During the conversation, Jin Zijin had already bent down to examine the bodies of the monkeys.
A local sailor spoke up, "When I first joined the navy, I came to this island once. Out of curiosity, I and a few comrades planned to climb the mountain, but we encountered these monkeys halfway up.
A few of my comrades were knocked off the cliff by the monkeys and fell to their deaths, and several others were injured by the monkeys. Those wounds wouldn’t heal and they froze to death. I was lucky to escape."
"Froze to death?" Xiao Jinyan grasped this key point, "How did they freeze to death?"
The sailor explained, "Indeed, they froze to death. These monkeys have poison on their claws, the poisoned person’s wounds gradually get frostbites, and once the poison enters the body, the whole body freezes and then they die."
Gui Yunxi, who had been forcibly brought here as a coachman, turned pale with fright and hurriedly said, "Officials, I’m just a coachman. I can’t climb such a high mountain. Please spare me, I’ll wait for you on the ship."
Xiao Jinyan chuckled, patted Gui Yunxi’s shoulder, and whispered, "Are you afraid?"
Gui Yunxi nodded hastily. He was just a common man, honestly earning a little money by driving; who had he provoked to deserve this?
"You have to go though, don’t forget the woman who poisoned you has already gone up. She used to be a proper young lady from a good family, they can climb up, and you, a fully able-bodied man, dare not? If that’s the case, then don’t bother getting the antidote, just jump into the sea and drown yourself, it would be less of an embarrassment for men."
Ever since Gui Yunxi complained to these officials about how Searcy had been poisoning him along the journey and coercing him to drive incessantly, Xiao Jinyan had scorned him immensely.
A grown man being bullied by a young lady , how pathetic.
"A woman?" Gui Yunxi was utterly shocked.
He thought, "Could the woman he’s talking about be Searcy?"
So fierce, how could she be a woman?
Xiao Jinyan scoffed and stopped paying attention to him, instead, squatting down to inspect the monkey corpses with Jin Zijin.
"Cousin, can you tell anything?"
Jin Zijin looked solemn, "The cold is intense; the blood is much colder than that of normal corpses."
Xiao Jinyan was slightly startled and reached out to touch the blood.
"Don’t touch!" Jin Zijin grabbed his hand, "The blood is also poisonous."
"Can’t touch it?" Xiao Jinyan asked in surprise.
Jin Zijin gently shook his head, saying, "If there are no wounds on your body, it won’t be deadly, but it’s best not to make contact since it’s poisonous."
"Then why did you touch it?"
"My physique is different, I’m not afraid of the poison."
Xiao Jinyan was speechless.
The marines, seeing the bodies scattered all around, were intimidated, yet they couldn’t speak up in front of Jin Zijin and Xiao Jinyan.
They had been told by the Great General to obey their commands during the sea voyage. They were afraid to climb the mountain, but if Jin Zijin and Xiao Jinyan insisted on going up, what could they do?
Someone gently nudged the sailor who had spoken boldly before, having witnessed how terrible those monkeys could be, he once again summoned his courage to speak.
"Generals, the monkeys don’t come down below halfway up the mountain. We are safe at the bottom, but going up there..."
Xiao Jinyan laughed, "That’s exactly where we want to go."
Everyone’s bodies jerked sharply.
"But no one has ever dared to go up, the fisherman who rest on this island only ever rest at the base, never daring to climb the mountain."