Chapter 206: The Unfathomable Trap

If an ordinary person encountered such a situation, they would first panic, yell loudly, and then, without further reaction, call for help.

But Li Yan was not an ordinary person. Realizing that something unexpected might have happened, he put aside his joking demeanor and began to analyze the current situation more calmly and rationally.

If the six of them hadn’t cleverly hidden themselves, then they might have been ’hidden’. If they were ’hidden’, there should be enough people nearby to knock them out before they could scream, and there must also be a place to hide them. This would require a gang to accomplish.

Here’s the problem: this is a remote overseas island, with no roads apart from sea and air access. Although it’s been developed with quite a few people around, they are mainly concentrated at the beach, harbor, and resort areas. Regardless of who they are, they wouldn’t harm tourists who bring business!

Because of his special identity, Li Yan often magnifies problems, associating them with himself. This is a professional habit and a cautious mentality of sailing carefully to avoid crashing!

So, after feeling like someone was secretly watching him, he began treating the hidden people nearby as enemies!

But... is it really aimed at him?

Carefree Island was just recently launched as a tourism project, with Paradise Group setting the collective travel target here, which should have been decided in December. Li Yan, part of Heavenly Film, confirmed his visit only a few days before the holiday. He came here on a whim to hike with Sun Hui and others, which wasn’t planned beforehand. Their route here, him stopping to answer a phone call, everything happened spontaneously and randomly.

If he had enemies, there were better places to attack than here; planning this would be impossible.

With this thought, Li Yan relaxed a bit, not treating the potential enemies as imminent threats. At least, he hadn’t felt any killing intent!

After watching for a moment, he turned around, surveyed the area, and then walked behind the massive rock.

The height and width of the exposed earth are about two to three meters. Hiding six people here wouldn’t be a problem. Did they really come here to hide?

After approaching, Li Yan crouched down. He noticed thick wild grass on the ground, showing signs of fresh trampling!

They really had hidden here! Judging from the jumbled footprints, it must have been made by multiple people in a hurry and was completed not long ago.

Just as he discovered these traces, he suddenly felt the ground sink quickly beneath him!

The support under his feet disappeared suddenly, and his body was already falling through the air, unable to jump despite his efforts. However, although Li Yan hadn’t learned the lightweight skill of stepping with the left foot on the right foot for leverage, his superior reflexes and agility allowed him to quickly seize the opportunity, maintaining composure, spreading his arms and legs outward.

Upon feeling the sinking, he had already associated it with the most primitive kind of trap! A trap needs to have at least a three-meter depth to confine its prey. Digging that deep is laborious, so the area is usually not too large. His first reaction was to attempt to brace himself against the surroundings to avoid falling directly to the bottom.

In fact, even if it were deeper than three meters, it wouldn’t necessarily hurt him. But in this unclear situation, who knew if there were wooden stakes or sharp knives below? Since someone set up a trap, even a crueler one is not out of the question.

...

The whole process was swift, with Li Yan’s splayed legs already bracing against the soil on both sides, preventing further descent. Meanwhile, above him, light dimmed as the overturned turf returned to its original state, blocking out all the light.

Li Yan immediately took out his phone, using the screen’s light to quickly discern the trap’s entire structure. It was a trench-like trap, about one to two meters, running parallel beneath the large rock. His ability to split his feet on the opposite walls was thanks to falling towards the narrow face; had he fallen towards the wider face, he would have found himself doing a split right to the bottom.

Because the fall wasn’t deep or quick, his feet almost touched the bottom when they braced against the sidewalls. At the bottom, a chaotic pile of people lay; undoubtedly, they were Sun Hui and the others.

The light went out, leaving the inside dark again. Li Yan pressed his phone again to illuminate and check their situation. With such a trap, and with so many people falling together, they shouldn’t all be unconscious; some should be crying out in pain, even if injured. Could there really be spikes below that caused them to be silenced?

With six adults falling into a space over two meters long and one meter wide, it was definitely cramped. This left no room for Li Yan to plant his feet, nor was it easy to see what was under them.

His vision and observational skills were exceptionally strong. Having just scanned the whole scene, he now focused on checking their conditions and noticed something unusual. At the bottom, though without spikes or stakes, were several stones! From their fallen positions, it seemed their heads suffered varying impacts, possibly hitting the pit walls or stones below. The severity was unclear, but they were at least knocked out. This is possibly why no one screamed.

Understanding the situation below, Li Yan wondered why someone would use such an archaic trap against tourists. It couldn’t be meant for beasts, even if the island still had wild beasts; traps wouldn’t be set near stones. Besides, the area had been developed for years; either wild animals were sold off or became meals.

Moreover, the six may have fallen together, but he only fell after crouching to inspect; it wasn’t an instantaneous drop. Additionally, the turf above had reset. This can only be controlled manually!

Then, Li Yan heard footsteps above, approaching, and there were more than one. He quickly put away his phone, unwillingly lying down among them, pretending to be unconscious, waiting for a chance to uncover this mysterious enigma.

...

After Li Yan fell, several people slid down from the thick foliage of nearby trees. They jogged behind the massive rock, carefully lifting the trap’s turf cover.

They saw a heap of bodies in the trap, some supine, some prone, some folded, none able to move.

This was their prey!

"Do you think... they might be dead? We... killed them!" someone said nervously and guiltily in a particular dialect.

Others were silent for a moment before someone complained: "Weren’t you the one who suggested using stones? Killing them was your idea!"

"How can you blame me? I just proposed a safer idea; I wasn’t the one who decided..."

"Enough! Stop arguing!" someone whispered, halting their guilty infighting. "They’re probably just unconscious, maybe a bump or mild concussion at worst. People don’t die that easily!"

"What? Concussion? With their brains shaken, how can that be okay?" Although this explanation was milder than death, it still weighed heavily on them.

Concussions vary in severity, being a big or small problem, the person didn’t have time for explanations and directly instructed: "Hurry and pull them up!"

The others realized it was not time for fear, but to proceed since they were already down this path.

"I’ll go down! You help pull!"

"I’ll go down too!"

"Stop arguing!"

The one who seemed most authoritative coldly instructed them: "Move quickly; staying too long can bring trouble from nowhere!"

At this point, instead of concern, the others were excited, saying: "Old Kang!"

The one called Old Kang coldly replied: "Now, even though we’ve injured them, our aim is just robbery, just a bit of clothing. At most, complaints will arise without knowing who took their items, leading to some investigation, minor compensation, and that’s it. If you leave those four women behind, they go back missing four, can this end smoothly? Are you hoping for a massive island search, or helicopters hovering above?"

"Damn it! Forget it!"

"Shit, these people prefer style over warmth; in this cold weather, why didn’t they wear warm jackets?"

"Enough talking! Let’s move! Two of you go down; we’ll pull from above!"

"Haha, alright! I’ll let them ride my neck coming up!"

With the cover gone, they could see the situation clearly. Two of them went down along small foot-holds left on the walls. At the same time, another person calmly suggested to Old Kang: "Old Kang, they have cameras and phones. Should we exploit that? We can’t keep doing this!"

Old Kang pondered. (To be continued, for more Chapters, visit www.qidian.com, support the author, support legitimate reading!)