Under the flare’s light, we saw that the mud in the distance was arching up like a hill and rushing towards us. We couldn't see what was under it, but it was growing so quickly that the churning mud was shooting out at a height that was as tall as a person.

The four of us started running, but Fatty suddenly stopped after a few steps and cursed, "Fuck this shit. If there’s something under the mud, what are we running for? Fuck it."

I cursed. The mud here was extremely soft, so it was useless to run and hide no matter how good you were. Fatty had immediately understood this as soon as he ran those dozen steps. Our feet were simply too heavy to move.

Poker-Face grabbed me and Fatty and pulled us forward. He could pull us out with one hand every time we got stuck since he was so strong, but he had no anchor and used up all his strength. In the end, we only managed to make it thirty or forty meters into the nearby darkness.

We left Liu Sang behind. Almost half of his body was stuck in the mud and he was crying and shouting, "Idol, save me!"

Poker-Face went back, grabbed him by the neck, and dragged him to us. He immediately kicked the back of our knees, knocked us down, and pressed us into the mud. "Don't move," he said.

He then picked up our flashlights, drew his body back in a huge arc, and threw one of them. The flashlight flipped in the air and then landed in the distant mud with its beam face up. When he threw the remaining three back-to-back, the light beams created a spiral band of light in the air. They eventually landed in the distance, creating three more dots of light.

As Poker-Face also squatted down in the mud with us, we immediately understood his intention. Fatty and I started smearing mud all over our faces, leaving only our eyes and nostrils exposed. I noticed that Fatty was still smoking his cigarette, so I smacked it out of his mouth and put it out.The mountain of mud arrived in an instant. We couldn't see what was in the mud because it was so dark out, but we could definitely smell a horrible stench. One of the county records mentioned that the sea market was actually a huge sea monster that lured people to the seaside with words and then swallowed them whole. I wondered if it was true.

At this time, I suddenly noticed that something was wrong. The mud we were lying on was actually starting to move. And it was flowing to the area right in front of us.

We all rolled over and immediately started crawling in the opposite direction, but it was no use. We were still being pulled forward. Fatty cursed and started shooting in the direction we were being pulled in. The bullet streaked through the darkness, but there was no sound of impact.

I reacted fairly quickly and rolled over to Fatty's side, pulling out the flare gun and firing it into the sky again.

We finally saw what was in front of us, and it wasn’t a giant creature hiding in the mud.

There was a crack in the mud in front of us that wasn’t wide, but it was very long and deep. The entire mudflat had split open for several kilometers, looking more like a small chasm now.

"I got it!" Fatty shouted.

It was possible the rocks under the mudflat had collapsed and the mud mountain had formed from the gas below rushing up to the surface. Now all the mud was rushing towards this crack, forming a kind of mud waterfall.

There was no use trying to crawl in the opposite direction."Mr. Naive, Little Brother,” Fatty shouted, “if the three of us are going to die here, I have something to ask you!"

"Listen, listen, listen!!!” Liu Sang shouted over him.

At this time, we all heard numerous voices coming from within the chasm. They sounded very close and very clear. Then, the ground fell out from beneath our feet and the mud swept us into the chasm. I fell for about ten seconds before I landed in the mire below. It felt like I was being assaulted by a ton of shit. Everything was dark and the air was filled with an unbearable stench.

"This won't kill us!" I yelled into the darkness.

Mud started falling on my head and I quickly rolled to the side, struggling not to be buried alive. I noticed that our flashlights had also been dragged down by the onslaught and were lying nearby. On the bright side, the mud in this area was thicker than I thought and the waterfall quickly stopped. On the down side, water was starting to accumulate. "Fatty, where are you?"

He set off a cold firework, illuminating our surroundings. The mud had washed him more than a hundred meters away from me. When I looked at him, I saw that the bottom of this chasm was now a mud river and there were rocks on both sides of the place where he stood. We had fallen at least sixty or seventy meters beneath the mudflat and were now in the depths of the seabed. The rocks were covered in silt and I could vaguely see that thousands of jars were densely packed together in the rock walls.

Now these jars were filled with mud.

The mud river was still flowing, indicating that this underground chasm obviously went deeper. Liu Sang also set off a cold firework on the other side, and I saw countless decayed wooden boats near him. There was layer upon layer of them embedded in the rock walls.

****