That night, Li Cuo didn’t know how long he had slept; he had been dreaming all night. When he woke up, it was already noon the next day.

Li Cuo found it strange that no one had come to call him and that the team hadn’t set off. Was everyone in the expedition team still sleeping in?

After a moment of self-encouragement, he crawled out of his sleeping bag and walked outside the tent.

The tent could block out the cold as well as the heat, but when Li Cuo stepped out, a wave of heat hit him, and the sunlight was so bright it looked like it had been rendered by a computer.

Once he adjusted to the light, he saw that nearly everyone in the expedition team was standing by the lake, their attention captivated by something in the water, completely oblivious to him.

Li Cuo glanced at the camels the expedition had brought and thought that this was a good opportunity to escape, if only he knew how to ride a camel and the way back. Unfortunately, that was clearly impossible, so he quickly dismissed the idea.

Then he moved closer to the crowd and saw several soldiers had stripped down and were trying to retrieve something from the lake.

“What’s going on?” he yawned and asked a nearby person. The person replied, “Someone threw all our equipment into the lake.”

“Ah? Who did it?”

“I don’t know. Normally, this place should be very safe, so we didn’t arrange for anyone to keep watch last night. No one expected someone would do something like this here. Look, the soldiers are fishing it out now; whatever they pull up will be set aside to see if it can be dried and used again.”

Li Cuo turned his head to see Wu Xie and Professor Wang fiddling with some of the retrieved items, and he asked, “Are these devices important?”

“If they can’t be repaired, there’s an 80% chance we’ll have to go back,” the person said. “This is an expedition, not a sightseeing trip.” Li Cuo walked over to Wu Xie, and just as he was about to speak, Wu Xie waved his hand, saying, “I’m not in the mood to answer any of your questions right now.”

“I wasn’t going to ask you a question,” Li Cuo replied. “I just wanted to remind you of something.”

“What?”

Originally, Li Cuo wanted to tell him about the shadow he had captured in the camera, but just as Wu Xie finished speaking, someone shouted from the direction of the lake, and a commotion broke out in the crowd.

Wu Xie and Professor Wang immediately stood up and ran over, and Li Cuo had no choice but to follow. He dashed over and saw several people surrounding the retrieved equipment, pointing and discussing.

“What is this? You just brought the stuff here; what are you all mumbling about?”

“This isn’t our equipment,” one of the soldiers responsible for the retrieval said.

The soldier pointed at one of the retrieved items and said, “I recognize everything else, but look at this thing; it’s not ours.”

It was an object seemingly wrapped in a metal shell but not too heavy, about the size of a wheelchair wheel, cylindrical in shape, and covered in rust, with many small bumps that looked like corroded rivets.

“This isn’t our equipment?”

“Absolutely not.”

“When was it retrieved?”

“I don’t know; it was just pulled up along with this pile of equipment. We didn’t notice it before, but we just found it while sorting through everything. It seems this thing has been at the bottom of the lake all along.”

Wu Xie walked over and kicked it gently, and the object rolled onto the sand. He felt that it was very light.

“Don’t! Be careful, it might be a bomb or something!” someone shouted. Everyone immediately stepped back.

Wu Xie sighed as he looked at the others, also feeling puzzled. But Li Cuo had already recognized it; he stood frozen in place, thinking to himself, how could there be such a thing here?

“This…” he tried to speak, “this… this… this is…”

“What?” Wu Xie replied impatiently, “Spit it out.”

“You’d better not touch it with your foot,” Li Cuo said, “it’s best not to touch this thing at all.”