Li Cu was suspended from the crane of a truck’s rear cargo bed. The truck was loaded with various goods and construction machinery, and the one he was hanging from had a crane in the cargo bed. The crane’s arm extended outwards, about three or four meters long, clearly intended for lifting small machinery. He was hanging under the crane’s arm, just a hand’s breadth above the sand.
Ropes bound his upper limbs tightly, his hands and arms completely secured. He wiggled his feet, turning his body a full 180 degrees, and then he saw Black Glasses lying on top of the truck, holding a pair of binoculars aimed at the distant sand dunes.
He paused, recalling the earlier moment at the archaeological team’s resting camp when Wu Xie had asked him to take photos. He had captured a particularly strange shadow that looked like a woman. He also remembered Black Glasses’ disguise before he was recognized last night and wondered if it was this birdman lying on the sand dune that he had accidentally photographed.
He struggled a bit and recalled what Black Glasses had said last night, a chill running down his back. Clearly, this person was not joking. From their first encounter to his current actions, he appeared to be carefree and frivolous, but he was far more ruthless than Wu Xie when it came to getting things done.
“What do you want?” Li Cu asked, as the rope swung him around in mid-air.
“Fishing,” Black Glasses replied, glancing at his watch before continuing, “You were sleeping well, I could hear you snoring just now.”
“Boss, can you stop joking? Let me down, and I’ll do anything for you,” Li Cu still held onto a glimmer of hope.
“Don’t worry, I’ll let you down,” Black Glasses said. “Just wait another ten minutes, and you might even beg me to reel you back up.”
Looking at his situation, Li Cu understood what Black Glasses was up to and couldn’t help but curse silently. He mentally vowed, “Once I hit the ground, I won’t move an inch. If you dare come down to hit me, I won’t give you the satisfaction of turning into your bait.” Then he saw Black Glasses pull out a long gun from beside him.
“Look, I modified this myself,” Black Glasses said when he noticed Li Cu staring at the gun. “You must find it strange that I have poor eyesight and wear sunglasses but can still be so sharp. Let me tell you, in extreme situations, my eyes actually allow me to see more clearly. The world I see with these sunglasses is different from yours. Although it’s not very convenient in daily life, at least when it comes to shooting, my vision gives me a lot of advantages. To put it simply, with this piece of junk in my hands, I can hit wherever I want.”
“Whether your eyesight is good or not has nothing to do with me wearing glasses. Even if you say that, I still don’t want to be bait,” Li Cu replied. “I’m not telling you this to ensure your bait’s safety; I’m reminding you to behave and cooperate with my actions. Once I let you down, you have to run towards the sand dune, or I’ll blow your ass off.”
“Dog—” Li Cu was about to curse when Black Glasses kicked a switch near his feet, causing the rope holding him to loosen suddenly, and he fell from mid-air, landing hard on the sand.
His hands were still tied, the rope connected to the truck. He didn’t feel its weight while being suspended, but now that he was dragged along, he realized it was exceptionally heavy. He climbed up and heard the sound of the black glasses guy pulling the gun’s bolt.
“Run towards the sand, run until the rope can’t pull you anymore, then run back.”
Li Cu thought about saying, “You have the guts to kill me,” but as soon as he heard the sound of the bolt, his legs almost immediately started moving on their own, completely out of his control. He heard the black glasses guy shouting from behind, “Run, run, run…” and the voice grew fainter as he ran farther away. When he was exhausted and stopped to look back, he found the truck was already far away, and the rope had loosened quite a bit.
Running was much more tiring than he had imagined. He gasped for breath, swayed a few times, and then a gunshot rang out in the distance, a bullet hitting the ground right by his feet. He almost jumped up and immediately started running forward again, making it to the top of a sand dune in one breath. The rope couldn’t be pulled anymore, so he turned around and cursed, “Damn your grandma’s legs!”
After cursing, the black glasses guy ignored him, and he was too exhausted to care. He sat down on the sand, thinking, “You should be out of options by now, I’m not going back.” With that thought, he leaned out to look behind the sand dune. That place was where they buried the bodies, the “Sadness of the Departed.”
He couldn’t help but freeze for a moment. He saw that at the bottom of the dune, many hands were actually reaching out from the sand.
All the hands seemed to belong to corpses, palms facing up in a grasping position, densely packed beneath the entire dune.
“What is going on?” He was dumbfounded. Could it be that all these corpses had risen from the dead? Just as he was thinking this, he saw a few of the hands actually move, retracting back into the sand.
He thought he must have seen it wrong, but after the first few hands sank back into the sand pile, several more in the “forest of hands” followed suit. It was as if they were some kind of leech from the ocean, retreating into the sand in response to a stimulus.
He gasped, and almost simultaneously, ripples began to form beneath the dune, something was starting to move under the sand. He knew it was bad and immediately jumped up. Could it be that those corpses were the ones that dragged Wu Xie and the others into the sand? Were these corpses alive?
Watching the “ripples” on the sand surge towards him, he immediately ran back. His body was already exhausted, and he couldn’t run as fast as before, stumbling as he went. After a few steps, he turned back to look and almost jumped in panic.
He saw at least hundreds of “ripples” appearing on the dune behind him, the entire desert really seemed to come alive, rolling and churning, all the “ripples” spiraling towards him in a spectacular scene.
“The desert has come to life.”
He suddenly recalled what the black glasses guy had said; damn, it really wasn’t an exaggeration.
Fortunately, Li Cu was young and had enough explosive power. Gritting his teeth, he didn’t feel completely drained and sprinted all the way to the bottom of the truck, climbing up onto it. He saw the black glasses guy grinning as he looked at the surging sea of sand in the distance, looking quite pleased. “What the hell do you want?” Li Cu shouted, “We’re going to die! And you’re just here watching the show!”
“Don’t worry, these trucks have been here for many years; they are definitely safe on the truck. Otherwise, these trucks would have been overturned long ago.”
The man in black glasses pulled back the bolt of the gun, and at that moment, Li Cu could clearly see that it was an old-fashioned rifle, likely one he had found among the vehicles. At his feet lay six or seven bullets, all polished to a shine. “We need to take a look at what’s under the sand; we have to take some risks,” he said.
It seemed that while he had been unconscious last night, this guy had made quite a few preparations. Li Cu had picked up bullet casings at the shooting range before and knew how much effort it took to clean oxidized bullets to this extent. However, what he didn’t know was that this effort was necessary. For firearms, bullets that have been stored for too long, if not cleaned and checked, have a high chance of misfiring.
Li Cu crawled over to him and continued to ask, “What do you think? Do you have any plans?” After getting up there, he felt a bit more at ease and couldn’t help but feel excited.
“I still have to rely on you,” the man in black glasses nodded at him seriously and said, “I’ll need your help again soon.”
Li Cu frowned, a bit unable to understand his meaning. The man in black glasses shook his head with a “whoosh” sound, directing his attention to the sea of sand in front of them.
He saw that all the “ripples” had almost completely converged in front of the truck they were in, as if the entire sea of sand had been turned over. The “ripples” further away were also gradually gathering around, layer by layer, stopping in front of the truck.
This scene was somewhat reminiscent of a street performance, where a few shouts drew a crowd. However, what had gathered around them was unknown.
As Li Cu watched the number of things gathering increase, the sweat on his back was pouring out. At that moment, he felt like he was fishing in the Amazon River: within a radius of six or seven meters, there were piranhas everywhere, and he was in a small boat, knowing that if he fell in, nothing would be left.
“I think…” Li Cu wanted to tell the man in black glasses to take it easy, as there were too many of them. There was nothing to grab onto in the truck, and if the vehicle shook, he might fall off. But before he could finish his sentence, the collar of his shirt was grabbed by the man in black glasses.
Before he could react, he heard the man in black glasses hold his breath and shout, “One coming!” Immediately, his entire body was lifted up and thrown into the air, landing in front of the truck.
Half a second later, he had landed on the sandy ground in front of the truck. His reaction was quite fast; he did not hesitate at all despite falling awkwardly. Almost instantly, he instinctively crawled up. His hands were still tied, and he struggled to maintain his balance. After standing up, he stumbled and half-kneeled down.
At the same time, countless hands suddenly reached out from the surrounding sand to grab him.
The sensation in that moment was too bizarre, as if a barren land had suddenly burst into bloom with strange, dry flowers in a quarter of a second. It could be described as a kind of explosion, and not just the blooming of a single flower, but the entire sea of sand had erupted in an instant.
Dozens of hands simultaneously grabbed various parts of Li Cu’s body. Then, he felt the sand beneath his feet suddenly become unable to support his weight, and he began to sink into it. All the places that were grabbed were met with an irresistible force.
It happened so quickly, in just an instant, he was completely buried in the sand. It wasn’t until sand started to fill his nose and his mouth was stuffed with dirt that he realized he had been thrown off the vehicle by the black bear. At that moment, he didn’t even have the chance to curse; he only felt countless hands pulling him deeper into the sand. He could sense himself sinking rapidly but was unable to do anything. All his strength had to be focused on holding his breath tightly, preventing the sand from entering his nasal passages and lungs. However, the sand that had already gotten in made him feel extremely uncomfortable.
