After Swapping Identities With My Archenemy - Chapter 62

Chapter 62: Living Sacrifice

As it turned out, the flushed face Jiang Huaiyi had earlier wasn’t just due to embarrassment or hidden feelings it was a genuine fever.

Her emotions were a tangled mess. She had rarely fallen ill in the past, but the combination of a major recovery, the harsh northern climate, and the intense physical exertion of running from bears had finally broken her immune system. She felt paradoxically hot to the touch but shivering with cold.

Shen Wensi, showing her characteristic foresight, produced medicine from a foil pack. After swallowing the pill with some lukewarm water, Jiang Huaiyi lacked the strength to think further. She collapsed into a heavy, dreamless sleep for the rest of the night.

When she woke, she was met with three pairs of worried eyes. Song Rong pressed a hand to her forehead. “The fever is gone. You really gave us a scare last night.”

The morning mist in the forest had begun to wash away the terror of the previous night. The others had already dealt with the bear carcasses. Mu Ze had briefly considered eating the meat but decided against it, worried that the bears might have tasted human flesh before.

They ate a hot meal of soaked dry cakes by the fire and began to strategize.

“Are we still going up?” Song Rong asked, unwrapping a sausage.

Jiang Huaiyi stood up, feeling steady enough. “I’m fine now. We have to go. We don’t know the exact ritual or timing, so we need to observe the others. We can’t let our team be the only ones left in the dark.”

The Disappearing Guide

As they climbed back up to the main camp, Chu Lianxue grumbled, “Rong, that guide your grandfather found is completely unreliable. She vanished the moment things got dangerous.”

“I don’t understand it either,” Song Rong muttered, embarrassed. “My grandfather said her family was trustworthy, but that was twenty years ago.”

Jiang Huaiyi sighed. Twenty years was long enough for a “simple village” to turn into a cynical industry. To the locals, these newcomers were likely just walking wallets—or worse, targets.

When they reached the top, the camp was in shambles. Windows were smashed, and rooms had been ransacked. Curiously, Zheng Ji was still nowhere to be found. Even more unsettling was the fact that the “new teams” Er Shu had pointed out earlier had all vanished. Only the veteran teams remained, many of them nursing injuries.

They found the woman in charge of the housing. She was disheveled, her cotton coat torn, slurping porridge with a look of shock.

“You’re alive?” she blurted out. “I didn’t see your bodies when I was collecting the dead this morning. I thought the bears dragged you off.”

“Where is Er Shu?” Jiang Huaiyi asked sharply.

“Gone,” the woman said, pocketing a hundred-yuan bill Shen Wensi handed her. “She didn’t come back last night. But when we checked this morning, her luggage was gone. Someone took it either her or someone else.”

Jiang Huaiyi exchanged a look with Shen Wensi. Er Shu had fled in such a rush she hadn’t even dressed properly. There was no way she would have risked coming back for a suitcase while the bears were still rampaging. Something was very wrong.

The Observation Deck

With no guide, the group followed the “veteran” teams toward the massive observation deck. Despite the carnage of the night before, a strange, fanatical energy gripped the crowd. It was as if the danger had only whetted their appetite for the “Dragon.”

The observation deck was a marvel of engineering, perched precariously over the cliffside, barely ten meters above the rushing river below. Unlike the flat area where the huts sat, this part of the river was narrow and turbulent.

By the time they reached the deck, the sun was high. Jiang Huaiyi, still recovering, was practically dragged up the final stretch by her teammates.

At the very front of the deck, where the structure jutted out over the water, Jiang Huaiyi noticed something she hadn’t seen from a distance: a small set of rails, like a miniature slide or pulley system. A rope hung vertically from it, disappearing into the mist below. There were no brakes, only a steering handle at the top.

The deck tilted slightly inward for safety, but there were no railings at the very edge. Curious, Song Rong leaned forward to see where the rope led. Chu Lianxue grabbed the back of her backpack just in time.

Song Rong let out a muffled shriek and scrambled back, her face ghostly white.

“There’s a little girl tied up down there!”

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