The soldier only felt that with just a few of his brothers beside him, just as he was about to speak, the soldier in front had already turned back and reached out to grab his hand.
"Second Brother Chen, why did you put out the torch?" In the darkness that surrounded them, the soldier had only just noticed. When he spoke again, he had already noticed sothing strange. Not only had the torches behind him gone out, but as he looked around, all was dark, even the peaks of Mount Lihei hidden in the darkness had disappeared. This, this... impossible...
In an instant, his arm was tightly grasped back by the soldier called Second Brother Chen. The fingers gripping his arm couldn’t stop trembling, and the soldier imdiately shut his mouth, the fear spreading contagiously. In the midst of the darkness, they seed unable to hear a single sound.
The soldier could only vaguely see a few dark shadows around him, and just as he was about to grab another soldier beside him to console himself, suddenly, a buzzing sound started approaching slowly from afar.
This soldier had grown up in the wilderness, and recognized at once the sound of wild bees, a sound he was familiar with from childhood and often accompanied his eating of wild honey. These wild bees were twice the size of dostic bees, and their stings were very painful; a swarm could be deadly.
Before the soldier could recover from the familiarity of the sound, suddenly, the buzzing sound had already rushed in his direction. It wasn’t just one or two, but rather a sky-covering swarm, as if all the wild bees in the mountains had gathered in one place.
The soldier realized the danger and was about to duck and cover his head while shouting out loud.
"Duck, it’s wild bees—" But in the next mont, a bizarre thought suddenly erged in his mind; it was deep in winter, how could there be wild bees, not to ntion in such numbers...
But before this thought could lead to any conclusion, the soldier felt a sting on the back of his hand, identical to the sensation of being stung by wild bees he rembered. He scread, and countless things collided wildly across his body in the darkness. The guard flailed his arms trying to knock away the bees clinging to his face; one of the bees had already crawled into his ear.
"Ah—"
"Ah—" The soldier seed to hear countless screams of agony. He started to run, thinking he needed to jump into water to escape.
But after just a few steps, the soldier’s movents grew slower and his face was covered with wild bees. His limbs flailed wildly in the air, increasingly slowing until the next mont, he slowly collapsed, his eyes swollen shut, his face swollen as big as a pig’s head.
The soldier slowly fell down, unaware that the soldiers with him also collapsed one after another in a bizarre, fearful posture, rolling into a wild ditch by the side of the mountain cliff, silent.
...
"Why has it slowed down ahead?" Deputy General Lin, walking in front, only heard the footsteps of the soldiers, the occasional snorts of horses, mixed with the sound of breaking branches and the crackling of burning torches. Deputy General Lin looked ahead into the thick fog and darkness, unable to see anything clearly.
"Sir, perhaps we have reached a bend, and there are also fewer lights ahead," said an attendant beside Deputy General Lin.
Deputy General Lin said nothing more, thinking there might be so truth to it.
The team continued to advance, but Deputy General Lin furrowed his brow as he suddenly realized that the soldiers from the Eastern Border who had been leading the way were nowhere to be seen. He felt a vague sense of unease but did not raise an alarm, handing his horse over to an attendant nearby.
"You six, follow to the front to have a look," Deputy General Lin nonchalantly pointed to a few soldiers beside him. The soldiers imdiately unloaded their equipnt onto the backs of their horses. Deputy General Lin had already moved a distance ahead, and the six n hurried to catch up.
Since Deputy General Lin was preoccupied, he walked very quickly. The rugged mountain path gradually made way for him. He walked faster and faster, and the smoke grew thicker, to the point where visibility was almost nil. They had torches, but logically it shouldn’t have been so dark.
The next mont, Deputy General Lin suddenly stopped in his tracks. Years of campaigning had honed his keen senses, and he faintly sensed sothing amiss in the air.
If one were to sll carefully, they would detect the cold sting of frost, the decay of flora, the stench of mire — similar to the usual scents of the forest, yet Deputy General Lin instinctively felt a difference. There was a hint of sweetness in the air, and the torches, where were they?
Deputy General Lin swiftly drew his sword; the iron scent of the blade filled his nose imdiately. Realizing sothing was wrong, he stopped and turned around cautiously. The six soldiers who had followed him continued moving forward till they saw Deputy General Lin draw his sword and paused in surprise.
"It’s an ambush—" Deputy General Lin croaked out these three words, watching his surroundings with vigilance. It was different now, not just the sll. The lights from the torches behind them had completely disappeared, as if they had suddenly fallen into a black hole.
"Sir, sir—" The six soldiers also drew their swords, surrounding Deputy General Lin in a circle with their blades facing outward, clearly panicked.
"Did you notice anything?" Deputy General Lin asked.
"General, could it be a Maze Formation?" one soldier replied with a trembling voice. It was bewildering to find such phenona typically seen in the Western Border and Northwest Border, occurring here.
Deputy General Lin did not respond, but he also suspected it was the Maze Formation. The question was, when had they entered it without noticing? He vaguely felt the sweet sll ca with the thick fog, so had they entered the Maze Formation as soon as they stepped into the fog?
"Don’t panic. As long as we stay alert and keep our wits about us, the Maze Formation will dissipate by itself with the dawn," Deputy General Lin said calmly, though his grip on the sword handle did not relax at all. If it truly was a Maze Formation, their experience dealing with it was limited, and those reassuring words were just to stabilize the morale of his n. Yet, at the mont, he was the one without any confidence.
However, his panic did not last long. The sweet scent beca increasingly intense, followed by a pungent sll of burning sugar that leaped into Deputy General Lin’s mind, reminiscent of when his ho had caught fire during his childhood, the scorched odor from the neighboring sugar shop reerging now.
"It’s on fire—" Deputy General Lin’s eyes were filled with panic. How could it not be? The flas enveloped a sticky liquid that clung to his body, impossible to shake off, leaving a vicious and nauseating scar on his arm to this day.
"Run, it’s on fire—" Deputy General Lin yelled out. The other six soldiers looked bewilderedly at Deputy General Lin, their faces filled with astonishnt, seeing no fire in the pitch darkness, and unable to spot any hint of light.
"Sir—" A soldier spoke up hesitantly, clearly seeing Deputy General Lin’s growing panic as he continuously backed away with a look of fright, desperately patting his body with movents strong enough as if trying to beat himself to death.
"Sir—" The soldiers watched in horror, unable alike to see clearly in the darkness, which only increased their fear.
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