Xiao’ai swallowed instinctively, and after so many days of dryness, her parched tongue and throat actually met with moisture. She drew a deep breath — and to her astonishment, discovered she still had the capacity to breathe. Her eyes flew open. She was lying in a narrow, confined space. Beside her hand, a drip line, and through the flow regulator she could see the fluid dropping, one drop at a time.
As her mind cleared further, she realized she was lying in the rear seat of a vehicle. There was a faint smell of cigarette smoke. She turned her head and saw there were people in the front seats — two men.
“Hey…” Her voice was raw and hoarse.
“She’s awake, she’s awake,” the man in the driver’s seat said.
Then the man in the passenger seat turned to look at her. He wore a black jacket; his gaze was sharp and commanding, his jaw line strikingly defined — the very image of rugged, seasoned good looks.
Not a divine being, yet surpassing one.
Xiao’ai was so overwhelmed she wanted to cry. A few tears coursed down her face; she raised her hand to wipe them, then greedily licked her palm. The man in the passenger seat poured out half a cup of water and handed it over. She seized it with both hands, drank it all in one swallow, then broke into even more heartbroken sobbing. Her throat was still raw and ragged; the sound she produced was shrill yet hollow — like a kettle that had boiled dry.
She could not believe she still had the chance to live. To drink water again.
Water. Something she had never given a second thought. And yet now, even a single mouthful could bring her to tears. She covered her eyes; sorrow and joy, pain and relief flooded in from all directions at once. These brief eight or nine days had felt like an entire lifetime. As for what people call romance, what people call vows — she had seen through all of it. Seen right through it all.
Life is not something you can afford to take lightly. It cannot withstand being toyed with.
And love, it turns out, cannot withstand the winds and the waves either. Cannot withstand being tested.
Outside came the sound of footsteps — many people approaching. The car door was pulled open, and several figures in what looked like doctors’ and nurses’ uniforms efficiently lifted Xiao’ai from the rear seat of the SUV, placed her on a stretcher, and transferred her to another vehicle. Xiao’ai noticed Zhe Ming on a separate stretcher, seemingly more alert than herself. He did not dare look at her, so he feigned a blank, empty stare. The couple who had sworn to live and die together had come to a bleak and sorry end — whether that was misfortune or fortune for either of them, it was hard to say.
Xiao’ai turned her head away, away from Zhe Ming. In the milling crowd she caught sight of one or two familiar silhouettes — it seemed to be Ba Yunye and Hippo, who had taken them from Kashgar to Ürümqi just a few days ago. The sight of them made her half-wonder whether she was experiencing the visions people see at the moment before death — she and Zhe Ming had once watched a film called The Shallows, in which the female lead, trapped at the bottom of the sea with her oxygen nearly gone, seemed to be rescued, or perhaps the rescue was merely a hallucination brought on by hypoxia. Whether she lived or died in the end remained a thought-provoking mystery.
Xiao’ai blinked, trying to concentrate and determine whether any of this was a hallucination.
Ba Yunye pushed her way through the crowd and, seeing that Xiao’ai had already regained consciousness, felt a wave of relief. “Beautiful, whatever you do, don’t go doing something this dangerous again. If you want to hike, if you want to travel — come find us.” She patted Xiao’ai on the shoulder, never missing an opportunity to drum up business.
“Master Ba…” Xiao’ai still couldn’t bring herself to believe any of this was real.
“Yes, it’s Master Ba right here! When you get out and meet the press, you make sure to mention it! Me — Master Ba — volunteered with the Beidou Rescue team and found you all for free.” The write-up in a previous press report still haunted Ba Yunye, and she was terrified that people might think it was unsafe to ride with her. She got it all out while the ambulance still hadn’t left, and then, still not quite satisfied, gave Zhe Ming a nudge as well. “You too — remember to mention my name!”
Long Ge watched her do all this and shook his head with a smile.
Zhe Ming and Xiao’ai were taken away by the professional medical team. Ba Yunye exhaled in relief, leaned against the vehicle door, and said: “Zhe Ming’s ear — same as Old Wang’s palm — has been corroded. But his condition is more serious, probably because it wasn’t treated promptly or properly. The whole ear is now…” She shrugged, and gestured toward the side of her face. “His face has also decayed quite badly. There’s likely to be some lasting impact on his appearance.”
Old Wang, still shaken, immediately checked his injured hand again.
“How did he get hurt?” Diao Zhuo asked.
“Digging for water. Something inside sprayed out and splattered onto his ear — badly burned.” Ba Yunye crossed her arms and looked steadily at Diao Zhuo. “Same kind of thing we ran into.”
Old Wang thought it over. “Could it be the death worm? The legendary creature is also said to be able to spit venom.”
Diao Zhuo got out of the vehicle, went to the rear compartment, and took out an entrenching tool. Whatever he intended to do next, that single action said it all.
Ba Yunye pointed the way. Several people took their entrenching tools over to the spot and began digging together. The sand in the hollow had been baked dry and loose by the midday sun — every shovelful opened a gap that was immediately flooded by sand from the sides, as though there were no end to it. Besides dried grass roots, the digging turned up nothing else. Whatever had expelled that powerful acid remained as mysterious as ever.
“It probably got away long ago,” Long Ge said, wiping his forehead.
Diao Zhuo recalled the circumstances of both Old Wang’s and Zhe Ming’s injuries — one had occurred just after rain, when the surface was slightly damp; the other late at night, when temperatures were lower. His thinking had not changed: bone-dry, scorching sand could not sustain anything that carried fluid within its body. Whatever creature this was, its appearance had to be linked to the moisture of the sand and the temperature.
Humans intruding on the desert were, from the perspective of its creatures, nothing but a disturbance. Whether they retreated or fought back, all of it was for the sake of their own survival. Since they had no wish to be found, it was better not to force the matter.
“Let it go.” Diao Zhuo thrust his entrenching tool into the sand upright and left it standing there. “We push southwest. We find Zhang Tian’en.”
Everyone stowed their tools and turned to head back to their respective vehicles, when Old Wang came running over, walkie-talkie in hand, his face lit with excitement. “Found him! Found him! Alive!!”
Zhang Tian’en had been located by another rescue team. Though he was barely clinging to life, there was still a faint breath in him. Had they arrived even one hour later, nothing could have brought that young life back.
With that, all three university students who had attempted to cross the Badain Jaran Desert without any support or resupply had survived.
The Badain Jaran seemed almost sentient. The very moment the news of Zhang Tian’en’s rescue arrived, the singing sands came rolling forth — like the thunder of war drums, repeating three times before falling suddenly silent. Whether it was the desert celebrating the rebirth of life, or issuing a warning to the ignorance of humankind, no one could say.
Everyone exhaled a long, deep breath, and at last relaxed completely. They lifted their eyes to the distance, and for the first time were able to appreciate with the uncomplicated eyes of visitors the sand dune contours sculpted by nature’s extraordinary craft. The wind had polished the sand beneath their feet into layered ripples like spring fields freshly turned by a plow. In the distance, towering dune walls formed a natural rampart, rising at an angle nearly perpendicular to the earth, their summits merging with the blue sky. The sand at the top bore downward-flowing wave patterns — like cascading waterfalls of sand, one after another. Here and there, a sparse clump or two of nameless desert plants swayed in the wind, a tenacious testament to life.
In the harsh and arid desert, these small, shriveled plants had survived for decades. Meanwhile, human beings — who had arrived fully prepared and with the stated ambition of conquering nature — had repeatedly found themselves on the brink of losing their lives. If that was not a profound irony, what was.
“Diao Zhuo — dare to do something truly wild?” Ba Yunye gazed at the dunes, a small flame of off-road adventurous spirit burning in her eyes.
Diao Zhuo was leaning against the vehicle door, smoking. The tension of the past few days had unwound, and he asked lazily: “Want to fight me again?”
She blinked — she hadn’t been talking about that at all. But hearing him say it, she deliberately responded: “Fight or not?”
An actual fight? Long Ge and Hippo exchanged a glance, shrugged at each other with the shared look of people who had no choice in the matter, and braced themselves to play peacekeeper.
“It’s too hard here. Find a softer spot and we’ll settle it.” Diao Zhuo flicked ash from his cigarette, and the fine sand and ash drifted off together on the wind.
Ba Yunye burst out laughing. “What’s the matter — afraid I’ll knock you flat on your back and your head smacks the ground too hard?”
Diao Zhuo tilted his head toward her. “Afraid you’d hurt yourself.”
Ba Yunye hadn’t actually intended to fight him at all, but being baited like that genuinely made her want to try. She stepped forward, grabbed a fistful of his collar, rose on her toes, and stared him down. “Fight now if we’re going to fight — whoever’s afraid of getting hurt is the lesser one.”
Diao Zhuo freed himself from her grip, pressed his cigarette butt into the sand, and tossed it into the rubbish bag he’d brought. “Fight, my foot. I never hit women.”
Ba Yunye’s thought process worked rather differently from most women’s — hearing that only made her more indignant. “How do you know I’d be the one getting hit?”
He gave a brief snort and laughed. “I also have no interest in being hit by a woman.”
That settled it for her. She let go of the fighting idea and stepped in front of him instead, pointing at the towering dune opposite. “Let’s have a race then — who can make it to the top?” As she spoke, her thumb jabbed in the direction of the SUV beside them.
Everyone looked over without needing to be told. Drive a vehicle to the summit of a dune that high, at an angle approaching vertical? Long Ge traced the line of the slope all the way behind him — there was a very long run-up, which could provide the necessary momentum. With enough commitment, reaching the top in one clean push was not impossible. But it demanded tremendous nerve and steadiness. At the very minimum, you could not hesitate when you pressed the accelerator, and you could not hit the brakes halfway up. The moment you lost your nerve and braked, the moment your steering wavered even slightly, there was every chance the vehicle would roll with you down to the bottom — and no amount of pressing the accelerator afterward would matter.
(Warning: this maneuver carries significant danger. Readers are advised not to attempt to replicate it.)
That said, given Ba Yunye’s and Diao Zhuo’s driving ability, rolling down with the vehicle was unlikely. Who would reach the summit first was a different question entirely — genuinely uncertain.
Diao Zhuo jumped cleanly into his vehicle, leaned out his window, and asked: “Master Ba, how do you want to play this?”
Ba Yunye started her engine. The vehicle trembled and roared like a battle-hardened warhorse readying for a charge. Looking through the passenger-side window, she caught sight of Diao Zhuo’s hard-edged, striking face — like a close-up shot on television. Damn if it isn’t captivating. The more she looked, the more she liked it, and the feeling was sharper now than it had been back in Qiang Tang.
His toughness and temper, his manner — all man, through and through — his persistence and his ease, the edge of wildness that surfaced in him sometimes: it all matched her taste precisely. Even if it came to nothing beyond a moment’s satisfaction, she intended to hold on tight.
“If I get up there first, you’re mine in life and mine in death — dare you?”
“And if it’s me first?”
She smiled — an extraordinary blaze of confidence, her eyes alight with absolute certainty that she would win. “Do as you please! You’re not going to win anyway.”
Diao Zhuo steadily turned his vehicle around and headed up the slope, Ba Yunye rolling slowly along behind him. The two drove a long stretch before pulling up side by side at the top of the incline. Ahead of them, the high face of the dune rose steeply. The sun was directly ahead, and the slope in shadow took on a muted reddish-brown, gilded only at the very crest by sunlight. Looking up, when the wind came up the yellow haze filled the air, and there was something of the vast, desolate grandeur of a wuxia novel.
“Should I give you a head start?” Diao Zhuo said, deliberately.
Ba Yunye didn’t flinch for even an instant. Her expression was firm and resolute — just as it had been in that moment she had raised the gun and shot out the rear tire of the vehicle ahead. “A bet is a bet. No tricks!”
“A horn blast for the signal.” Diao Zhuo looked forward.
“Beep—”
On that single note, both SUVs launched simultaneously, charging straight at the dune wall ahead.