Clinging to the vines, I quickly drafted a complete escape plan in my head.
But when I'd rested enough and was about to carry out the first step, I suddenly felt like crying.
Back at the shelter, when I'd watched others slide down from the rooftop, I used to curse in my heart at anyone who moved too slowly, thinking they were as stupid as pigs.
But that was only as a bystander.
Only now did I understand how impossibly hard it was when you had to do it yourself.
And what they had been fighting against was friction, while I was fighting against gravity.
The moment I tried to pull myself upward, the vines burned my palms raw and hot with pain.
Zheng Yiyi lay motionless on my shoulder.
If not for the faint tremble of his little body, I would've thought he'd drowned already.
Being soaked in water for so long was absolute torture.
The weightlessness was maddening, leaving me restless and anxious.
I tilted my head back at the tree above, clenched my teeth, and forced myself to climb.
It was only about ten meters.
Under normal circumstances, running back and forth over that distance would take just a few seconds.
Defying physics with sheer stubbornness, I gave myself a fierce pep talk.
After stuffing Yiyi into my hoodie's hood, I moved with difficulty to a spot where the vines grew thick, twisted several together into a thicker rope-like bundle for stability, and tied them tighter with another vine.
Taking a deep breath, I gripped the vines hard with both hands and began to climb.
The beginning was the hardest.
The vines didn't reach down into the water, so I had to rely entirely on my arms to pull upward.
The surface of the vines was rough and uneven, burning my hands with friction, but at least that also gave me a firmer grip.
Grunting with effort, I finally hauled myself clear of the water.
With my legs able to hook around the vines, the strain on my arms lessened.
Luckily, the bundle I tied was thick enough that clamping my legs around it held me steady.
After a brief pause to catch my breath, I resolved to make a single, unbroken push to the top.
As the old saying goes: strike while the iron is hot—once, then weaker the second time, then exhausted the third.
In a climb like this, pushing your body to the limit, you can't afford to rest too long.
Stop too much, and you'll only feel weaker and weaker until you can't go on at all.
With my legs supporting me, the climb became noticeably easier.
Yiyi, who had been poking his head out curiously at first, soon shrank back into the hood as we climbed higher, too scared to move.
By the time I'd climbed seven or eight meters, the vines here were looser than below, since I was close to their roots where they spread out.
With no other choice, I grabbed a few of the thicker-looking ones by hand and prayed they wouldn't snap.
My worry made me quicken my movements, and little by little, I finally managed to reach the trunk of the crooked-neck tree.
The moment I hugged it, my entire body went limp with relief.
Even the roaring of the torrent below couldn't stir any tension in me anymore.
I clung to the crooked trunk, still suspended halfway up the cliff.
I knew it wasn't the time to rest, but my muscles had long since stopped listening to me.
I had no choice but to hang there and recover.
Tilting my head, I squinted at the rushing current in the distance, wondering where all this water flowed.
I remembered a survival program I'd once seen on TV—such torrents usually formed after heavy rains and often ran into rivers, eventually merging into the sea or other larger waterways.
Just as my thoughts drifted off, a strange hiss hiss suddenly reached my ears.
At first, I didn't react.
But when I heard it again, I forced my stiff neck to turn toward the sound.
That one glance almost made me slip and fall back into the torrent below.
Barely two meters ahead of me, a snake with a colorful, pointed head was flicking its tongue, creeping toward me hesitantly.
The instant my eyes locked on it, my blood turned to ice, and my entire body froze solid on the spot.
Snakes, rats, cockroaches—almost no girl isn't afraid of these things.
My fear of snakes can be said to have reached the peak of my nerves.
Even just seeing them on TV usually gives me goosebumps all over.
I had never once imagined that one day, out here in the depths of the mountains, I would run into one in such a miserable state, and all alone.
Knowledge about snakes was taught back in elementary school science classes.
My eyes were locked dead-on a flower-patterned snake, coiled around a tree just two meters away, seemingly locked in a standoff with me.
Its body was bright, its head sharply pointed—damn it, this was a venomous snake!
Inside my hat, Yiyi had no idea what was going on outside.
Probably noticing that I hadn't moved for a long time, it was starting to get restless.
After a couple of pushes, I felt it poking its head out.
My heart skipped a beat.
I suddenly thought—what if its sudden movement drew the snake's attention?
I figured the only reason the snake was holding its ground against me was because my size far exceeded its own.
As long as it didn't sense that I posed a threat, it should eventually slither off on its own.
I stared hard at the snake again—thankfully, Yiyi's appearance hadn't triggered its tension.
Still coiled around the tree, its cold eyes remained fixed on me, unblinking.
I couldn't help but let out a tiny breath of relief—
but in that instant, a very wrong thought struck me.
Even though spring had fully arrived, the weather was still chilly, with occasional cold snaps.
Normally, snakes should still be hibernating, shouldn't they?
Yet here was this one, patiently waiting without moving an inch… Could it be… hungry!?
Almost as if it understood the thought in my mind, the snake that had been still for so long suddenly began to slither down the trunk toward me, right as my conclusion settled in my head.
In an instant, goosebumps erupted all over my body once again.
My first instinct was to scream—but I knew now was absolutely not the time for that.
I clenched my teeth and forced myself to hold it in.
At that moment, Yiyi—who had been cowering all this time—suddenly turned fierce.
Perched on my shoulder, it bared its teeth and let out a low growl at the snake, like a little lion exuding an unexpected ferocity.
I had never seen Yiyi make that expression before.
My body, which had been trembling uncontrollably, was miraculously infected by its courage.
The fear in my chest eased a great deal, and I locked my eyes firmly on the flower snake again.
It had stopped once more, tongue flicking in and out, and its eyes were clouded and murky.
I couldn't shake the feeling that it was staring at me with a sinister chill.
Even though I knew snakes have poor eyesight and usually rely on their tongue sensors to detect heat and pinpoint their target, those eyes still made my whole body crawl with discomfort.
Yiyi kept growling from its throat.
From the corner of my eye, I noticed that the fur on its soaked, matted body seemed to stand upright slightly.
But in just that brief moment of distraction, when I turned my gaze back to the snake, it was already moving toward me again.
By now, the distance between us was only a few dozen centimeters.
I knew that snakes—especially venomous ones—always had the habit of launching a sudden strike when you were within their attack range.
I secretly clenched my fists.
I had just escaped the mouths of several walkers and barely crawled out of the water alive—how could I let myself be taken down by some little thing like this at the very last moment?
Staring at the flower snake slithering closer and closer, my temples suddenly throbbed violently.
I gritted my teeth hard, roughly calculated where its seven-inch spot would be, and then, without waiting for my brain to fully react, my hand shot out at lightning speed, grabbed it, and almost instinctively flung the snake straight into the rushing waters below.
Everything happened in an instant.
When I heard the crisp splash of it hitting the water below, I froze for a moment, staring at the hand that had just tossed the snake away.
The slick, cold, clammy feeling still clung heavily to my skin.
I flexed my fist, and the slippery sensation only grew stronger, immediately sending a wave of nausea surging through my chest.
In a hurry, I yanked my hand back, scrubbing it hard against my jacket sleeve.
Finally, I shoved the now-calmer Yiyi back into my hoodie pocket, tore off my jacket, and rubbed my hand furiously.
I had no idea how long I kept wiping, only that by the time I stopped, my hand was sore and swollen with a prickling sting.
After that little accident, I didn't want to stay on that tree for even another minute.
I tied the jacket around my waist, steadied my nerves, and quickly hugged the trunk, inching my way forward.
The moment my feet landed solidly on the ground, my mind still felt dazed.
Listening to the rushing water beneath the cliff, I had the surreal sense of having just lived through another lifetime.
I didn't dare linger near the water's edge.
And with walkers roaming these mountains, it wasn't truly safe here anyway.
Without further delay, I turned and headed into the woods.
But after only a few steps, another maddening realization hit me.
After all that frantic running and fleeing before, plus drifting in the rapids for so long, I now had no idea where I even was.
Standing there in panic, I looked around in all directions, only to find nothing but unfamiliar scenery.
To be precise, though, this mountain looked almost the same everywhere—so "familiar" or "unfamiliar" didn't even matter.
The result was the same: I couldn't recognize a single landmark.
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