I hastened forward a few steps until I was side-by-side with Wu Jian, looking ahead. In the light, the path looked very ordinary, no different from the ones that we had just walked down.
I looked at Wu Jian in confusion. He pointed to the corner and said, "Look at that."
I looked in the direction that he pointed, but did not find anything. I felt even more confused.
"Turn off the light," continued Wu Jian.
I turned off the lights on the miner's cap on my head and suddenly saw a lot of green bright spots appear where there was nothing a moment before. I looked closely and realized that each speck was some sort of bug that was crawling around in an irregular way.
"What is that?" I asked Wu Jian curiously.
Wu Jian shook his head, "I don't know, but it's always good to be careful."
I nodded and planned to walk side by side with Wu Jian, which seemed like a good way to take care of myself, but Lulu grabbed my hand from behind and said, "I'll go ahead."
I frowned and tried to refuse. Although Lulu was much more skilled than me, I still thought that men should go ahead of women to protect them, especially in this environment.
"You can't go ahead," Yan'er said from the back, and then pushed the long shirt person beside her, asking, "Should you or I go ahead?" Her tone was as charming as Sister Hua's.
The long shirt person came straight over to me and Wu Jian in the front, then deliberately got close to the glowing bug.
The bug did not react, and the long shirt person observed for a moment before saying, "It seems like a normal firefly."
Fireflies should fly in the air and flicker, I thought. This bug seemed to be permanently lit, but the long shirt person said it was a firefly, so I relaxed. After all, I wasn't an expert on bugs.
We kept the same formation, with the long shirt person walking in front. The bugs didn't react when the long shirt person passed by, but they became a bit restless and crawled faster when Wu Jian and I passed.
The long shirt person told us to slow down because the road was sloping downward as we moved forward. It seemed that he was a good leader, because he always told us information ahead of time. Of course, there was not much information for him to share with us. The only two useful pieces of information so far were about the sloping road and the bugs.
As for the increasing number of bugs we encountered, I felt okay with their presence. Because there were so many of them, we could see the road without a lamp, and they didn't seem interested in attacking us. However, their presence also came with an unsettling crawling sound.
I touched Lulu's arm and said, "Look, it's beautiful, right?"
"Yes," Lulu answered simply.
It was beautiful indeed. As the number of bugs increased, we seemed to be walking in a channel full of moving green light.
The creepy sound from the bugs grew stronger and stronger, until the walls on both sides of the path had turned entirely green, with no sign of the original wall at all. Now, even if the lights were turned on, the bugs would still be visible.
"Do we have to go this way? These bugs are giving me so many goosebumps." Huang Xiaolong rubbed his arms with his hands to show that goosebumps were really raising up.
Wu Jian stopped to think. To tell the truth, I agreed with Huang Xiaolong's idea of going another way. There were too many bugs here. Even if it was beautiful, it still felt creepy. However, I wasn't sure whether the other paths would have just as many bugs.
"Ah!" The long shirt person in front shouted with a surprised voice. Wu Jian and I looked at each other, then sped up to see what had happened. I was immediately stunned and Wu Jian even screamed.
I didn't know how to describe what I'd seen and heard. We'd come to another world, like a portal made up of bugs.
The area ahead was full of dense trees. We could not see the edge of the rolling hills that spread out before us, and the sun hung high in the sky above the peaks.
I heard exclamations of surprise as one by one the people behind me saw the scene. Xiao Lingdang even wanted to run out into the trees, but the Qin beauty caught her collar in one hand and pulled her back.
Lulu frowned and looked carefully. "It's not really the sun."
I turned to Lulu, and she repeated, "It's not the real sun, or I would have felt it."
She was right. Lulu was a ghost, and ghosts should not walk in sunlight. I turned to Sister Hua and she nodded.
"So is this an illusion?" Wu Jian expressed doubt, but before anyone answered, Huang Xiaolong rejected that possibility.
Huang Xiaolong pulled a blade of grass from the ground and crushed it with his fingers. "It would not seem so real if this were just an illusion. Alas, Brother Jian. Why do I feel I should go back to school again every time I'm with you?"
Wu Jian did not answer Huang Xiaolong's playful question. He instead copied Huang Xiaolong, ripping up a blade of grass just to observe it. His eyes looked shocked. "Can this be real?"
I saw the grass go to pieces in Wu Jian's hand before staining them with a green juice. Could this be fake? Lulu and Sister Hua had made me think everything was a hallucination, but now I was uncertain.
The long shirt person looked around. "Now what should we do? I suggest we go back and choose another way. It's weird here."
I had already been planning to retreat, but this place seemed even stranger knowing a ghost thought it was strange. While I was planning how to persuade Wu Jian to change course, the forest suddenly shook in the distance. There seemed to be something big moving out there.
Just as everyone's eyes looked in that direction, all of a sudden, an earth-shaking roar rang out. I had heard the sounds of tigers and lions at the zoo, but compared with this sound, the roars of tigers and lions were like newborn kittens.
We all looked at each other. Huang Xiaolong swallowed his saliva and said, "Brother Jian, let's change paths."
Wu Jian nodded slowly. It seemed that he was frightened by the roar as well. As we started to turn back, the long shirt person suddenly cried with surprise.
"Oh, my God."
Looking over my shoulder, I saw a huge bird, larger than an airplane, rise out of the mountains, its wings like clouds drooping in the sky.