That night, Wu Xie and the others pushed the inflatable raft into the lake. There was a small interlude during this process; when they were pushing the raft, Li Cu heard Wu Xie say to Wang Meng, “If this thing leaks on the way, you won’t get your salary for this month.”

“You should deduct the salary from the manufacturer, why deduct mine?”

“Because you didn’t notice and fix it while inflating.”

“Boss, if you ate spoiled strawberries, should you blame the person who washed the strawberries or the one who sold them?”

“I blame myself; I knew they were spoiled but still ate them. Isn’t that just asking for trouble?”

“…”

The group pulled the heavy raft into the lake. Four people got on the boat, Ma Rila rowed, while the others organized their equipment.

Li Cu asked, “Wu… Boss Wu, what’s your plan? This place is so big; even if there’s no water, it would take us a whole day to search by walking.”

Wu Xie waved his hand and said, “We have our ways; you don’t need to worry about it. This kind of skill is useless for you to learn, and we don’t want it to be spread outside.”

As the raft reached the middle of the lake, Wang Meng and Ma Rila put on their gear and flipped into the water. Since they didn’t bring diving equipment, they could only rely on diving masks and underwater flashlights to snorkel for underwater exploration. Li Cu didn’t understand how, with such rudimentary equipment, Wu Xie could be so confident about quickly searching the entire underwater area.

Wu Xie clearly didn’t intend to go down himself; he sat on the boat smoking while watching the lights flickering beneath the water.

Li Cu couldn’t stop thinking about the earlier question and finally couldn’t help but ask, “Can you give me any hint at all? I don’t want to learn, but I just want to know.”

“No.”

“Wu Boss, you don’t need my help and don’t want me to know your skills. Then why did you bring me onto the boat? Aren’t you just trying to frustrate me?” Li Cu felt a bit gloomy.

“Yes, I am trying to frustrate you,” Wu Xie said.

Li Cu looked at Wu Xie’s face, feeling increasingly annoyed, thinking that this guy must have something wrong with his head. If it weren’t for his back injury, he would have jumped into the water and swum back to shore.

“Do you want to know why I’ve been frustrating you all along?” Wu Xie asked when he saw that Li Cu had stopped talking.

Li Cu shook his head, “If you’re not a pervert, then you’re the kind of person who has a persecution complex, so you should be making others suffer, not just me.”

Wu Xie continued, “It seems you’ve realized that I wouldn’t harm you casually, so you’ve started to argue with me. But you don’t know, even though I seem slightly neurotic, if I really lose patience with you, I would definitely bury you in the sand.”

Li Cu sighed, thinking to himself that he didn’t know Wu Xie well, didn’t know what kind of person he was, and had no idea what he wanted to do.

Wu Xie went on, “Actually, I keep frustrating you because when I see you, I see my former self.”

“What were you like back then?”

“Just like you are now, like a lamb waiting to be slaughtered, knowing nothing, unaware of when you will be harmed, not knowing why others want to harm you, and having no idea why you got caught up in all of this. You just wait, but you don’t know what you will be waiting for.”

“Does that mean you were an idiot before?” Li Zhu asked, and after he finished speaking, he closed his mouth, thinking to himself that it was over now; he was really going to be buried in the sand.

Wu Xie just looked at him for a long time before nodding, “You have a good intuition.”

The two of them fell silent.

The desert was very cold at night. With no conversation, Li Zhu felt increasingly chilly and started to regret coming here. He was even angrier, thinking that this whole mess had nothing to do with him. If he had known, he would have just slept in the tent.

After about the time it takes to smoke two cigarettes, Wang Meng finally surfaced, and Wu Xie pulled him onto the raft. It was clear that diving in the cold water for a search was very exhausting; Wang Meng was gasping for breath and could hardly speak.

Wu Xie waited for him to catch his breath before asking, “How is it?”

“Nothing has been found so far, but something is missing,” Wang Meng panted. “Boss, I feel like something is off. The sand underwater keeps shifting, but there’s no current. I don’t know if there’s something in the sand.”