My logic was very simple. It was very important for to understand what I was dealing with.
Was it looking at with its eyes, slling with its nose, or listening to with its ears? Basically, how did it know that I was falling asleep?
Also, was it really an it?
I had considerable experience with this kind of thing. Grandpa's notes often ntioned a need to rely on your own experiences, but when it ca to the actual process, it was easy for people to forget the things they had previously learned and fall into a fearful state.
The zombies I had encountered before werent like this because they were more of a dead thing with conditioned reflexes. The thing currently in front of , however, seed to have a strange, evil nature. According to my grandpas theory, the situation I was facing wasnt consistent with my past experiences, so I needed to think in reverse.
What happened here? Was it really a zombie?
You might say that this thing in front of was extrely intelligent, but that actually wasnt the case. In fact, its behavior had a certain pattern to it that wasnt all that complicatedit just wouldnt let continue climbing up. It had an extrely oppressive presence, which it seed to be using to deliberately cause to have a ntal breakdown and jump from here. But you couldnt say that it didnt have any intelligence at all, because it didnt attack like a beast or make have a violent hallucination. Instead, it used a kind of depressing thod.
If everything that happened here was an attempt to lure to jump off the cliff, then I wouldn't find it so strange. After all, I had experienced so evil things before, and this kind of strange thing would happen in so places. Plus, the evil presence here had a tendency to make people try their best to commit suicide. There were many parasites in the natural environnt that would make the people they parasitized have strong suicidal thoughts. Those who witnessed such behavior would think that the people were possessed by evil spirits.
But I wasnt allowed to climb up any more, which didnt fit in line with this behavior. As I was thinking, I looked up at the void overhead, which was actually where the censer was hanging.
In fact, what would we do if we were able to climb to the top? Was there a hole for us to get out of here? Or maybe there was so kind of force that wouldnt let us out? It was also possible that there was sothing in the censer that I wasnt allowed to see, so this power sent a zombie down to stall us. If so, this Mr. Power was quite weak and powerless since it seed like he didnt have many thods at his disposal.
Following that line of thinking, if these zombies werent intelligent and were just dead thingswhich was in line with my past experiencesthen what enabled them to have behavioral patterns?
To be honest, if I thought about it this way, I couldnt help but think that the thing in front of was actually more like a paranormal phenonon, or
I exhaled a big mouthful of smoke and said to myself, or theres sothing inside these zombies thats alive and intelligent.
But this intelligence was limited. It was just like those snakes in the Snake Marshs ancient city that were more intelligent than I had originally thought. Or maybe it was similar to getting close to the nest of a large animal out in nature. Take bears for example. If there were cubs in the nest, the mother bear would stop you from far away.
When I thought of this, that strange sense of disharmony I kept feeling in my heart weakened a little bit.
The next step was to try.
Ok, I said to myself. I went over and sat down in front of Jin Xingsan without saying anything. It looked at as if it were waiting for to speak.
If there really was sothing alive in this thing, then there were several ways that it could tell that I was falling asleep. After all, animals' senses were much stronger than humans senses. Infrared rays, heat, hearing, and sll were all senses that could detect such a thing. I knew for a fact that there were so bats that could accurately sense whether animals were asleep or not.
Smoking would affect my sll, but ordinary cigarette smoke would hardly cover up any changes in the hormone levels in my body. If I wanted to forcibly cover up my sll, I may need more cigarettes.
Hehehe.
When I touched my pack of cigarettes, however, I suddenly rembered the past and couldn't bring myself to do it.
"Little Master Three, what are you planning? Jin Xingsan asked . You've been smiling there for a while. What are you so happy about?"
I cald my mind, patted him, and realized that my expression must have looked like Tang Bohu when he was fantasizing on the roof in the movie Flirting Scholar.(1)
"Help ask the people in your team, I said to him. I want a bottle of cologne."
"What's going on? You still need such a thing at a ti like this?"
"The sll of sweat is too strong and is making uncomfortable," I said to him. Soone behind him imdiately threw a bottle of cologne to , which I caught in midair. I looked behind Jin Xingsan but couldnt figure out who had thrown it.
"Is this why you were smiling for so long?"
"I thought of sothing happy," I said while patting it again. "You sll pretty strongly, too. Here, have so."
I sprayed a lot of cologne directly on him. Jin Xingsan was obviously greatly discomforted by this and stepped back.
I went back over to Fatty, had him block from view so Jin Xingsan couldn't see my actions, and then imdiately started spraying the cologne on myself. The sll was really pungent, so after spraying a lot on myself, I felt as if my nose was completely blocked. Then, I imdiately lay down and tried to go to sleep.
But just as I was on the brink of sleep, Jin Xingsan ca over and nudged awake while saying, "You can't sleep now, Little Master Three. I heard sothing moving around."
I got up, the anger in my heart from falling asleep and then quickly being woken up going straight to my head.
But at the sa ti, I also understood that it wasnt detecting through sll.
After that, I turned on my cell phone, played a clip of a speakers low, static, thrumming sound, put it over my heart, and tried to continue sleeping.
But it still wasnt working.
Jin Xingsan ca over again and woke up once more. I was starting to feel uneasy in my heart, but I didnt interrupt its nonsense and just let it finish before persuading it to leave. My body was feeling kind of weak now.
In the eyes of those who hadnt been bewitched, this was a situation where that thing was coming over as soon as I was sleepy and making a high-frequency papapapa sound beside , which would wake up. This was obviously a hunting thod used by a group of predators to consu a large preys physical strength. They would constantly interfere with the large preys rest until it was finally exhausted.
I sat up and patted my face. Is it heat? I figured that was the most unlikely thing since I was hiding behind Fatty, whose body heat should be masking my own. If Jin Xingsan could detect heat from his position, then he should only be able to see a mass of white light. Was there so other sensory ability I didnt know about?
Most of my knowledge ca from what I knew of the animal world. I didnt have a systematic mory, so now I was racking my brain without coming up with anything
"Pheromones," Fatty suddenly whispered to from the side.
When I looked at him, he continued, "People must secrete hormones when they sleep. That kind of thing is so precise that you can't cover it up."
I narrowed my eyes. It made sense. So did that an that there were black-haired snakes in these corpses? It was true that this thing behaved a bit like those hei feizi.(2)
But I had never t a black-haired snake with the hallucinogenic ability we had been experiencing here.
Forget it, were in such a desperate situation that we should just keep trying everything. But even if it is pheromones, how does it work? If it can sense the hormones I secrete when I sleepthen my movents are more obvious. And if it really senses like this, then it can find wherever I hide.
But there was a way.
I could completely wrap myself up in so way and hold my breath. Of course, like this, I couldnt monitor whether this idea was effective by falling asleep, so I could only take the risk and just leave directly. If I ended up being discovered, then I could just kill this one.
I took a deep breath. My exhaustion was making turn to extre asures and I wanted this to end quickly, so I gave Fatty a look, silently telling him to get ready to do it.
Fatty was also very tired and kept closing and opening his eyes as he tried to rest just now. After repeating this over and over again for a while, his eyes looked a little dark. Youd better be sure, his eyes seed to be saying to .
I nodded and then began whispering my plans to him.
****
TN Notes:
(1) The Flirting Scholar is a 1993 Stephen Chow movie. Info here. The main character is based on Tang Bohu (1470-1523), a Ming painter and poet, one of the four great southern talents of the Ming.
(2) If you dont rember, the term hei feizi first appeared in Sand Sea Part 4 Chapter 201 when those black snakes crawled down peoples throats and took over their bodies (Im still traumatized by that one chapter). Hei feizi just ans sothing like black flying thing.
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