Chapter 30: "Small Cracks Become Big Holes"
Li Hang was short, poked his head out and used his beard to gauge the width of the stone crack, feeling that it should be more than enough to accommodate him.
Still worried about the safety of the little clouded leopard, he didn't delay any longer, lowered his head and got in.
After twisting and turning a few corners in the cracks in the stone, a fork appeared in front of me.
One of the small stone caves must have been excavated by pangolins, and the small stones left in it were scattered on the ground.
There is also a deep stone crevice that should have existed in the first place, and you can faintly see the depth of the stone crevice getting wider and wider in the darkness.
Li Hang looked at these two roads hesitantly.
It's strange that the last remnants of their breath, whether it's cats or pangolins, disappear into that stone crevice instead of a cave that is safer for pangolins.
Of course, he didn't know that the cat had already caught up with the pangolin when he followed here, because it had learned a lesson that it didn't try to challenge the hardness and smoothness of the pangolin's scales with its claws. Instead, he chased a few steps and crashed into the pangolin, pushing it against the cave wall.
The pangolin fled to the door of the house when he saw it, and was caught like this at the critical moment.
It lowered its head, slid its scales at the cat, and slid sideways, escaping into the crevice in the stone that he hadn't explored yet.
Seeing that the prey had fled from under his claws again, the little clouded leopard was extremely unwilling and chased after it regardless of it.
Li Hang only hesitated for a moment, and followed their breath into the stone crack.
As Li Hang went deeper, the stone crevices gradually became less narrow.
He ran slower and slower, looking at his surroundings with some trepidation.
The gap above that was originally not high has gradually closed into a one-man high stone wall, and the front has become like a passage spreading in the darkness.
Li Hang's footsteps gradually slowed down, and he found that the corpses of some small animals appeared from time to time along the way.
One or two were fine, but now the more the corpses appeared, the more often they appeared, and now almost every one or two meters there were a few corpses with only bones left.
To his horror, all the corpses looked like they were heading out of the crack behind him, as if they were still trying to escape at the last moment of their lives.
"Woo woo ho ho ~ "
From the depths of the empty cave came the hoarse cry of a cat.
Li Hang couldn't care so much for an instant, and ran in the direction where the voice came.
"Woo~~"
The voice of the little clouded leopard sounded again, with a hint of tremor and fear in his voice,
"Meow~~~~"
A sharp cry came out of Li Hang's mouth, signaling to the cat that he was coming.
It didn't take long for Li Hang to see the little clouded leopard lying on the ground, and behind it, a pangolin was lying motionless on all fours, with its soft belly exposed.
Li Hang hurriedly walked to the cat Xiaomi's side, quickly swept its whole body, and found that there was no wound on its body, but it was in a bad spirit.
He breathed a sigh of relief, and only then did he notice the surroundings.
In a dark cave, the ground is littered with animal remains.
Some of the skeletons seem to have been turned into bone meal because they have been around for so long, mixed with hairy dust, and condensed on the ground.
Occasionally, a few semi-weathered bones stand upright, firmly coherent with bone meal.
Because there were not too many bones, many rotten or non-decomposed corpses were piled up on top of each other, making the whole ground look a little uneven.
Other than that, Li Hang didn't encounter any danger, but what about the languishing cat Xiaomi and the pangolin that seemed to be dead?
The more Li Hang thought about it, the more strange he felt, and the hair on his back unconsciously exploded.
He didn't dare to stay here for a long time, he saw that the little clouded leopard seemed to be weak and couldn't stand up, so he hurriedly ran over, picked it up hard, threw it on his back, stretched out another tail from behind to wrap around it, turned around and walked out of the cave.
"Woo~"
When the cat Xiaomi reached this point, she still cared about her prey, and whimpered in a low voice and motioned for Li Hang to take away the pangolin.
Li Hang laughed angrily at Meow Xiaomi's appearance that he didn't forget the food until he was dying, and didn't pay attention to it at all, pretending not to hear it, but accelerated the pace of leaving.
He walked out along the way he came, and although he carried a small clouded leopard on his back, it did not affect the speed of walking.
As he walked, Li Hang felt that something was wrong.
It is said that after walking for so long, he should have reached the fork in the road before, but although there were fewer animal corpses along the way, he could look into the darkness in the distance, and there were still corpses scattered with no end in sight.
Li Hang broke out in a cold sweat in an instant, he tried his best to recall all the references he saw when he came in, and found that although the surrounding environment was similar, there was no trace of familiarity.
The cat on his back Xiao Mi had been completely unconscious, thinking of the pangolin, and then looking at the current state of the little clouded leopard, Li Hang closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths to keep himself as calm as possible.
His teeth clenched, and he turned and walked back to where he had encountered them, carefully remembering all the circumstances along the way.
After walking for a while, this time I finally saw the pangolin smoothly.
Li Hang once again looked at the strange scene here.
If you don't care about the corpses, the whole cave is like a winding tunnel, no matter how twists and turns, there is only one way in the end, so why can't he get out?
Li Hang did not believe in evil and looked for the footprints he left behind when he came over.
But this is even more bizarre, he can't even find all the footprints left when he just folded back, let alone the breath before.
The cat's breathing was getting weaker and weaker, and her body seemed to be starting to become heavy, Li Hang could only put aside the strangeness around him first, and carefully looked for the reason that might cause it to be weak in the little clouded leopard.
Although Mao Xiaomi and Li Hang usually use voice movements and eye contact, it is not a human after all, and it can't describe the situation it encountered to Li Hang.
So Li Hang didn't wake it up in a coma first.
Li Hang began to inspect the cat Xiaomi's body inch by inch, but except for a few small scars left before, he did not find any traces of its external injuries.
He approached the pangolin, which had been suspected to have been dead for a long time, to examine the cause of the pangolin's death.
The pangolin also did not see any injuries outside its body, but unexpectedly, it did not die, but fell into a coma like the cat.
Li Hang put the heart of his claw on its nose, and felt that its breathing was very steady, and it seemed that it was just asleep.
"Whew~"
Li Hang let out a sigh of relief, if the pangolin hadn't died, it was almost certain that the little clouded leopard, which was much stronger than it, would not be in any danger to his life for the time being.
He tried to walk back again, this time for more than ten minutes, but there was still no end in sight, so he had no choice but to return to the pangolin, which he named the "center point".
Looking at the cat Xiaomi and the pangolin who were still asleep, Li Hang hesitated for a while, put down the little clouded leopard, turned his head to look at the depths of the cave, gritted his teeth, and walked over.
He no longer had hope of returning the same way, and even suspected that the corpses that died on the road were like them, who strayed in and ended up trapped here, unable to return, and starved to death.
Although he doubted that the little clouded leopard and the pangolin would be strangely unconscious and he was completely fine, since he couldn't figure it out and couldn't get out, it was better to go into the depths of the cave than to be trapped and die here, and maybe he could still find a glimmer of life.
After making a decision, Li Hang did not delay any longer, and walked towards the depths of the cave without looking back.
As he advanced, the number of corpses in the cave increased at first, but after walking for a while, they gradually became smaller, but the bones of these corpses became thicker the further back they went.
"Click"
Li Hang's front feet suddenly fell into a pile of dusty bones, he didn't expect that the thick bones in front of him were so fragile, I really don't know how long these bones have been here, and they can't even support the weight of a cat.
Bypassing the pile of skeletons, Li Hang continued to move forward, the space of the cave was wide enough to accommodate two trucks in parallel.
The skeletons on the road are becoming more and more scarce, but occasionally I come across one, judging from the size of the skeleton, they have surpassed the lion and tiger.
Li Hang guessed that they should all have encountered some weird diseases or curses like cats and small mi.
The little clouded leopard is much more physically fit than the pangolin, so it can support it for a while before falling unconscious.
And the animal that can persist in walking here before falling into a coma must be how powerful it must have been in life.
Li Hang relied on these strange invisible attacks to have no effect on him, and trotted towards the depths of the cave.
Slowly, there were no corpses on the road, just like a normal cave, empty, only the slight footsteps made by Li Hang when he ran echoed in the cave.
Suddenly, there seemed to be a glimmer of light in the distance, and Li Hang hurriedly picked up his speed and ran towards the light source.
As Li Hang approached, the light source became brighter and brighter, gradually revealing its original appearance.
Li Hang stood at the entrance of the cave at the end of the cave with some disappointment, and the light source that gave him countless hopes turned out to be a few pieces of fluorite in the cave that emitted a faint white light.
At the mouth of the cave, a huge skeleton squatted there, as if even death could not make it bow its head.
Walking to the side of the skeleton, compared to the skeleton, Li Hang was not even as big as the other party's fingernail.
It had been dead for an unknown amount of time, and its bones still had a terrifying aura.
If it was another unconscious animal that came here, it might have been frightened when it first came into contact with this breath.
Li Hang restrained the instinctive trembling of his body, bypassed the skeleton that was still dead, and walked towards the cave.
When he walked away from the unknown skeleton for some distance, his body finally eased up, and his fast-beating heart calmed down.
"Huh~"
A translucent white shadow suddenly came out of the fluorite and pounced on Li Hang.