I woke to weak, filtered light and muffled voices outside the tent. It was morning, but the world felt wrong. Liang Yu and I pushed open the tent flap and stepped into chaos.
Lin Qiang was pacing, chewing on her thumbnail, her face pale. “He wouldn’t just disappear. He never leaves me behind,” she muttered. “Something’s happened. I know it.”
The others Zhou Mei, Guo Ran, Chao Fei were gathered in a loose cluster, whispering and glancing at the treeline. They’d already searched the whole perimeter: no Shen Jun.
Lin Qiang, usually so calm and put-together, looked almost wild. “He never would’ve left. Not without telling me. Something’s happened to him.”
Liang Yu tried to steady her, but it was obvious even he was rattled. “We’ll find him,” he said, but his voice lacked its usual certainty.
Someone murmured, “Could it have been a bear?”
All eyes turned to me. Flushing, I stammered, “Last night, I kept hearing something outside our tent. And that smell..... It was bad, like something dead.”
A chill ran through me as I realized: The stink was gone now. Vanished with the morning mist.
Nobody took it seriously. Liang Yu shot me a look, half warning, half embarrassment. “This isn’t the time for ghost stories. We need to stay focused.”
I bit back frustration. “But this is an actual wilderness you said so yourself bears are possible, aren’t they?”
Liang Yu rubbed his temples. “If a bear had taken him, we’d hear the commotion. Shen Jun’s too strong to go quietly. There’s no sign of a struggle, nothing broken.”
He had a point, but it didn’t explain the missing man.
I couldn’t argue. I turned away and stalked toward the forest but didn’t dare step inside. I just paced the tree line, peering into the gloom. Liang Yu followed after a moment, his usual cool now chipped around the edges.
He’d caught up with me and immediately started apologizing.
“I shouldn’t have snapped earlier,” Liang Yu said softly, his eyes lined with guilt. “Lin Qiang’s just...broken right now. I didn’t mean to lash out.”
I cut him off before he could go on. “You smelled anything today? That stink from last night?”
Liang Yu paused, sniffing the air, his face wrinkling. “Nothing. It’s gone.”
I stared at the leaves under our feet, rubbing my arms against the chill. “Yeah. Me neither. How could something that strong just disappear? And look there’s no carcass, no droppings. Nothing.”
Liang Yu, ever the outdoorsman, leaned down and really looked at the earth, at the bush, his eyes narrowing. “Actually......there are animal tracks here.” He traced a faint patch of disturbed leaves.
My jaw tightened. “Shen Jun’s?”
He studied the ground more carefully, frowning. “It’s possible. There’s no sign of a struggle, no scrapes, no drag marks. It looks like.....whoever made these walked into the woods on their own.” He shook his head, frustration creeping in. “Shen Jun knows better than that no one goes solo without gear in a place like this.”
His finger hovered over a deep, unmistakable impression as if pressed down by a great weight. “And this. You see how deep the footprint is? There’s at least fifty, sixty kilos in each step. Maybe more.”
A cold shiver ran down my spine. “I told you.....it’s a bear.”
Liang Yu looked at me, his face unreadable and tense. “Maybe, but.....this thing was walking upright. I’ve seen bears rear up, but I’ve never heard of one just strolling around on two legs like this. Not for this long, not this steady.”
Everyone except Fang Ming who stayed at the campsite with Lin Qiang grabbed flashlights and marking tape and entered the woods. The group’s usual chat was gone, replaced by short, tense questions and the constant rustling of underbrush.
Chao Fei’s voice was low and shaky. “I heard sometimes escaped killers hide out in forests like this. What if we’re that unlucky?”
My mind kept drifting away from serial killers. Whatever did this, I was sure, didn’t wear a human face , at least, not the whole time.
We searched through midday, our voices swallowed by the whispering forest. By late afternoon, the world dimmed under the thick canopy, our flashlights already flickering to life when we found him.
Shen Jun.
He lay about two kilometers from camp, sprawled in a ravine, obscured by a thick layer of deadfall so hidden, we nearly missed him. I only noticed because I dropped to tie my shoelace, and there, barely visible in the rotting leaves, was a hand.
I screamed a raw, terrified sound that tore through the silent woods. Liang Yu was at my side instantly. We didn’t speak. None of us did.
We skirted the gully and found Shen Jun’s body at the bottom.
His stomach was ripped open, organs scooped out, leaving a jagged cavern. His legs were mangled, muscle and bone exposed, scraps of bloody fabric tangled in the mess. The flesh was gone in ragged, uneven bites.
I gagged. There, on a femur, was a massive tooth mark not clean cut, but raggedly chewed.
The air smelled like blood and rot. I retched, the violence of it overwhelming, and turned away. Behind me, Chao Fei screamed, her cry piercing enough to send a pair of birds exploding from the branches above.
We stopped short, unable to bring ourselves to go any closer to the body. Shen Jun what was done to him couldn’t have been the work of any person. No, whatever did that was something wild, something from the heart of the forest.
I sank to the ground, shaking, and watched as Liang Yu his face ashen knelt beside Shen Jun’s body, took off his jacket, and gently covered the remains. That small act of decency in the face of such violence stunned me into silence.
Then, just as we’d begun to hope this nightmare couldn’t get worse, the stench hit me cloying, thick, rotting meat laced with something iron and animal, so strong I nearly gagged again. It seemed to radiate from the trees around us, swallowing even the blood and viscera at our feet.
“What happened? Are you all right?”
The sound of crashing brush and panicked voices echoed through the trees Lin Qiang and Zhao Shaoju rushing toward us. Liang Yu stepped between them and the body, but it was too late: Lin Qiang caught sight of Shen Jun, gasped, and fainted before she could even scream. Chao Fei and I hurried to her, propping her up as her body went limp.
Strangely, the moment they arrived, the relentless stench disappeared slipped away as if it had been waiting to retreat before witnesses. Or was I imagining it? Was this some trick of the forest, or was the unseen force behind this truly retreating from too many watchful eyes?
“Call the police.... Call someone.”
Liang Yu’s voice was barely controlled cutting through the panic, hands clenched at his sides. Just then, Zhao Shaoju’s voice cracked, trembling.
“Our cars .....both of them someone slashed all the tires. We’re not going anywhere. We’re trapped.”
I stared at him, stunned, as if the ground had dropped out beneath me. The realization crashed down with crushing weight: the cars were useless, our phones were locked away. No help would be coming. We were cut off, left at the mercy of whatever hunted the night in Pine Song Ridge.
Chapter 02
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