The wind here is no longer as fierce as it was earlier, swirling around me. There must be something ahead blocking the wind, but where did those two guys who were following me go? I wasn’t walking that fast, yet they managed to fall behind. Did they get hit by a flying rock and fall behind?

I raised my mining lamp to illuminate the surroundings, but I didn’t see any shadows. I couldn’t help but feel a bit regretful; I had been too focused earlier and hadn’t paid much attention to my surroundings. However, in such a strong wind, there really wasn’t much to notice around me. The sound of the wind was so loud that it drowned everything out, and all my energy had to be focused on my destination and maintaining my balance.

Suddenly being alone, I felt a momentary surge of fear, but I quickly dispelled it. After catching my breath for a moment, I continued to move forward. I couldn’t go back to look for them; I had lost my sense of direction. If I went back, I had no idea where I would end up, so the best course of action was to keep going forward.

I discarded a piece of equipment; it was just too heavy. The foreign adventure gear is quite personalized. Once, I saw someone carrying a frame the size of a shield and a notebook the size of a phone book for his wife. I was too lazy to carry that for them, so I lightened my load and ran towards the light.

However, no matter how fast I ran, the light still seemed out of reach, as if I wasn’t getting any closer at all. I was panting heavily and thought about giving up, but I wasn’t willing to. As I ran, the light ahead began to blur.

Just when I was about to lose consciousness and collapse, suddenly, someone grabbed me. I had no strength left, and with a pull, I knelt down on the ground. Looking up through my wind goggles, I recognized the eyes of two people: one was the “Muffled Bottle” and the other was “Black Sunglasses,” whose goggles were also black. They urgently pulled me up and dragged me in another direction.

I broke free from their grip and pointed ahead, trying to tell them there was a place to shelter from the wind.

However, when I looked again, I was stunned; I saw nothing. The light ahead had vanished, replaced by complete darkness, and even the huge silhouette was gone.

Muffled Bottle and Black Sunglasses ignored me and continued to drag me along. At that moment, I saw that Black Sunglasses was holding a flare gun. The two of them had immense strength; my nearly 180-pound body was lifted effortlessly. Soon, I regained my senses and started to push off the ground, indicating that I could run by myself.

They let go of me, but I immediately regretted it. These two were running too fast; keeping up with them was exhausting. I gritted my teeth and sprinted after them, running for about twenty minutes until only the two shadows ahead remained in my view. In a daze, I realized we had rushed up the riverbank and around a mound of earth, after which the two black figures disappeared.

I cursed, “Wait for me!” but suddenly tripped and fell, rolling several times down a slope. Struggling to get up, I spat out the dirt from my mouth and looked around. To my surprise, at the bottom of the slope was a deep ditch, filled with people huddled together, trying to escape the fierce wind. When they saw me fall, they all looked up at me.

We huddled at the bottom of the ditch, with sand and dust swirling above our heads. The Gobi Desert is not always flat, especially in places where rivers once flowed. On both sides of the riverbed, there are many channels that have been washed out during high tides. The scars on the Gobi are not very deep, but there are still two or three meters, which is enough for us to find shelter from the wind.

I was exhausted when a few people came over and pulled me to the bottom of the ditch. It turned out that there was a large depression on one side of the ditch, as if a giant poplar tree had been blown down, and the pit formed by the broken roots had been washed out by water. The trunk of the poplar was already buried at the bottom of the ditch, with only a small part visible. They all huddled inside this depression, where a smokeless stove was lit for warmth, and there was no wind at all.

I was dragged inside, and the depression was shallow and not very high, making it quite cramped. They made some space for me, and someone handed me water. This was a dead angle for the wind, and we could already talk, but my ears hadn’t adjusted yet, so I couldn’t hear what they were saying.

After taking a few sips of water, I felt much better. I took off my wind goggles and lamented, “Damn it, China has so many beautiful places, why did I have to come here?”

However, such winds in the Qaidam Basin should not be rare; this wasn’t even the worst wind. I had watched a documentary about geological exploration in the Qaidam Basin years ago, where a survey team had their tents blown away by a strong wind, and their supplies were scattered over ten miles in an instant. What puzzled me was why Ding Zhuo Ma didn’t warn us. The strong winds on the Gobi are quite obvious; not to mention the elderly, anyone who has lived here for a while can grasp the patterns.

Similarly, I wondered when this wind would stop. I often heard people in the Gobi say that in places like this, winds blow only twice a year, each time lasting for six months, and once they start, they seem endless. If it continued for a long time, we would be in big trouble.

Deng Youping and the guy with the black glasses quickly went out again, probably to look for others. The people here were clearly shaken; few spoke, and they all curled up together. I found it amusing, thinking they were supposed to be like Indiana Jones, but it turned out they were just as helpless. However, I soon realized that my feet were shaking uncontrollably, and I couldn’t stand up.

The person who handed me water asked if I was okay and if I had any bruises. I shook my head and said I was fine.

To be honest, I still vividly remember my experience in Changbai Mountain during a blizzard. Compared to that time, this was already quite comfortable; at least we could hide and didn’t have to worry about freezing to death.

I poured a little water on my face; my eyes were hurting from the pressure of the wind goggles, but it gradually eased.

After relaxing, I was able to observe the people in the pit. I didn’t see An Ning. Ding Zhuo Ma, his daughter-in-law Zha, and Xi were at the very back of the depression, and Wu Lao Si was also there. There weren’t many people; it seemed that most were still outside, and I didn’t see any Caucasians.

I thought to myself that this group was too large; An Ning and the others were definitely still outside searching. With so many people, even Deng Youping and his team couldn’t take care of everyone. Fortunately, we weren’t in the desert; otherwise, we would have been doomed.

Three hours later, the wind finally began to ease. The group led by the “Dull Oil Bottle” initially managed to bring a few people back occasionally, but soon their stamina gave out, and they stopped going out altogether. We all huddled inside, feeling drowsy, and waited until it was truly dark outside, a pitch-black night. The sound of the wind outside was like a malevolent spirit howling; at first, it was irritating, but later it just made me feel sleepy.

I had long been prepared to spend the night, so I wasn’t surprised; many people had already fallen asleep. Some ventured out into the wind and rummaged through the many bags piled outside for food. We hastily shared a little to eat, and then I leaned against the yellow sand and fell asleep.

I didn’t sleep for long; when I woke up, the wind had lessened significantly, which was a good sign. I saw that most people were still asleep, while Zaxi sat at the concave opening, seemingly keeping watch. It was not a stable place; above us were either stones or cracked earth and sand, so sand occasionally fell from above. While I was sleeping, I ended up with a mouthful of sand, which felt very uncomfortable. I spat it out and walked over to Zaxi.

I didn’t want to talk to Zaxi; he wasn’t the easiest person to get along with, or perhaps he was just wary of us. I’m also not the type to warm up to someone who’s cold, so I didn’t care about his attitude. I walked over to him just to get a few breaths of fresh air and to find a different spot to sleep.

However, as I approached, I heard noises outside and saw the light of a mining lamp, suggesting that someone was out there. I was puzzled and asked Zaxi what was going on. He handed me a cigarette and said that Aning had returned, the wind had calmed down, and they had called people out to look for others and check on the vehicles.

Thinking about the vehicles stuck in the sand, I felt a bit worried. With such strong winds and sand, I wasn’t sure if those vehicles could still be driven once dug out. I was also concerned about the Caucasian man, wondering if he had returned, so I put on my goggles and wrapped myself in a cloak before heading outside to ask about the situation.

As soon as I stepped outside, I felt relieved; the wind was even lighter than I had imagined. It seemed the worst had passed, and there was hardly any sand in the air. I pulled off my cloak and took a few deep breaths of the cool air in the desert before walking toward the mining lamp.

That was in the direction of the riverbed, and I made my way down to where they were gathered. They were inspecting a vehicle that was stuck at an angle in the sand, with only the front end visible. Aning was nearby, anxiously adjusting the frequency on her radio.

I asked them, “What’s going on?” One person shook his head and simply said, “Families torn apart.”

I was puzzled and didn’t quite understand what he meant, so I turned to Aning. She saw me and managed a forced smile before coming over to explain, “Just now, Ding Zhoma said that the wind might pick up again, and we need to find a better shelter quickly. But our vehicles are all stuck; a few are definitely totaled, and the others probably can’t be moved without repairs.” She paused for a moment, “The most troubling thing is that four people are missing; they may have lost their way when the wind first picked up. We just searched a round and couldn’t find them.”

I asked who the people were, and An Ning said it was the Caucasian and three others I wasn’t familiar with. The Caucasian was with me when he went missing, so I pointed them in the right direction and asked if they had searched that area. An Ning nodded and said they had searched nearby, but these people must have gone further than she thought.

I sighed and comforted her a bit, telling her not to worry. They all had GPS, and with the strong wind, they couldn’t have gone too far. There was still wind, and visibility wasn’t very clear; once it got light, it would be easier to search.

She bit her lower lip and nodded, but her expression didn’t change, which made me feel a bit uneasy. I wasn’t familiar with the Gobi Desert either, and at that moment, I didn’t know what would happen, so I had to keep quiet.

We forced open the doors of two cars and took out the equipment inside. Then they wanted to look for the next vehicle, so I had to follow along.

At that point, I realized that the car was stuck in the riverbed, which didn’t seem to be the quicksand often mentioned in novels. Instead, at the bottom of the riverbed, the ground had collapsed, and the car had sunk in completely without being submerged. Someone told me that the salt crust had been crushed. There are many places beneath the Gobi here with a lot of salt crust; this is a riverbed, and when there was water before, the riverbed was very complex, with a lot of sediment. After the drought, when the salt crust crystallized, it left many voids, so some places in this riverbed were actually like dry cheese and could not bear weight. We parked in the wrong spot.

I wondered, “But we’ve been walking on the riverbed the whole way here without any issues.”

The person replied, “That’s because the river channel we walked on before has been dry for a long time, but the river channel beneath our feet has only been dry for at most six months. Didn’t you notice that there’s almost no grass or shrubs here?”

I looked around in surprise, and indeed, it was bare all around, not even a single tamarisk grew.

That person said to me, “We are definitely heading upstream along this river. At the end of this river, there must be a high mountain. If the river hasn’t changed course, there should definitely be an ancient city or ruins nearby, which means that old Tibetan woman wasn’t just leading us blindly. I thought for a long time that she was a fraud.”

I looked upstream at the river channel he was pointing to, and on the flat Gobi, it seemed there was indeed something there. Remembering the massive shadow I saw in the wind, I felt that it wasn’t just my imagination.

That night, we found all the vehicles and gathered our luggage. By dawn, the others gradually woke up, and An Ning began organizing them to get busy—some repairing cars, some searching for people.

A few of us who had been looking for cars the previous night grabbed a bite to eat and went into our sleeping bags to catch up on sleep, feeling extremely tired, and we slept until sunset.

When I woke up, the wind had completely died down, and the dust had cleared. That group was very efficient; several cars had been repaired, and they were getting ready to set off again, redistributing supplies and repacking the vehicles.

An Ning hadn’t slept for a day and a night, constantly listening to the radio. The mute oil bottle and the guy with sunglasses were not around, and when I asked, I found out that the two were still outside searching for those four missing people.

I felt uneasy after listening to the situation; it had already been a day, and those four people still hadn’t been found. Didn’t they have GPS? Could it really be as Zaxi said, that this device is useless in the Gobi Desert?

I took some food out of my bag and walked over to Anning while eating, asking for the specifics of the situation. Anning had a furrowed brow, dark circles under her eyes, and looked very haggard. When I asked her, she didn’t seem in the mood to answer. The walkie-talkie was constantly buzzing with conversations about searching outside, all in English. I listened briefly, and it was all bad news.

I asked her if she wanted me to go out and search as well, but she shook her head and said it wasn’t necessary. They had already split into three groups and were searching for the third time. Even if I went, it might not be useful. She told me to pack up; Zaxi and the others had found a “Devil City” twenty kilometers ahead, and we would set off there to rest. The wind was supposed to pick up again in the evening.

Seeing her in such a distressed state, I didn’t want to bother her further, so I went to check on another group of people repairing the vehicles and helped pass them tools. After watching for about half an hour, Zaxi returned from the riverbed and told us that the wind was picking up again. A sand line had already appeared on the horizon, and we needed to move quickly; otherwise, all the repairs would be for nothing.

We quickly prepared our things. Since there were fewer vehicles, the ones that weren’t repaired were left behind. I shared a vehicle with several Tibetans and set off towards the place where the sun was setting.

After driving on the vast Gobi for about twenty minutes, the shadows of the Yadan landforms appeared ahead under the setting sun. Stone mountains rose abruptly from the ground. Zaxi’s voice came through the walkie-talkie, guiding us to adjust our direction. Soon, we saw a massive “castle” come into view.

That was the place Zaxi chose to shelter from the wind. We drove straight towards it and, as we got closer, discovered it was a large rock mountain shaped like a steamed bun, with a gradually dense expanse of Yadan landforms behind it, resembling the defensive works of a castle.

The Devil City, also known as the Wind City, is a unique terrain sculpted by strong winds, with a large area filled with bizarrely shaped rock mountains that can be imagined as various strange objects. When the wind blows through these rocks, it produces eerie sounds, hence the name Devil City. Such landscapes are very common in the Gobi. I had visited one in Xinjiang before, so I wasn’t particularly curious this time.

We stopped outside that “castle” at a flat-bottomed rock mountain. Zaxi jumped down first and called out to us. We all got out and started setting up camp. Two hours later, the wind indeed picked up, turning into a sandstorm that obscured the sky and lasted until midnight, gradually dying down like the previous night.

The wind was so strong that no one could sleep amidst the howling of the Devil City. Once the wind calmed down, one by one, we gradually fell asleep. The two night watchmen who had slept during the day were very interested in the Devil City. Seeing that Zaxi and I weren’t sleeping, they went outside to take photos. Zaxi cautioned them to be careful and not to wander inside, as it was easy to get lost.

I had slept during the day and was feeling quite energetic, while Anning was pondering the search methods for the next day, her hand still gripping the walkie-talkie. It seemed she wouldn’t rest until those few people were found.

I went over to persuade her to sleep for a while, but before I could say much, someone suddenly shouted from afar on the Gobi: “Medic! Medic!”

Aning’s team doctor is a chubby guy who wasn’t sleeping while reading. As soon as he heard the commotion, he woke up. We all looked over in that direction and heard someone shouting, “Come quickly! We found A K!” A K is one of the four missing people. Upon hearing this, we all jumped up and ran over in a hurry. We quickly saw that it was those two who had gone to the Devil’s City, waving at us from a dirt mound. When we rushed over, we saw a large pit on the mound, and at the bottom lay a person—it was A K.

The team doctor ran over, panting, jumped down, checked, and shouted, “He’s still alive!” A few people hurriedly rushed down to carry him, and the doctor yelled for them to take him to the tent.

The scene was chaotic. Zaxi carried the person back, and I squeezed to the side, looking at the pit and then glancing back in the direction we had come from. I thought to myself, “My gosh, how did this person end up here? It’s still over twenty kilometers from where we parked yesterday, and at that time, we were walking against the wind. Did he come here against the wind?”

Back in the team doctor’s tent, I watched as he worked to save A K. Soon, A K was revived, and the doctor sighed with relief, saying he had just fainted from exhaustion. The doctor gave him an injection, and he quickly woke up.

After he woke up, we asked him what had happened. He said he didn’t know either; he was walking along, and after a while, he saw a shadow ahead and thought it was a rocky mountain, so he went over. As he walked, he lost track of time and ended up falling into the pit. He then asked, “Hey, have Old Gao and the other two come back?”

Old Gao refers to a Caucasian person. When I heard him mention the shadow, I felt a shiver and wanted to ask him for details. But as soon as Aning heard him ask about Old Gao, she immediately questioned him about why he was asking and if he had seen them.

He replied, “They were right in front of me at the time. No matter how much I called them, they didn’t turn back. I figured it was because of the headwind, and they couldn’t hear me. Then I fainted. So, they haven’t come back?”

Aning was surprised, “You mean you saw them before you fainted?” A K nodded. Aning turned to me and said, “Did you hear that? The place where A K was found is outside the Devil’s City, and right in front is the Devil’s City. This means they went into the city! No wonder we couldn’t find them no matter how hard we searched.”

Her eyes suddenly sparkled with excitement, and she clapped her hands, urging us to go out. We stepped out of the team doctor’s tent, and after some discussion, Aning insisted that we immediately enter the Devil’s City to search.

These people didn’t know what was going on. They had walked against the wind for over twenty kilometers, and Old K had fainted outside. The people inside might be exhausted as well, and we needed to find them quickly so we could feel more at ease.

I was in good spirits and nodded in agreement. We quickly assigned teams, and many people went to sleep without waking them up. Only the doctor and I were ready to go in first to scout around, while the others would wait for two hours before waking up and coming in.

After we finished discussing, we began to prepare. Just as we picked up our bags, Zaxi walked over and stopped us, saying, “Wait, my grandmother said you can’t go in.”