Zhang Chenguang snatched the water bottle. The last remaining drop slid from the opening and was instantly absorbed by the dry sand below. He shook the bottle hard, then stretched his tongue as far into the mouth of the bottle as he could, sucking and licking — but all he drew in was air.
None of them were willing to accept that the moment of complete dehydration had arrived so suddenly and without warning. Zhe Ming even threw caution aside and scooped up a handful of the damp sand from the ground and shoved the whole thing into his mouth, hoping to suck out some moisture. But sand was still sand. It was unbearable to hold in his mouth, and within seconds he was retching and coughing violently. The sand drew out what little saliva remained on his tongue and the roof of his mouth rather than yielding any water.
He spat it out in great heaving mouthfuls, smearing his entire face in the process, very nearly choking in the effort.
“What do we do…” Meng Xiao’ai was completely at a loss. “What do we do now…”
Zhang Chenguang suddenly looked up and fixed his gaze on her — his expression vacant, but with a thin edge of cold composure beneath the blankness.
The loss of that final drop of water was the last straw. It crushed completely the fragile bond of coexistence those three young people had built on nothing more than the heat of youth and the half-formed feelings of a secret admirer.
Zhe Ming and Meng Xiao’ai had expected him to explode with rage — to leap up and lash out the way he had just moments ago. But he did nothing of the sort.
He picked up the GPS and confirmed once more the direction of the nearest desert lake. Then he noticed: the GPS battery was nearly dead.
He leaned over to rummage through his pack for the spare batteries, and his face went white — where were they? After a brief, stunned pause, he remembered: he’d put them in Zhe Ming’s pack before they set out. His heart, which had shot into his throat, settled back down — but it was still hammering wildly. Without a word, he turned and rifled through Zhe Ming’s pack instead. The batteries weren’t there either.
“Where are the batteries?” he asked, voice low.
Zhe Ming was a little afraid of him now. He quickly pushed aside his own misery and turned his pack upside down, searching every pocket. “How are they gone… that’s strange… cough cough! I swear they were in there with the compass… cough cough!”
He must have accidentally pulled them out at some point along the way and dropped them somewhere without noticing.
And now this, on top of everything else. Zhang Chenguang understood all too well what this meant: they had arrived at a moment where survival came above all else. He didn’t lose his temper. He didn’t cry. Instead, a smile spread across his face — slowly at first, growing wider and deeper, until he broke into full-throated laughter. The sound was hoarse and hollow, like the witch in some dark fairy tale, unpleasant and unsettling.
He laughed for quite some time, then quietly collected his belongings, picked up the empty bottle, shouldered his pack, and walked away.
“Hey!” Meng Xiao’ai called after him. He moved as though he’d gone deaf — not a flicker of acknowledgment.
“Zhang Chenguang!!” Zhe Ming shouted, then was immediately seized by another fit of coughing from the sand still lodged in his throat — coughing so hard his lungs seemed about to be expelled along with his trachea, coughing until his vision blurred from the lack of oxygen. “Don’t… don’t go! I’m… sorry! Please don’t… cough cough cough!!”
“Don’t leave us behind!!” Meng Xiao’ai screamed.
The GPS was the most critical thing now. The spare batteries had been lost by that liability of a companion, and before its power died, finding water was the only task that mattered. Every single second could not be wasted further.
Zhang Chenguang saw it clearly: those two were a dead weight. Only by breaking free of them could he survive. He had already depleted his own water on the two of them — he’d done more than his duty. Whether they walked out of this desert was now a matter of their own ability. He owed them nothing more.
Watching his retreating figure, Zhe Ming and Meng Xiao’ai stood momentarily at a loss. Then, snapping back to their senses, they scrambled to gather their things and stumble after him. But their physical condition couldn’t begin to compare to his, and both had already suffered heatstroke over the past few days. They couldn’t keep up. All they could do was drag one foot in front of the other — driven by nothing but the raw, wordless survival instinct that every living creature carries within it.
Ahead, some of the dunes had already exceeded five hundred meters in height. Their sunward faces were a brilliant sandy gold; their shadowed faces were pitch black, like half a dark void. Every ridge line was a flowing, sinuous curve, winding left and right with a graceful, unhurried beauty — an ocean of golden sand, and at the same time, an art form sculpted from it.
The three SUVs crossed each ridge with extreme caution. This was the Great Sand Mountain zone. Beyond it lay Qinghai Lake. As it was a scenic area, Qinghai Lake had some people running food and lodging businesses, and mobile phones would have signal there. The south side of Qinghai Lake was directly adjacent to Bilitu Peak. If the three students could reach Qinghai Lake, they would have successfully completed the crossing.
They crossed two dunes without finding any human footprints. The team slowed their pace, expanded their search radius and drove for another stretch, then finally had to stop.
“Turn back.” Diao Zhuo made an immediate call. “They haven’t made it this far yet.”
Old Wang slapped his thigh. “But I brought you on the shortest northwest-to-southeast crossing route! They only have so much water — would they really have taken a detour?”
Ba Yunye leaned half out of the driver’s side window. “We haven’t spotted any empty bottles or food packaging all the way here, which means they haven’t passed through this area. They might have changed route mid-way!”
Diao Zhuo stepped out of the vehicle and used the satellite phone to contact the command post. He was told there was still no sign of the three students near Bilitu Peak. Ba Yunye also stepped out, picked up the binoculars and scanned the distance. The dunes rose tall and smooth with no sign of anyone having passed through. “Are there any desert lakes nearby?”
Old Wang sat cross-legged on the ground drinking water. The question seemed to stump him — he looked uncertain for a moment.
Long Ge studied the GPS map, used the setting sun to orient himself, and pointed toward the northwest. “…Old Wang, are these lakes marked on here — salt water or fresh water?”
“Ha, that thing’s not reliable.” Old Wang said with an air of mystery. “Only the desert lakes in the scenic area stay put. If you follow the map, whether you find a lake is a matter of luck. A lake needs human presence to anchor it — without it, the lake simply moves. Out here in the great desert, you either follow a camel or you follow experience.” He tapped his temple.
Long Ge, well-versed in the rhythms of this line of work, immediately smiled and goaded him: “So what you’re saying is, you don’t actually know either?”
As expected, no guide worth his salt could stand being told he didn’t know the way. Old Wang let out a scoff. “Nearly one hundred and fifty known desert lakes have been mapped in this region, and the desert is vast — there are many more yet to be discovered. Some have been found but are next to useless. It depends on the season and the dunes. Some lakes only have water from March to April and are completely dry from July onward — go all that way for nothing. Some lakes shift along with the moving dunes. When I bring clients, I only take them to lake locations I’m certain of — the ones that don’t grow legs. I know every one of those. But the ones marked on the map, I don’t take clients there. Wastes fuel, and you’ll likely find nothing. Those ones have legs. Trust me.”
“Why is water sprouting legs everywhere you look…” Ba Yunye pressed a hand to her forehead.
Diao Zhuo took it in stride. “The reason is simple: no navigation or mapping software company has actually conducted on-site surveys deep in uninhabited territory — especially near the edges of restricted military zones. So there’s a discrepancy between what’s shown on navigation tools and the actual terrain.”
Ba Yunye burst out laughing. “Any mysterious desert legend you explain disappears completely. You are the ultimate destroyer of wonder out here.”
Diao Zhuo looked up. “Have you felt the power of knowledge yet?”
She clutched her chest, mangling an idiom: “It’s so powerful it could uproot mountains.”
“Whatever you’re grabbing doesn’t have any mountains in it.”
Ba Yunye was so infuriated she couldn’t form a single word.
Old Wang stood up and leaned over to look at the map, then pointed to it. “If there’s anywhere along the route where water might reasonably be found, it’s these two desert lakes — one closer, one further away. For the vehicles, the difference is just an extra hour or two. For those kids on foot, it’s two or three days.”
Not far off, Ba Yunye, trying to calm her temper, attempted to climb the sand dune. Three steps up, two steps back — harder going than a glacier. “So if they realized they were running low on water and headed for the nearest lake, it would still take them two days on foot?”
Old Wang shook his head. “They’d have had to change course early enough — otherwise how could they possibly hold out for two days?”
Diao Zhuo thought for a moment. “We’ll head to these two lakes marked on the map. If they changed route mid-crossing, they must have gone to one of them.”
“Good plan.” Old Wang stood up, patted the sand from the seat of his trousers, and felt a sudden searing pain flare in his palm. He looked down. Somehow, several large blisters had formed on his hand. The act of brushing his trousers had burst them, and the raw, exposed skin beneath was an angry red. “Good heavens!”
“What happened?” He Ma asked, completely bewildered.
“I don’t know… strange.” Old Wang was thoroughly mystified. He kept flicking his hand, but the pain refused to ease — it only grew more acute, sharp enough to make him scrunch up every feature on his face.
Ba Yunye had assumed he’d simply scratched himself, but it didn’t look like that at all. She walked over quickly. The palm of Old Wang’s hand was a vivid red, faintly exuding the distinct smell of scorched flesh. “What did you touch just now?”
“Nothing… I didn’t touch anything.” Old Wang kept gasping.
Out of the corner of his eye, Diao Zhuo noticed that the color of Old Wang’s dark trousers had changed — at first glance it looked like sand clinging to the fabric, but on closer inspection, the area from his hip to his upper thigh appeared to have been bleached, as though something had been sprayed on it.
Looking at the wound on Old Wang’s palm, his immediate instinct was: burn injury.
Connecting it to the discoloration on Old Wang’s trousers, Diao Zhuo’s mind went to one possibility: a strong acid burn. But where would a strong acid come from out here?
“Get a bottle of water!”
He Ma quickly pulled out several bottles of mineral water and used them to flush Old Wang’s palm. After two full bottles, Old Wang was still in pain — but the burning sensation had subsided. He shook his hand dry as the water dripped into the sand, then dabbed it with medicated cotton, applied some erythromycin ointment with a cotton swab, and bit down on the gauze as he wrapped the bandage with practiced efficiency.
Diao Zhuo stood next to the spot where Old Wang had been sitting and dug down with his entrenching tool. There was nothing in the sand beneath — nothing at all. However, perhaps because of the light rainfall earlier, the sand deeper down was very cold.
Then, without warning, several small holes appeared in the damp sand beneath Old Wang’s feet. Ba Yunye noticed and stepped on one out of curiosity — it immediately collapsed under her foot.
Ba Yunye was just turning to walk away when something shot up from the ground. She instinctively jerked back and retreated several quick steps.
“Diao Zhuo, give me the shovel!” She held out her hand.
Diao Zhuo came over carrying both shovels, and the two of them dug together. They found no physical object — only a two-finger-wide burrow in the sand, which was instantly buried by the surrounding sand as soon as it was exposed. They dug again, but it had already become solid.
“Keep digging — faster.” Ba Yunye gave Diao Zhuo’s shoulder a pat. It was as hard as a rock.
Digging deeper, they could faintly make out a few more burrow openings — but the sand around each one seemed particularly loose, and the slightest disturbance from above would send it caving in immediately, so each burrow only appeared for a fleeting moment before disappearing.
Ba Yunye was frustrated. She jabbed at the sand with the shovel in random bursts, but still nothing surfaced. What was clear, however, was that something unusual was present in the sand — and that whatever it was, it was the source of the strong acid. Diao Zhuo’s instinct was that now was not the right time to investigate further. He scraped some of the sand that clung to Old Wang’s trousers into a sample container and kept it.
Old Wang’s hand was now too injured to drive. His vehicle would have to be taken over by Ba Yunye. He Ma teased her: “You’ve been glued to Diao Zhuo these past two days — now you’re stuck in a different vehicle. You must be pretty sad to be peeled away, huh?”
Ba Yunye was completely unbothered. She threw her hands on her hips and laughed with an easy, boisterous confidence. “Since I’m the one who got attached, being yanked apart like that — skin and all — it’s him that hurts, not me! Ha ha ha!”
Diao Zhuo, entirely accustomed to this sort of thing, maintained a perfectly neutral expression — but as he walked past her, he let out a cold, deliberate scoff. “If you’re being peeled apart skin and all, it’ll be that delicate skin of yours that gives out first.”
Ba Yunye grabbed his arm, looked him dead in the eyes. “Do you think you’re a yak? Competing with me over whose hide is tougher? If you have the nerve, we’ll settle this in a proper fight once we get out — see whose skin holds up better.”
Diao Zhuo held her gaze without flinching. “It’s not that your skin is tough. It’s that you’re thick-skinned.” With that, he pulled open the driver’s side door for her, extended his right hand with gentlemanly courtesy, and gestured for her to get in.
Ba Yunye, caught with no good comeback, had no choice but to get in first. Once settled, she suddenly hooked her arm around Diao Zhuo’s neck and pulled him close, leaning in to murmur against his ear: “If I weren’t thick-skinned enough, how would I ever manage to win you over?”
Diao Zhuo’s throat moved as he swallowed. A single word formed in the back of his mind: damn.