedly bright, but they can actually let me see the form of cockroaches around me. Usually I am extremely disgusted with cockroaches, and I get goosebumps all over my body when I hold them in my hands, but today so many cockroaches surround me so intimately, and climb on my head and face, I don't even have such a deep hatred, what's wrong with me?
Through the dim light and the sensations of my body, I took in my surroundings. This is obviously a valley, so big! I'm afraid it's a mile wide and I don't know how long, and the lifeless things under my feet seem to be indeed animals, with skin and no hair, blood but not red, no heads, tails, and limbs. But there are a lot of them, and they are paved far above the valley floor, almost all of which are covered with the valley floor. Some are like small hills, some are folded, high and low like frozen waves, and it is impossible to see farther away.
I stumbled and fell for a kilometer, and then fell free-fall for I don't know how long, and I don't know how high this place is from the ground. And I only had a dagger on me, not to mention a backpack, flashlight, food, and even that folding shovel, and it seemed that I would spend my whole life in this dark valley. Is this hell? I can think of the only hopeless place in the world that can compare to hell!
If you think about it carefully, there is a vast Nenjiang Plain on the ground here, and there are large swamps, how can there be such a big cave underneath? I like to take a class in the field, and I have learned some theories about continental drift, and I guess it may be because the continent where China is located is like the one in Europe, when the Baikal line intersects, the Great Khingan Mountains are uplifted and the ground behind it sinks, merging into a valley, and the tops of the two mountains merge together, but there is a hole at the bottom. The ground above has been weathered and deposited over the years to form a plain, and no one knew that there would be such a large cavern underneath. So the creatures here are all left over from ancient times, and they are enclosed into a small biome. There must be quite a few creatures here, forming a food chain. There are low-level plants, and there are carnivores at the top of the food chain!
Carnivores, at least I haven't met them yet, I'm just worried that in a few days, no, after a while the smell of this insect corpse will dissipate, and these cockroaches will realize that I am not their mother at all, and will not hesitate to eat me all, and I will not even have a chance to escape!
That's it?
Now that I'm here, I'll figure everything out, and then find a way to survive, and then I'll find a way to climb up! What's the big deal, there's hope to be alive! Aren't there still those ghosts in the rock wall with me! By the way, those ghosts must have seen me, what will they do to me? I looked at the rock wall and sighed. Now the first task is to go to solid land, then light a fire and get something to eat. I still have a lighter and a mobile phone in my denim pocket, but the signal is completely non-existent, so I can only use it as a clock. And that coin. I was so moved when I thought about it, I didn't expect that I had gone through so much danger and that there was only such a thing. I made a detour towards the nearer rock wall, jumped from one animal to another, fell into the gap and crawled out with my dagger.
There was no space under the rock wall, and I squeezed and crawled, and it took me half a day to find some dirt to settle on, and the cockroaches still took the trouble to crawl around me. I finally stood a little higher and looked at the terrain in the distance. Those soft things were stuffed to the brim, stretching into the deep darkness. Fortunately, I was already standing on a piece of dirt, and there was land behind me, which is a bit of a stretch to say that it was land, because the dirt was on the bodies of those soft bodies, as if it was floating. As I learned more about the environment, I could see that the valley was originally filled with these soft bodies, but then stones and earth were buried on top of them. The place where I landed was a place where there was less dirt than the soft bodies exposed.
I wandered for a while, and there were a lot of plants on the ground, but most of them were fungi. There are a lot of vine-like plants growing on it, but the cliff wall is pressed against the top of the head like the roof of the cave. I noticed some of the plants on the wet rock wall, like moss, but they had grown to a very long time. I tried to hold on to it, slowly climbing upwards until the rock wall turned vertically into a slope towards me, and I found some crevices in the rocks. There were strange plants growing in the wet soil in the cracks, and gradually the plants became more and more dense, and finally denser and denser, until they became a jungle that was attached to the cliff wall. The plants stretched their branches into the space, absorbing the nutrients in the air, and I gradually buried myself in this vertical jungle.
The branches of the plant have no leaves, but they are relatively soft, not dry and hard, and some are fungi that grow into vines. I was bewildering my search, when suddenly an animal sprang out from my side, and instead of lunging at me, it fell down. I don't know if I'm going to fall to the bottom, and although there are those soft guys at the bottom, it's going to be miserable to fall down at such a high point. I was wondering if the creature would get inside the mollusks, when suddenly something like a snake sprang out and opened its mouth to lunge at me! I didn't know how high I was from the ground, because I couldn't see clearly, and I was afraid that I would eventually fall enough, so I reached out and grabbed a vine to borrow my strength. But the other end of the vine suddenly came back and opened a terrible mouth to me, with a few teeth on the top and bottom of the mouth, not teeth, but sharp to the point of thorns! As the bite came over me, I let go of my hand. The mouth bit down on his torso, and it seemed that it took a lot of effort to pull the teeth out of the hard torso. I looked at it carefully, mainly because I was afraid that the mouth would chase me again, but the mouth did not chase me, so it slowly hung down, four or five meters long. There is no tongue in the mouth, only a lot of mucus and dense barbs, and an empty tube in the middle. Because it doesn't have eyes, I'm guessing it's a plant that specializes in catching cockroaches that land on its stalks. At this time, the flying cockroaches that were loyally surrounding me alarmed many of these vines, and they inadvertently landed on the vines, and for a time many cockroaches were quickly caught by the vines. The cockroaches screamed and struggled in the cavities of the vines, and the more they struggled, the deeper they entered, and finally they were slowly digested by the mucus inside.
I've heard of plants that eat insects, but I didn't expect that near my home, there are such underground caves that no one knows about, and there are such strange and crazy plants! But I remember that such plants are all in the tropics, and my house is on the cold edge of the temperate zone, how can there be such a thing?
I am more and more amazed, the most amazing thing is that I came here without feeling stuffy at all, which means that the oxygen content of the air here is still good. There's no light, there's no greenery, where does the oxygen come from? The only possibility is the animal-like and plant-like soft bodies underfoot, which absorb energy from the rock formations and convert carbon dioxide into oxygen, I don't know if that makes sense. At this time, I looked at the soft bodies from a distance, and I saw that they were glowing green fluorescent!
Seeing that there are a lot of vines around me that are turning around to eat cockroaches, I must not touch those vines, and if I touch them, I will take a bite. I saw a lot of these plants on the cliff wall in front of me, but I couldn't get around it, so I had to retreat carefully. Just as I was carefully exploring and leaving the cliff, intending to move away from the cliff, I saw an animal on the cliff, still climbing left and right, and it turned out to be the guy who had escaped just now. The creature was as big as a rabbit, but it scurried up and down the cliff face like a monkey, and its body was wet and hairless, like a lizard. It jumped off the cliff in surprise by me, but grabbed the head of the vine and was thrown back onto the cliff. At this time, cockroaches collected the spores of fungi plants and flew to me, more and more, it seems that they want me to eat them, and their queen mother should eat this thing. I was afraid that if there were too many spores, I would choke them to death, so I scattered them. But I don't know what's wrong, the cockroaches are indomitable to send the spores one after another, and the spores around me are getting more and more smoke, and I can't help it, so I have to put the collar of my jeans up and cover my mouth and nose.
The creatures here are trying to find a way to eat, but what can I eat? I don't have an appetite for what they eat, though I don't feel very hungry. I suddenly remembered that I had eaten a little before I started digging in the ground, and by the time I fell from the tomb, it was already dark, and I hadn't eaten for more than ten hours, but I didn't feel hungry. In addition to the horror that made me have no time to notice the hunger pang, there must be a reason why I don't know why my sensory nerves became extremely weak. Or should I eat, I know that even if I don't feel hungry, my body must be hungry, what to eat? Come to think of it, I can only eat those soft bodies, but I have noticed that there are so many soft bodies here, why are there no animals that eat soft bodies? Is the soft body poisonous?
I dodged the smoke of the spores and sat down on the edge of the molluscs to see if there was anything to eat the molluscs. I remember some people saying that in the wild you have to see if there are any creatures in the water, and you can't drink water without bugs and animals. I looked at these guys, big ones the size of trucks, small ones the size of water scoops, one next to the other, with dirt and rocks in the crevices, and plants growing on them. I took out a razor and cut open the leather-like skin of the soft body, picked up a piece of flesh the size of my thumb, and picked it up with my knife to find a vine on the cliff wall, carefully touching the vine's straight trunk. The head turned back without hesitation, and the whole process took less than half a second, and the piece of meat was swallowed. But the meat doesn't move, it doesn't struggle, it gets stuck on the edge of the mouth when it enters the mouth, and it can't fall off and doesn't go inside. The vines swayed gently as if they were uncomfortable, but they didn't stretch to let the lump of flesh into the deep cavity. Just hanging like this, the digestive juice dissolves the meat after a while, and the liquid that has turned into it is sticky, but it still slowly drips out of the mouth! I don't think this will work, and I still don't know if it will poison this guy to death.
I dug up another piece to find the animal, and the lizard must have eaten cockroaches as well. After a careful search, he found that there were many of them even on the ground, so he threw the meat in front of a lizard. The lizard's eyes have deteriorated, and it only notices by the vibrations around it. The piece of meat fell onto the plant in front of it, and without hesitation, it stuck out its tongue and swallowed it in one gulp. At least the guy didn't vomit and didn't die immediately, so I had to follow it until it climbed up the cliff and caught the cockroaches all the time.
I was a little relieved that I hadn't seen this guy poisoned for a long time, and he was energetic looking for a companion. When I think about it, even if I am poisoned, it is better than spending the rest of my life in this dark and dark place. Well, eat! I just took out the soft meat and ate it with the cut I just made! I didn't feel sensitive, I didn't taste anything, but I just ate it. I ate more than a pound, and I didn't feel full when I arrived, so I felt that it was almost over, so I planned to find some water to drink. It's hard now, this space is wet everywhere, even the air is very humid, but I can't find a pool. I searched everywhere, even looking for a hose to understand the space.