However, he kept his eyes closed for a long time, and nothing unusual happened. So he opened his eyes again and found that everything around him was still the same; nothing was attacking him, and there were no changes in his surroundings. He frowned and waited for a while longer, only to realize that whatever had attacked Wu Xie and Wang Meng seemed uninterested in him, or perhaps it simply hadn’t noticed him. What could be the reason for that? Could it be because of the sound?

He thought about it and remembered many scenes from Western horror movies featuring monsters in dunes. He wondered if this creature didn’t rely on smell; perhaps, in the desert, where sound traveled exceptionally well, it relied on hearing instead.

“If I don’t move, maybe it won’t notice me,” he silently pondered.

But it was bright and sunny here, and if he didn’t move, he would eventually be completely baked under the sun. What should he do?

He slowly calmed himself down. The hardships he had endured in his childhood had given him an incredibly strong nerve. He decided to conduct an experiment. Carefully, he unbuckled his belt and tossed it a short distance onto the dune in front of him. The belt landed on the dune and quickly slid down, causing a small landslide of sand.

He held his breath, watching that direction, hoping to see if anything would crawl towards it.

Nothing happened. The belt remained motionless. He felt puzzled. Could it be that the creature had already left? He cautiously moved his feet, intending to step onto the dune, but as soon as he shifted, he felt something was off.

It was hard to describe this feeling. He spent several seconds trying to sense it before realizing what it was: it felt as if something was standing right behind him.

He stiffened his neck and slowly lowered his head, carefully shifting his gaze backward. Sure enough, he saw a massive shadow looming behind him, something standing rigidly at his back.

Li Zhu gasped, imagining countless forms that this thing behind him could take. He thought to himself, “Oh no, I’m doomed! That thing is right behind me.”

The entity behind him made no sound, not even a breath, which filled him with terror. Almost as soon as he realized it, he immediately bolted, taking a few steps before turning back to look. All he saw was a long, dark shadow that instantly vanished into the sand.

Everything happened too quickly; he couldn’t see anything clearly. Then, he noticed the creature beneath the dune stirring and racing off into the distance. The sight terrified him to the point that he almost wet his pants. It wasn’t until the ripple disappeared at the edge of the dune that he scrambled to his feet and ran towards the lake. Once he reached the lakeside, he climbed onto a truck and hid in a corner, trembling uncontrollably.

He didn’t know what he had seen, but he was certain that it didn’t belong to this world and was beyond his ability to handle. The two people who had kidnapped him were surely dead by now. He was all alone, and there might be nothing worse in this world than this situation.

In the past, Li Cu fantasized about adventures, about the thrill of exploration, and that exhilarating feeling of being detached from the mundane world. But at this moment, all of that had completely vanished. He thought about how, no matter how difficult or exhausting life was in the city, it was still safe; coming here, he was constantly in danger of losing his life.

Compared to the unknown terrors of the desert, those two despicable kidnappers now seemed incredibly charming to him. Lost in his thoughts, Li Cu’s mind was a chaotic mess. He huddled in the back of the truck for a long time, shrinking into himself until he was utterly exhausted and fell into a daze of sleep. When he awoke again, the sky around him had turned completely dark.

Li Cu poked his head out of the truck bed and looked outside. He saw the row of trucks they had organized, eerily quiet like a ghost town. Hai Zi still lay calmly among the vehicles, showing no signs of leaving. He felt hunger pangs in his stomach and recalled that there seemed to be some food among the items he had collected.

He also remembered what Wu Xie had said about the mummified corpses and thought to himself that now there wasn’t even any dried corpse to eat. Indeed, Wu Xie never seemed to succeed in his attempts to eat dried corpses; God always found various ways to prevent such mistakes.

He dared not go out to retrieve those food-like items. In the darkness, he felt even more passive. A round moon illuminated the night, casting a silvery frost around him, but the light was too dim for any real comfort, so he decided to endure a little longer.

Perhaps because he had slept so deeply before, after this nap, he felt revitalized. Not knowing the time, he lay flat in the truck bed, trying to minimize his breathing so that no sound would escape. He kept telling himself that this was safe, even though he felt surrounded by countless dangers. Feeling safe here was utterly meaningless.

As he endured the first half of the night, he suddenly realized something was wrong in the latter half. He began to feel a bit drowsy, and the unbearable hunger and thirst seemed to fade away with his sleepiness. He wondered if this was a sign of impending death.

Perhaps he was severely dehydrated, and if he passed out, he might truly die. So he forced himself to hold on, but he couldn’t endure for too long. He struggled and eventually fell asleep again. This sleep might have lasted only seven or eight seconds before he was abruptly jolted awake.

He was puzzled, feeling that something had interrupted his slumber. As he rubbed his eyes to gather himself, he suddenly heard a strange sound coming from a distance outside the truck. Upon listening closely, he realized it was singing.