The search and rescue work at Niutou Mountain ended after three weeks. The outcome was regrettable. The 24-year-old young man Ji Yuan could not be rescued. The main cause of death was lack of water, that is, he died of thirst.
According to the two search and rescue team members who found Ji Yuan, it was a little dark and they could not see clearly, but when they first found Ji Yuan, he was still able to speak. After fainting, he was rushed to the hospital as soon as possible, but he had died on the way to the hospital and could not be resuscitated.
This incident had a significant impact on Niutou Mountain and Ji Yuan's company, but the ones who suffered the most were Ji Yuan's parents and relatives.
But all these plans and causes cannot be seen.
. . .
My whole body aches... I can't move...
This was Ji Yuan’s first feeling after his consciousness awakened.
My head was muddled, my thinking wasn't very sharp, and the only thoughts I had were filled with pains that felt like needles pricking my entire body.
I couldn't move, couldn't speak, couldn't see, and even my sense of the outside world was very vague. I just felt more and more intense pain.
I don’t know how long it took, but the torturous pain finally subsided.
After this ordeal, Ji Yuan collapsed on the ground like a puddle of mud, gasping for breath. After relaxing for a while, Ji Yuan felt something was wrong.
The touch beneath his body was hard, cold, and relatively flat. It was definitely not like lying on a bed. Instead, it felt like lying on the floor. The temperature around him was a little low, and there was a slight cold breeze blowing from time to time, making Ji Yuan shiver with cold.
But his body could only shiver spontaneously. Ji Yuan found that he still couldn't move. Apart from being able to breathe, he couldn't even open his eyes. This feeling was somewhat like the legendary "sleep paralysis", but it was also different. At least he couldn't feel any special oppression on his body.
After regaining his smooth thinking and physical sensation, Ji Yuan has been in a state of panic.
It was obvious that he was not at home or in the hospital. There was no human voice around him. If there was any sound, it was only the chirping of insects and the occasional bird calls, and a faint musty smell.
This made Ji Yuan wonder if he was lying on a road in the wild, or somewhere worse.
It is even possible that he was kidnapped by someone, drugged and thrown into a deserted warehouse.
I don't know how much time passed in anxiety. No people came or cars passed, there was only the unchanging silence.
Gradually, Ji Yuan discovered that his hearing seemed to become very sharp, and the high and low sounds of insects and birds became unusually clear.
Sometimes, if Ji Yuan was not affected by distracting thoughts and anxiety in his heart, he could feel more accurately where the insects and birds were when he heard them chirping, and even vaguely knew how far away they were.
However, although this feeling of outstanding hearing is magical, Ji Yuan is becoming more and more panicked and irritated.
Ji Yuan didn’t know how much time had passed, but he felt like a very long time had passed. During this period, no one had appeared around him, even if it was really the kidnappers!
In addition, he couldn't move his body and couldn't open his eyes. This feeling was more terrifying than being locked in a small dark room. In order to prevent himself from going crazy, Ji Yuan could only keep thinking about the problem, recalling and pondering in his heart what had happened.
He skipped the time when he was unconscious, and his last memory stopped at the two people he met by the stream. He could still hear their screams when he fainted.
The two said they were looking for a missing person for more than half a month. Judging from the uniforms they were wearing, they might be search and rescue team members. But why were they here instead of in the hospital
Did something happen in between, or was there something wrong with the two search and rescue team members themselves
Ji Yuan could only think and guess about these questions, and then turn his thoughts to other places.
Before that, the most important and crucial thing is naturally the strange chess game. Without that chess game, none of this would have happened.
If Ji Yuan was an atheist before, he has obviously changed his views now.
Whether it was the disappearance of the company camp after they came out, or the words of the two search and rescue team members, as well as the changes in his body in a short period of time, these were all facts that Ji Yuan experienced personally. The first two might have been falsified, but the changes in his body were real.
In other words, in the eyes of outsiders, I had indeed been missing for more than half a month, but to me, it felt like only a few minutes or even less had passed.
This reminded Ji Yuan of a story his grandfather told him when he was a child:
(Legend has it that in ancient times there was a woodcutter who went up the mountain to chop wood one day and happened to see two old men playing chess in the mountain.
So the woodcutter put his firewood and axe beside the tree and stood aside to watch the two old men play chess. One of the old men even smiled and broke off half a peach for him to quench his thirst and fill his stomach.
After watching for a long time, an old man suddenly turned around and said to the woodcutter: "You should go home."
The woodcutter then realized that it was getting late, so he reached for his firewood and axe, but suddenly found that the dry firewood was gone, and even the axe handle had rotted away, leaving only a rusty axe head.
Some puzzled woodcutters hurriedly returned home along the familiar yet unfamiliar mountain road. The appearance of the village had changed a lot, and it was difficult to see any familiar faces in the village.
After careful questioning, the woodcutter realized that he had actually stayed in the mountains for sixty years. His family members all thought that he had been killed by beasts, and his parents and elders had passed away long ago...)
This story was one of Ji Yuan's favorite stories when he was a child. It is said that the old men in the story were two immortals, and there is also a famous Lan Ke Mountain where the story originated.
Of course, the place where Ji Yuan and his colleagues went camping was not Lan Ke Mountain but Niutou Mountain. However, the ancient trees, chess game and rusty axe that Ji Yuan saw all corresponded to the legend of the Lan Ke chess game.
According to this, it is not difficult to explain why Ji Yuan felt that only a short while had passed, but outside, it seemed that more than half a month had passed.
Moreover, Ji Yuan's luck was both better and worse than the woodcutter's. The good thing was that he came out not long after, and he had been outside for less than a month, so his life had not been greatly affected. The bad thing was that there was no immortal to give him any panacea, so he had not eaten or drunk for more than half a month, and it was God's blessing that he did not die immediately.
Ji Yuan, who was thinking this at the moment, didn't know that his original self had actually died a long time ago.
But even so, it didn't take long for Ji Yuan to think about all this. He was soon overwhelmed by loneliness, panic and irritability again. Even if he forced himself to think more, the feeling of depression became more and more serious.
No one spoke, no footsteps, no one came...
The time is so long, no one, still no one...
As he became more and more anxious, Ji Yuan had lost track of time. He didn't know whether an hour or a day had passed. He could no longer calm himself down by forcing himself.
No wonder in some prisons in Western countries, being locked up in a small dark room is a severe punishment for prisoners. It is a serious mental torture for people.
Now Ji Yuan is no longer worried about who kidnapped him, but is completely looking forward to the robbers coming soon, even if it means just hearing their curses or kicking him.
Still no one, still no one comes!!!
"Someone please come!!! Someone please come!!! Anyone will do!!!"
Ji Yuan shouted in his heart countless times. What he feared the most was that there were no robbers at all, and he would be paralyzed in the wilderness alone, with no one coming except wild animals, snakes and insects...