Selene shook her head. "This time, we're skipping the supply point again." She traced an arc on the map, perfectly bypassing the second supply point's location.
I could understand skipping the first supply point, but the second time was harder to accept. "Without supplies, we'll have a hard time making it to the finish line."
"You think even with supplies, you'd be able to get them?" Selene gave a cold laugh. "Think about the previous trips—was there ever a shelter you could walk into easily?"
I fell silent. She was right. Whether on the high-speed train or the cruise ship, the shelters were always the most fiercely, brutally contested places. Even if you wanted to give up and crawl away in humiliation, that door always felt inches out of reach.
Jasper Locke had another concern. He pointed at the map and said, "To bypass the second supply point, we can't take the mountain trail—we'd have to cut through this 'Smoke Forest.' I noticed a warning when we entered the mountains saying that area is uninhabited, the terrain is treacherous, and there are large beasts roaming around."
Selene smiled. "Professor Jasper, what do you think is scarier in this forest—the beasts, or the people?"
"...People," Jasper admitted honestly.
"There you go." Selene put the map away.
And so the plan was set: we would skip the second supply point, cut through the Smoke Forest, take a wide detour, and reach the finish line without anyone noticing.
As our route changed, the mountain vegetation gradually shifted as well. Viewed from outside, the plant life was colorful and vibrant—mostly temperate deciduous broadleaf forests with beech, maple, linden, and birch trees. But the deeper we went, the more the species narrowed to tall, unnamed trees soaring skyward, their age impossible to guess.
At the base of the trunks, brightly colored mushrooms stood elegantly. Needless to say, they were all highly poisonous.
It wasn't until we entered the depths of this dense forest that I understood why the map called it the "Smoke Forest."
Thick clouds of fog rolled continuously through the dense jungle. From a distance, the entire forest looked shrouded in smoke, adding an eerie, mysterious atmosphere.
"Be careful, this fog might be toxic." I had them tear strips of cloth to cover their mouths and noses. "I've seen this phenomenon in the jungles of the southwest when I was little. The locals call it 'snake-rolling mist.'"
"What does that mean?" Jasper asked.
"Look at that fog—doesn't it look like a giant snake rolling around inside?" I pointed. "The locals say it's a snake spirit trying to transform into a dragon, breathing clouds and mist to create all this smoke."
Jasper scoffed. "A snake turning into a dragon? The locals have quite the imagination."
"It's not just snakes turning into dragons—there are stories of humans turning into dragons too." I launched into a tale I'd heard from a caretaker at the orphanage when I was young.
The story went that during the Cultural Revolution, they had struggled against a feng shui master nicknamed "Never More Than Five" because when he was young, he'd select grave sites for people and never spoke more than five sentences—and his readings were always accurate, earning him that moniker.
Back then, any prominent family arranging a burial would pay top dollar to have Never More Than Five pick an auspicious site. Strangely enough, every family whose plot he chose prospered with abundant descendants and growing wealth.
Never More Than Five barely survived the Cultural Revolution, but his body was failing and his days were numbered. People wondered—after a lifetime of pointing others toward feng shui treasures and making them rich and powerful, what kind of supreme burial site would he choose for himself?
On his deathbed, Never More Than Five called his son to his side and instructed: "After I die, bury me on the small southern slope behind the yard. No coffin—bury me naked, face up, no marker, no mound."
His son wanted to ask more, but Never More Than Five breathed his last right after that sentence. The son could only follow his dying wish and secretly buried him on the little southern slope.
Why secretly? Because the small southern slope was a desolate wasteland where wild foxes and lone wolves roamed—a terrible feng shui site that even the poorest families wouldn't consider for burial. That his father chose such a place at the end terrified the son of being mocked. And burying him without a coffin, without burial clothes, naked—was practically an outrage.
But the son followed his father's will faithfully. Though he couldn't bear to let his father go into the earth naked, he wrapped the body in a layer of cotton cloth before burial.
And so Never More Than Five was buried—no marker, no mound, not even a headstone. In the 1980s, when law and order was chaotic, a gang of fugitives captured his son and forced him to reveal his father's burial site.
The gang figured that after a lifetime of feng shui consulting, Never More Than Five must have amassed a fortune. They wanted to loot his grave for valuable burial goods. But what they dug up left everyone dumbfounded—something enormous filled the pit, stretching the cotton cloth wrapping to its limits.
They sliced open the cloth and found a dark, coiled mass reeking of fish and gore, its body covered in scales like a giant python. But this python had two faint horns on its head and two underdeveloped claws on its front belly. The fugitives were terrified and scattered on the spot.
Only Never More Than Five's son understood: This was the dragon burial site his father had found for himself. If not for that layer of cotton cloth in the way, he probably would have transformed into a dragon and ascended to heaven. In the end, he failed—human scheming couldn't overcome heavenly fate. The son could only cremate his father's remains in tears.
Selene frowned deeply at the story, but Jasper dismissed it. "The southwest has always had dragon totem worship traditions, just as the northwest has wolf totem traditions. So this kind of folk tale is perfectly normal."
I argued, "But the caretaker said he actually met Never More Than Five's son."
Jasper chuckled. "He was just messing with you kids, scaring you. And this 'snake-rolling mist' has a simple explanation. The dense forest here blocks the wind, so moisture builds up. When warm and cold air meet, it forms these fog banks. But there is a mild toxicity—these fog banks contain some miasma."
"Professor Jasper knows best," Selene said approvingly.
Jasper nodded humbly. "Knowledge is power."
Snubbed, I rolled my eyes and fell silent. A few more li down the trail, the fog grew even thicker. Suddenly, I heard rapid "sha-sha-sha" sounds!
No mistaking it—those were the sounds of someone running fast over fallen leaves!
We exchanged glances and immediately heightened our guard. A man burst from the fog, covered in blood, his clothes shredded as if torn apart by something. Seeing us, he immediately cried out: "Help—"
Before we could ask anything, he shouted again: "Bear—"
As the words left his mouth, I heard violent "sha-sha-sha" sounds from ahead—but these were so heavy that the ground beneath my feet trembled.
A massive creature charged out of the fog, lunging straight at the blood-soaked man.
I stared, stunned—it was a bear. A genuine, real bear. Unlike the ones in zoos, this one radiated a wildness more intense than any perfume I'd ever smelled on a woman, carrying the fierce aggression of mountain winds and wildfire. Its coarse brown fur stood on end, and beneath its curled lips gleamed two terrifying canines dripping with saliva. It bore down on us like a living wall.
In the instant of my shock, an arrow whistled through the air and struck the bear square in the chest. It didn't bury deep, but it was enough to hurt. The brown bear howled, rolled on the ground, then rose and stared fixedly at us.
I finally took in its full size—the beast was about three meters long, covered in dense brown fur, powerfully built with a humped shoulder. With each breath, its flesh quivered. I estimated it weighed at least 400 kilograms.
Needless to say, this was the apex predator of these mountains—nothing could challenge it. Honestly, from the moment I first saw it, my legs started to go weak.
Selene had an arrow nocked and was about to fire a second shot, but the brown bear gave a low grow, turned, and vanished back into the fog.
We stood rooted in place, every muscle tense, none of us daring to move.
I knew the bear had taken an unexpected arrow and seen our numbers—it couldn't gauge our strength, so it held back for now. It hadn't fled. It was lurking nearby, and at any second it might charge from some direction.