茶杯狐 -CUPFOX

Team Leader Li was panting as he ran nonstop, occasionally checking his equipment.

The surroundings were changing like images on a slideshow: jungles, cities, ruins. When the scenery finally stabilized, he was running along a country road with many others dressed similarly, their faces indistinguishable.

After an unknown amount of time, a building appeared ahead—likely their destination. An individual, face unrecognizable, was distributing food to those who arrived.

Team Leader Li took the food box handed to him. Upon opening it, he found it full of meat—he knew inexplicably, without tasting, that it was rabbit meat, braised. However, he wasn’t surprised, even when he noticed the distributor had a pair of rabbit ears, one long and one short—it all seemed normal to him.

He quickly finished the rabbit meat in the box, then focused on preparing for the upcoming training.

…

When Team Leader Li woke up, it was still the middle of the night. He needed to take over the night shift from his deputy.

Normally, there would be no danger with the equipment they had set up around their camp. No beast, nor poisonous insects would dare approach.

But since they had discovered that footprint and that cave, and considering the mysterious deaths of Host Xue and his two companions, they couldn’t afford to let their guard down. They were on high alert.

After taking over from his deputy, confirming the positions and statuses of those on watch, checking equipment, and patrolling the camp’s perimeter, Team Leader Li retreated to a corner, leaned against a tree, and began examining a digital map, continuing to monitor the surrounding area.

However, in reality, he was preoccupied with recalling the dream he had while asleep.

The dream’s content wasn’t particularly special—it was about mundane training routines ingrained in him from years of habit. He’d had such dreams in the past many times.

But what struck him as strangely eerie was the frequent appearance of “rabbit meat.”

Sometimes, he was eating rabbit meat of various flavors after training; other times, piles of freshly processed, raw rabbit meat would just appear beside the road out of the blue.

And just by glancing at it, even if the meat didn’t have any distinguishing features of a rabbit, he immediately recognized it was rabbit meat.

In addition to that, the person distributing food in his dream wore a pair of rabbit ears, one long and one short, further intensifying the absurd and eerie atmosphere. Various elements related to rabbits would appear around him.

He didn’t feel anything was wrong or strange in his dream, but upon awakening, recalling this unusually vivid dream, he was filled with a sensation of eeriness; like there was somewhere that was itching, but he just couldn’t locate where and couldn’t scratch it.

Why was it rabbit meat?

Team Leader Li couldn’t help but think of the crude rabbit wood carving they had discovered in the cave during the day. Could it be what he contemplated during the day entered his dream at night? Was the rabbit-related elements in his dream integrated because he had been wondering why the wood carving was modeled after a rabbit in the day?

The rabbit ears worn by the person distributing food in his dream were just like the wood carving—one long and one short.

Team Leader Li wanted to convince himself that it was just an ordinary dream, but the more he thought this, the more images from the dream and the likeness of the wooden rabbit sculpture flooded his mind.

The wood carving… it couldn’t be… cursed, could it? As soon as this thought surfaced in his brain, Team Leader Li forcefully cast it aside.

“I can’t scare myself,” he muttered to himself.

Just before dawn, he noticed Dr. Fang had woken up. She was inspectively checking the samples they had collected and packed with a worried expression.

“What’s wrong?” Team Leader Li asked as he approached.

He then saw Dr. Fang holding the wood carving, which was stored in a transparent plastic bag, lost in thought.

Seeing this, Team Leader Li felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He began to have an ominous feeling, especially when Dr. Fang turned her head and asked, “How did you sleep last night?”

Looking at her, Team Leader Li dodged her question: “Did you… have a dream as well?”

Dr. Fang slightly squinted her eyes, glanced at the wooden carving in her hands, looked up at Team Leader Li and said, “I dreamt that I was performing experiments in the lab. My experiment involved a pile of rabbit meat. After I finished the experiments, I cooked and ate the rabbit meat. What about you? What did you dream about?”

Team Leader Li was rendered speechless. As far as bizarre dreams go, Dr. Fang’s topped his by a mile.

He briefly described his dream, and Dr. Fang listened with a serious expression. When both of them looked at the woodcarving in Dr. Fang’s hands again, their perspectives had changed.

It was very clear that the common element in both of their dreams was “rabbit meat”. Even though their dreams seemed to be about everyday activities, the appearance of “rabbit meat” made everything strange. It was especially unsettling when both of them had the odd feeling that the “rabbit meat” in their dreams was somehow connected to the wooden carving.

When the rest of the team woke up, Team Leader Li and Dr. Fang separately spoke to their respective subordinates, only to find out that, including the two of them, a total of five people had dreams. In each dream, the element of “rabbit meat” existed.

Another common characteristic they discovered was the proximity of their sleeping bags to the wooden carving.

Team Leader Li and Dr. Fang both quickly came to the same conclusion. This was no isolated event or coincidence. There was something strange about the wooden carving!

He immediately reached out to Mr. Liang, reporting the situation in detail.

After Team Leader Li finished his report, Dr. Fang supplemented with a few more details, and they waited for Mr. Liang’s instructions. But to their surprise, Mr. Liang was silent for several minutes. By the indicators on their equipment, the network was functioning fine and the communication was still ongoing.

They exchanged a look. Just as Team Leader Li couldn’t bear his curiosity anymore and was about to ask if Mr. Liang was still there, Mr. Liang’s distinctively sharp voice broke the silence: “Apart from dreams, are there any other anomalies?”

After receiving a negative reply, Mr. Liang asked a few more detailed questions and reexamined the wooden carving via the webcam. Then, he simply said, “Bring it back.”

Wasn’t that the plan, to begin with…

Hearing this statement, which seemed rather redundant, Team Leader Li started to feel more and more unsettled.

From Mr. Liang’s reactions and behavior just now, it appeared he was also taken by surprise and knew nothing about this situation.

What exactly were they tracking?

Who or what did the footprint belong to?

What kind of creature had lived in the cave by the cliff?

What exactly was this wooden carving?

Why was it rabbit meat rather than rabbits or anything else that influenced their dreams?

The number of questions in Team Leader Li’s mind was multiplying. He was getting more and more weird ideas and suspicions. He didn’t watch many paranormal mystery movies or TV shows, but living in this era, he must have come across some.

Therefore, he couldn’t help but think of those things, about similar scenarios, especially while being deep in the wilderness, far away from human society.

He glanced at Dr. Fang, a woman who had always been decisive and meticulous in her actions. But now, her expression was unusually serious, and she seemed worried, even more anxious than him.

Obviously, for Dr. Fang, the “‘rabbit meat’” that mysteriously appeared in her dream seemed far more complicated and incomprehensible than the corroded tree, footprints, caves, dead birds, and the wooden rabbit statue they had previously found.

Looking up at the drone that was providing them with communication support in the high sky, Team Leader Li had a sudden thought:

Could they safely return home?

That night, after Team Leader Li and Dr. Fang had discussed, they decided that while camping, they would gather all the samples they had obtained in the mountains, place them away from where the people were sleeping and resting, and have those who were awake and on night watch take turns guarding these things. Of course, the main item they were watching was the wooden rabbit statue. Even though Team Leader Li and Dr. Fang didn’t explicitly point this out, everyone knew.

When Team Leader Li and Dr. Fang previously asked the others about their sleep and dreams, although they had privately asked everyone separately and had been rather tactful, their team consisted of just over twenty individuals, all of whom were close colleagues. They had either undertaken numerous field assignments together or were together every day in the same lab, their relationships were solid. Any peculiar events would quickly be known to all, with everyone becoming aware of it.

So, although no one had any strange dreams or were visited by “rabbit meat” in their dreams that night, the atmosphere within the team became even more eerie and heavy.

Even though nobody voiced it out, everyone knew there was something wrong with the “wooden rabbit statue” found in the cave, as it would make people have strange dreams about ‘rabbit meat’.

The wooden statue was a rabbit, but they dreamed of rabbit meat — they couldn’t help feeling creeped out whenever they thought about the possibility of humans being involved. Roughly translated, this would be akin to the phrase “sending shivers down their spines”.

As a result, everyone was even more cautious and alert during the return journey than when they were coming. The team members responsible for security were on edge, startled by any small movement or noise. Many team members even suffered from insomnia, which made their conditions even worse during the day’s journey.

This caused Team Leader Li and Dr. Fang a great deal of concern. They feared that the deteriorating mental state of the entire team would provide an opportunity for the eerie wooden carving and the possible existence it represented to take advantage of.

Team Leader Li even thought that if anything weird happened again, he would leave the wooden carving in the forest along with the locator, and have Mr. Liang send someone to retrieve it later. Even if this meant being punished by Mr. Liang and the company, losing a significant bonus, he was ready to do it.

He had to ensure the safety of his team members.

However, in the following days, although the team continued to be depressed and nervous, nothing unusual occurred.

On January 14, more than twenty days after they entered the Qinling Uninhabited Area, they finally returned to the outside world, meeting up with the rest of the personnel who had stayed behind, and left via transport vehicles.

From the back row of an SUV, Team Leader Li looked back at the wooden carving placed in the trunk, now sealed in a container. With a sigh of relief, he felt an inexplicable sense of excitement and anticipation.

He hoped that the company would discover something from the items they had brought back, and then send him back here for further exploration, or to other places to trace the clues related to the wooden statue, the footprints, and what lay in that cave.

Even though he knew there would be danger, possibly even situations he had never seen or even imagined before, he found that the sense of exploring and investigating the unknown truly excited him, an impulse that even the desire for money or fear of danger couldn’t suppress.

His gaze lifted, looking through the rear window of the trunk, staring at the mountains enveloped in the mist. He muttered something to himself.

…

Fast forwarding to the morning of December 26, Xiang Kun got into Chang Bin’s car at the entrance of the residential area, preparing to go to the airport to pick up Zi Cheng.

Upon seeing Chang Bin, Xiang Kun quickly updated his cognitive model and drew a conclusion:

He seemed a bit tired but in high spirits. Obviously, preparing for the wedding was exhausting, but the fact that Zi Cheng was coming and they would be reunited thrilled him a lot.

As Xiang Kun was about to chat and ask about the progress of the wedding preparations, his phone suddenly rang.

With the caller ID showing “Shiling’s Mom”, he pretty much knew what this was about, and he picked up the call.

“Mr. Xiang? Good morning, are you busy? I hope I’m not disturbing you,” Shiling’s Mom greeted him courteously.

“No worries, I’m just in my friend’s car on the way to the airport to pick up someone.” Xiang Kun replied with a smile.

“Mr. Xiang, Liu Shiling received the gift you sent yesterday. She loves it very much; thank you.” Shiling’s mom said. Sounding like she was passing her phone to her daughter, she prompted: “Here, you should thank Uncle Xiang yourself.”

Then, Liu Shiling’s voice rose, tinged with a hint of tears: “Uncle Bald, my mom is too hard to teach, I can’t do it!!”

“Hey? What are you talking about, sweetie? Weren’t you supposed to say ‘thank you’…” The chiding voice of Shiling’s Mom could just be heard over the call.

Xiang Kun could not help but grin, naturally knowing what the Little Fatty Girl meant. When he had previously gone to Star City, he had left another coin with “super sensory contact” for the Little Fatty Girl, asking her to teach her mother the coin flipping trick, curious if Shiling’s Mom could also derive some special connection from the coin.

It seemed as though Little Fatty Girl had taken the task very seriously, although now it seems she was finding it rather difficult.

Xiang Kun replied with a laugh: “It’s okay, your mom might not be good at this kind of magic. Later, Uncle Bald can think of another magic trick. By the way, how’s the gift I sent you? Is it useful?”

He had previously sent a pair of wooden chopsticks to Little Fatty Girl via courier – a gift he had made himself. Of course, he had also performed an “emotional infusion” on the chopsticks.

Little Fatty Girl was the most enthusiastic and focused eater Xiang Kun knew, so when he learned how to “collect” and “convert” the emotions of others, he thought of garnering the satisfaction and joy she felt when eating.

Immediately, Little Fatty Girl’s voice brightened, “It’s useful! I eat with those chopsticks now, not using a spoon anymore! I’m really good with chopsticks now!”

Xiang Kun chatted a bit more with Little Fatty Girl, then hung up the phone after knowing that they had arrived at her kindergarten.

Xiang Kun then sensed the conditions of the two coins and the piece of A4 paper on Little Fatty Girl, as well as those chopsticks.

The state of the three “super sensory contact” items continued to steadily decline. Clearly, Little Fatty Girl continued to derive something from these three items. Also, the “emotion-infused” chopsticks appeared to carry a slight and pleasant emotion, presumably originating from Little Fatty Girl. After all, she had said she would take these chopsticks to her kindergarten for meals.

Next, Xiang Kun quickly sensed each and every item to which he had established “super sensory contact” and “emotional infusion” – including a few items he had deliberately left behind when leaving Qinling Uninhabited Area.

In addition to leaving a bead with established super-sensory contact near the mutated spider rock cave to help with location in case of a return, he had also found a small piece of wild beast bone before leaving, to which he had established “super sensory contact” and intentionally left in the cave next to few birds – most of the vines original to the cave had disappeared with the death of the mutated spider.

Furthermore, he had spent some time finding a piece of wood and carving a very crude rabbit wood carving with an arrow. Despite looking rather rough, it had nonetheless completed the process of “emotional infusion.” The emotion he infused while carving was his focused mindset when he was making and researching rabbit recipes.

This wood carving was also tossed into the cave.

He was confident that if the people from Divine Technology were to venture into the mountains again based on their previous approach, they would discover the cave and likely take the bone and wood carving back with them.

At that point, he would be able to glean a great deal of information through these two items.

However, at the moment, there were no signs of the bone having been moved, and the wood carving had not elicited any emotional feedback, evidently having not been discovered by anyone yet.

May I recommend an extraordinary new book called “Town Wu Si,” which tells a story from the perspective of law enforcers?