Chapter 332: Into the Forest (12)
“If I’m right, the stone pillar is on the altar.”
With that, Everly led Sophia out of the tent toward the altar outside.
As they passed the shelves holding the belongings looted from outsiders, she casually grabbed two multipurpose tactical axes and handed one to Sophia. Both the poll and the handle of the axes had been specially reinforced, allowing them to double as pry bars.
They made their way back up to the top of the altar, where Everly pointed at the long stone slab lying horizontally on the platform.
She had thought its dimensions were odd from the very beginning. Nearly three meters long and narrow in shape, it looked less like a table for displaying sacrifices and more like a park bench.
Moreover, the slab was completely devoid of carvings or decoration. It looked plain, ugly, and utterly ordinary. The altar itself had decorative patterns carved into the stairways on all four sides, yet the very top—the place closest to the deity—held nothing but a featureless block of stone. The more she looked at it, the stranger it seemed.
Once the suspicion took root, the inconsistencies became impossible to ignore. Considering this was a cult film that thrived on gore and bizarre imagery, the puzzle-solving portion was never going to drag on for long. The answer was practically staring her in the face.
Standing before the stone slab, Everly and Sophia each took a side. They wedged the hooked triangular protrusions on the backs of their axes into the crack beneath the slab, shifted their weight onto the handles, and pushed down with all their strength.
Crack… Craaack…
The mortar sealing the base of the slab gave way. With a series of sharp cracking sounds, one corner of the slab was successfully pried loose. At the same time, an indescribably foul stench billowed out from the gap, nearly making Everly black out and vomit on the spot.
The gap on Sophia’s side was even wider. Gagging, she dropped to the ground and peered into it.
“Urgh… There’s… there’s some kind of hollow space underneath…”
“Let’s move it.”
Holding their breath, the two women positioned themselves at opposite ends of the slab, gripped the stone, and heaved with all their might.
A moment later, the slab slid out of place, revealing a concealed pit directly beneath it.
The pit was filled with putrid blood. So much time had passed that it had congealed into dark, paste-like masses, clinging to the bottom and walls of the cavity in cracked, tortoiseshell-like patterns.
Standing in the very center of the pit was a massive stone pillar, its surface draped in a sheet of turquoise-green serpent skin.
Despite lying in that filthy pool of blood, the serpent skin remained perfectly smooth and pristine, untouched by even the slightest stain. When Everly shone her flashlight on it, the turquoise scales reflected iridescent rainbow hues, so breathtakingly beautiful that it resembled an emerald crafted by nature itself.
Rustle…
A sudden movement came from her wrist. Everly lowered her head and discovered that the Sacred Tree Bracelet on her right wrist had somehow sprouted a slender, tender branch. Like a tiny serpent, the delicate shoot crept downward, extending its tip toward the pit below.
A thoughtful look appeared in Everly’s eyes.
She had worn this bracelet for years, yet this was the first time she had ever seen it react. Recalling the bracelet’s origins and the murals she had just examined, could it be…
With a hypothesis forming in her mind, Everly shook her head when Sophia, holding up a torch, asked whether they should simply burn the serpent skin.
“In the murals, the barrier appeared the moment the Carib people draped the serpent skin over the stone pillar. I’ll try removing the skin first.”
With that, she knelt beside the blood-filled pit. Holding the tactical axe with its poll facing downward, she used the hooked protrusion on the back to catch the edge of the serpent skin.
Rustle…
The axe had only just begun to descend and hadn’t even touched the serpent skin when the bracelet on her wrist reacted first. A lengthened branch shot out and wrapped itself around the axe handle like a vine.
Using the tactical axe as a bridge, the supple vine rapidly extended downward. Its tender, budding tip stretched straight toward the serpent skin submerged in the blood pit.
“H-Hey, did you see that? What’s that thing in the girl’s hand? Why is it moving?”
One of the watching survivors couldn’t help but cry out in shock.
Neither Everly nor the vine paid the person any attention.
Holding her breath, Everly slowly extended the axe forward. When it was finally within arm’s reach, the banyan vine touched the serpent skin at last, coiling around one turquoise-green corner.
A streak of emerald light flashed through the vine.
In the next instant, the vine tightened its grip on the serpent skin and ripped it away with a powerful tug.
“Riiip—!”
The sound of the serpent skin separating from the stone pillar was barely audible, yet everyone present reacted as though their eardrums had been struck by a chisel. Almost in unison, they clapped their hands over their ears, their faces contorting in pain.
At the same time, a thin azure membrane shimmering with iridescent colors suddenly appeared overhead.
It was like a gigantic soap bubble, enveloping the vast stretch of forest beneath it. But now the membrane was vanishing at astonishing speed, like snow melting beneath the sun or paper consumed by fire—silent, swift, and complete.
Within only a few breaths, it had disappeared without a trace.
“W-What just happened…? What was that thing in the sky?”
“No idea… Was it the aurora?”
The survivors around her cried out in alarm, but Everly paid them no attention. Instead, she lowered her gaze to the serpent skin now resting in her hands—the banyan vine had practically forced it into her grasp.
After depositing the serpent skin into Everly’s hands, the vine seemed to have exhausted every last bit of its strength. It rapidly withered and dropped from the wooden bracelet.
In the mural, the giant serpent had been enormous, capable of swallowing a grown adult whole with its jaws. The piece of skin draped over the stone pillar had been slightly smaller, yet it had still been large enough to completely cover a pillar three meters tall and half a meter wide. However, once the vine tore it free and placed it in Everly’s hands, the serpent skin shrank as well, becoming a narrow ribbon barely half a meter long.
The “ribbon” was remarkably light. It felt cool and silky beneath her fingers, almost soothing to the touch.
Everly had no idea why the Sacred Tree had given the serpent skin to her, but she instinctively felt it would prove to be something extremely important. She carefully folded it up and tucked it into the pouch at her waist.
Standing beside her, Sophia had witnessed everything that had just happened. She took a long, thoughtful look at Everly, convinced that the young woman was shrouded in mystery—as though every part of her concealed a secret.
Fortunately, regardless of whatever past Everly carried with her, everyone’s goal was the same for the time being. Sophia wisely refrained from asking any questions. Before any of the tactless survivors could speak up, she cut them off first.
“Now that the barrier has been broken, I still have a few signal flares left. Should I fire one now?”
The other survivors’ attention was instantly diverted.
“Signal flares? You had signal flares this whole time? Why didn’t you use them earlier?! Hurry, hurry! Fire one! We need rescue!”
“Yeah, use one now! Even if the rest of us can wait, the three injured people can’t…”
Everly wasn’t nearly as shortsighted as they were.
“Let’s wait a little longer. Before we call for rescue, we’d better kill all of those cannibals first. Otherwise, if the sound of the flare wakes them up, not only will we fail to escape, we’ll be forced into a hard fight.”
Leaving the settlement and firing the flare somewhere else wouldn’t make much difference. No one knew the concentration of fentanyl in their system, so nobody could say when the Carib tribesmen would wake up. If they regained consciousness just after the group left, they could simply follow the trail and catch up to them. Everyone would still be in danger.
The safest course of action was to eliminate every last one of the Carib tribesmen while they were still unconscious.
“I… All right. I understand. I’ll go with you.” After staring thoughtfully at the severed heads on the stone altar for a moment, Sophia gritted her teeth and agreed with Everly.
She had witnessed firsthand how powerful and merciless those tribesmen were. She knew Everly’s proposal was the safest option.
“Kill them…? You’re going to kill those tribesmen? Please don’t. Shouldn’t we just leave as quickly as possible? Can’t we leave them for the rescue team to deal with?” one of the male tourists said.
The bespectacled executive chimed in as well. “Exactly. You have to think about us too. If you kill people who are completely incapable of resisting, wouldn’t that make us accomplices? We’re all ordinary people—we have no right to decide whether someone lives or dies. Besides, those red-skinned people kill only because they’ve never been civilized. As civilized people ourselves, shouldn’t we be giving them a chance to repent instead?”
“…”
Everly had met all kinds of people. It was obvious to her that, for all the executive’s lofty rhetoric, he was really just afraid of being implicated as a “co-conspirator.”
Humans really were amusing creatures.
Everly would bet that when the man had been locked inside the cage earlier, he had hated those cannibals with every fiber of his being. If he had possessed the ability, he probably would have been willing to tear them apart with his bare teeth.
Now, after finally escaping the cage and standing just one step away from safety, everyone’s moral standards had suddenly shot through the roof. They spoke with righteous dignity, spouting words like human rights, justice, and civilization…
Come to think of it, hadn’t there been a scene like this in the original movie as well? It felt exactly like the sort of biting social satire Western directors loved to include.
“Save those speeches for the people the cannibals already killed.”
Coldly throwing the executive’s words back in his face, Everly hefted her axe and was the first to step down from the altar, heading toward the food-processing area in the corner of the settlement.
“If you want to get out of here alive, you’d better listen to her—and come help,” Sophia urged kindly after witnessing everything. She then turned to follow Everly.
But after taking only a couple of steps, someone suddenly slammed into Sophia from behind.
In the confusion, the signal flares fastened to her waist jerked tight and then loosened. By the time Sophia regained her balance and instinctively reached down to check them, the number of flares on her belt had dropped from four to three.
“Y-You…!”
Whoosh—BOOM!
A sharp explosive crack rang out from behind them. Sophia looked up just in time to see a brilliant crimson flare shoot into the sky before bursting dozens of meters overhead into a blazing ball of fire.
The dark night was briefly illuminated. Everyone below, along with the altar, the ground, the stream, and even the glossy leaves of the trees, was bathed in an ominous crimson glow.
Several kilometers away, a search-and-rescue helicopter circling overhead immediately spotted the signal. It turned at once and headed toward the source of the flare.
Back in the settlement, an enraged Sophia drove her fist into the executive’s face.
“Damn it! You idiot! You’d better pray you didn’t wake those primitives!”
“H-Hey… There’s no need to get so angry. He was only trying to help…” one of the peacemakers stepped forward to mediate.
“Shut up! I already told you that those tribesmen only passed out after ingesting fentanyl—they’re not dead! If you still don’t understand how serious this is, then come with me and take a look at what those primitives did to your dead companions!”
Without another word, Sophia grabbed the disheveled executive and forcibly dragged him down from the altar.
The remaining survivors exchanged uneasy glances. After a moment’s hesitation, they slowly followed behind.
“Urgh… Ugh…”
A minute later, they stood at the entrance to the food-processing area. Staring at the human slaughterhouse before them, littered with dismembered body parts, and recalling the warnings Everly and Sophia had given only minutes earlier, their faces instantly turned deathly pale. Their stomachs churned, and cold sweat poured down their bodies.