The forest beneath the night sky felt intensely eerie and cold. The monkeys must have already retired somewhere to sleep; not a single one was in sight. Only owl-like birds occasionally sliced through the canopy, moving with the practiced grace of master hunters, swooping toward unseen prey on the forest floor and vanishing as silently as they appeared.

Holding the torch high, I left the cave, carefully straightening the small trees near the entrance that had been trampled askew, concealing the opening once more before starting to navigate back the way I’d come.

There had been no clear markers along the path where the monkeys had carried me—only crushed shrubs and flattened grass serving as sparse evidence of passage. I followed these wide swathes of laid-down vegetation until I reached a massive tree and came to a halt.

This tree was distinct. Ahead of it, the grass and undergrowth showed almost no sign of being trodden upon; behind it lay the messy expanse I had just traversed. I raised the torch to eye level, scrutinizing the trunk from top to bottom. There it was, on the trunk at chest height: half a scratch mark—the marker Xiaoshu had left. There should have been two, but the monkey troop, impatient with our slow pace, had swarmed us and carried us back. This explained the utter devastation of the grass ahead; while a single monkey moves lightly, skillfully avoiding every obstacle, a horde carrying humans has no such finesse. Where the leading monkeys walked, the others had to follow blindly, forced to crash straight through any impediment with no space to maneuver. This tree, truly, was the dividing line: everything behind me was the path taken; everything ahead was untamed, original forest. I had to follow the signs Xiaoshu made, or I would be hopelessly lost.

I recalled that Xiaoshu first used small stones as markers, tossing pebbles collected from the riverbank in conspicuous spots. Once the stones ran out, she began carving marks on the tree trunks—a double horizontal line etched every fifty meters or so. For the return journey, the order was reversed. I had to search for the double lines first, following the direction they indicated back. Only after passing the double lines would the small stones appear: the positions of two stones, one behind the other, were set according to the direction of our original approach.

Following the markers forward was smooth at first. After passing all the double lines, I had to crouch down, scanning the ground for the small stones. Truthfully, they would have been easier to spot by day, but searching for two finger-sized pebbles amidst the chaotic expanse of grass at night was like hunting for a needle in a haystack. I felt my way like a blind man touching an elephant, relying on instinct, sometimes finding one immediately, other times searching meticulously left and right for half an hour. Once, my hand closed around something fuzzy and plump. I flashed the torch—it was a spider. I jumped back, sitting hard on the ground, scrambling away. I looked closer; the spider lay motionless on the ground. I nudged it with a small twig, and it flipped onto its back, legs curled upward. It was dead. Perhaps it hadn't found shelter in time during the recent blood rain and had succumbed to the contaminated water.

Heeding that grim lesson, I never again risked reaching directly into the undergrowth. From then on, I held the torch steady, illuminating the ground, straining my eyes until my vision blurred and my neck ached, before finally stumbling out of the forest and hearing the gurgling sound of the River of the Dead.

The River of the Dead lay before me. The twenty-five-thousand-mile march was finally over. I grabbed my water canteen and rushed eagerly toward the shore, intending to fill it, only to see a woman sitting on a large rock at the water's edge, calmly combing her hair, clad in a light-colored dress.