Chapter 393: The Sleazy Old Man

“Run fast!”

Shui Miao saw the dark shadow behind the car growing larger and darker, and couldn’t help but panic, immediately accelerating and shouting at Lin Xue. Lin Xue turned around and saw a massive dark shadow pressing down like a small mountain, instantly turning pale with fright. She quickly whipped the white horse twice and fled north at full speed. Originally, Lin Xue had planned to find the old hunter Da’er Tu to inquire about the situation, but now she didn’t want to endanger others, so she changed direction and ran north.

“Damn it! This must be the entrance to hell!”

Shui Miao kept watching the rearview mirror and noticed that the entire Dantou Slope was emitting black mist. After condensing, the mist surged toward them… From the rearview mirror, it looked like a terrifying tsunami wall covering the sky and earth.

“Go! Go! Go…”

Lin Xue waved the horsewhip furiously while the white horse galloped wildly.

The two Tibetan Mastiffs also ran like mad. Luckily, they had been around for over a month and were often taken out by Lin Xue for runs; otherwise, they wouldn’t have been able to run that far.

However, as time passed, the two Tibetan Mastiffs clearly began to slow down.

Shui Miao drove the car ahead, stopped, pushed open the car door, and shouted, “Get on the car! Hurry up!”

“I can’t stop! Don’t mind me!”

Lin Xue’s horse was also fast; trying to stop suddenly was no easy task.

With two “whoosh” sounds, the two large Tibetan Mastiffs jumped into the car. They even jumped into the driver’s seat, forcing Shui Miao to push them toward the front passenger seat. The three small Tibetan Mastiffs, who had been curled up in the front passenger seat, took advantage of the chaos to squeeze toward the large ones, causing immediate chaos.

“Damn it, what are you messing around for!”

“Quickly move your butt…”

“Oh no, the tail! The tail!”

Shui Miao barely managed to close the car door and stepped hard on the gas pedal. The car jolted forward but stalled!

Shui Miao was extremely anxious and didn’t care anymore. He quickly pushed the Tibetan Mastiffs aside, restarted the engine, and slowly accelerated. This time, he dared not step hard on the gas pedal—if the car stalled again, it would be all over. As he slowly accelerated, he saw the black mist catching up to the car’s rear. When the car finally picked up speed, black things started clinging to the windows. Shui Miao looked carefully and realized these were not black mists at all but countless dark flying insects!

Could they be corpse-eating insects?

Although Shui Miao didn’t know much about these insects, he could guess roughly. These insects must have emerged from Dantou Slope; otherwise, what else could they be? Corpse insects weren’t scary by themselves. What was terrifying was their sheer numbers. If each insect took just a small bite, they could easily wipe out an entire wild horse herd, leaving not even bone fragments behind.

Shui Miao turned on the windshield wipers. As the car was swallowed by the swarm of black corpse insects, the sun finally broke through the clouds. Exposed to sunlight, the insects quickly fell to the ground, dug into the soil, and burrowed beneath the grass roots.

Five minutes later, everything returned to normal. The grasslands were peaceful and serene again.

But Shui Miao didn’t dare to relax. He knew those insects were still lurking not far behind. Once the sun was covered by clouds again, they would emerge from underground.

So terrifying!

Shui Miao never expected the tranquil grasslands could hide such danger.

Then he thought again: they had survived this time, but what about tonight?

Half an hour later, Shui Miao and Lin Xue returned to their base.

Without delay, they found the old hunter Da’er Tu and told him what had happened.

After hearing Lin Xue’s story, Da’er Tu was greatly shocked. He immediately told her these insects were called burial beetles, a type of corpse insect. They didn’t attack living people but were only interested in decaying corpses and animal dung. They would only awaken when they smelled large amounts of animal dung. Normally, they stayed underground and rarely came out, let alone attack people in large numbers. According to Da’er Tu, a large herd of wild gazelles would pass through Dantou Slope at the end of next month, leaving behind a lot of dung, which explained why the corpse insects gathered there.

However, the fact that a large number of insects had awakened and attacked people indicated they were affected by some unusual scent.

Da’er Tu initially speculated that the Tibetan Mastiffs’ body odor had attracted the insects.

Da’er Tu immediately went to notify the villagers to prepare burial bonfires to deal with the insect attacks at night.

Burial bonfires were a special type of local insect-repelling fire.

The main ingredients were cow dung, mixed with mugwort and wolf dung, which, when burned, produced thick smoke with a peculiar smell. Any insect that smelled the smoke would flee far away, and corpse insects were no exception. To deal with the large number of corpse insects, Shui Miao and Lin Xue thanked Da’er Tu and returned to their base. Shui Miao called Lin Zhiling and the others, informing them about the insects and asking them to buy a lot of insecticide to bring back just in case.

After finishing the phone call, Shui Miao instructed Lin Xue to tell Xiao Tang and others to pack their belongings and prepare to leave at any time.

Shui Miao had a vague feeling that things were definitely not as simple as Da’er Tu had said.

So many insects, swarming to attack people—could it really just be because of the Tibetan Mastiffs?

Moreover, the Tibetan Mastiffs were carefully taken care of by Lin Xue and had no bad smell at all.

Lin Zhiling and Xiao Shuang, who originally wanted to go shopping in the city and buy some female products, immediately bought one hundred cans of insecticide spray, some highly toxic insecticides, and even specially purchased two mist blowers after receiving Shui Miao’s call.

They returned at 3:30 PM.

After discussing, everyone felt there was something suspicious about the incident—it wasn’t simple.

Therefore, while the sun was still out, everyone drove together to the vicinity of Dantou Slope and installed two sets of infrared surveillance devices that could record at night in the bushes near Dantou Slope. They turned on the wireless receiver, confirmed everything was working, and then drove away. There were three sets of surveillance equipment in total; the remaining one was installed on the top of the yurt.

Before sunset, everyone finished dinner.

They packed all the items from the yurt into the car and gathered together in the recreational vehicle, ready to act.

If a large swarm of corpse insects attacked, they would drive away.

If there was another situation, they would act accordingly.

At dusk, two small figures suddenly appeared on the surveillance monitor. They rode horses to Dantou Slope.

“It’s Da’er Tu and Bao Shunfeng. What are they doing going to Dantou Slope at this time?”

Lin Xue knew these local herders well, especially Da’er Tu, who was skilled in hunting. Lin Xue had often consulted him over the past month. Another person was Bao Shunfeng, who raised many sheep. He was an old bachelor, and his gaze toward Lin Xue always seemed strange, which Lin Xue disliked.

“Maybe they are preparing those funeral bonfires…”

Shui Miao saw several bags on the horses they were leading and guessed they contained cow dung.

“Would they really be so kind as to risk their lives to help us burn the insects?” Lin Zhiling shook her head, thinking this didn’t make sense.

Xiao Tang pointed at the monitor screen and suddenly exclaimed, “Look! This is the garbage plastic bag I gave them. Inside… inside there seems to be our discarded garbage!”

“Yes! How could this happen?”

Xiao Shuang looked puzzled at the monitor screen. This was indeed confusing—why did they take their garbage to Dantou Slope?

Bao Shunfeng and Da’er Tu took the bags from the horses and mixed the contents of the plastic bags with dung, spreading them on the ground.

“Oh! That’s my underwear…”

Xiao Tang suddenly saw red underwear inside one of the bags. “Yes! This is definitely mine. I thought it had blown away, but they took it. They’re perverts! No wonder the garbage I threw away these days has all disappeared. It was stolen by them!”

“There’s mine too… mine disappeared yesterday!”

Lin Zhiling was also stunned.

The dung contained a lot of household garbage, including everyone’s underwear, and all sorts of things.

Seeing the surveillance footage, the young women realized that these two seemingly honest locals were actually perverted thieves.

Now, all their clothes were missing, all thanks to Bao Shunfeng and Da’er Tu.

“I get it! No wonder Bao Shunfeng always looked at me strangely. They must have planned this in advance. They did all this to use the insects against us! Oh! I figured it out—they must be trying to let the insects get used to our scent so they can eat all our clothes and leave us naked…”

Lin Xue’s deduction left everyone speechless.

With a group of women around, Shui Miao quickly stopped this speculation. “Let’s not jump to conclusions. Let’s watch first. They’re both old men; they probably wouldn’t go that far…” Before Shui Miao could finish speaking, he saw on the monitor screen that Bao Shunfeng had picked up a piece of underwear and was sniffing it intensely, even licking it with his tongue!

“Oh my God! Pervert! I’m going to kill him!”

Xiao Tang immediately shouted. Obviously, most of the underwear belonged to her.

Shui Miao was stunned!

Seeing Bao Shunfeng like that, Da’er Tu laughed and pushed him, causing Bao Shunfeng to sit down on the ground. Unexpectedly, Bao Shunfeng took off his pants right there, rubbing the underwear against his private parts while showing a very pleasurable expression…

“What a bastard!”

Lin Xue gritted her teeth.

All the young women looked extremely angry.

“Utterly shameless!”

Shui Miao couldn’t bear to watch anymore. He turned around and got out of the car.

Shui Miao was deeply shocked. It’s true that appearances can be deceiving. Who would have thought that Bao Shunfeng and Da’er Tu were like this!? Shui Miao felt regretful. Suddenly, he wished he could still have his supernatural powers, wished he could still read people’s thoughts. Only then could he better protect everyone and prevent them from being tricked by evil people.

“It seems I have no choice but to continue my cultivation!”

Shui Miao opened the door, walked out a dozen meters, stood on a high ground, frowned, gazed at the starry night sky, and made a decision in his heart.