Dr. Hedin reassures everyone that he will work with Mr. Xu to find a safe way for everyone to leave.

No one wants to go back to that terrible black storm again, after all, we managed to get out of it.

In addition, Mr. Xu stood aside and did not raise any objections, so everyone had no other opinions, and immediately repaired at the edge of the red mist.

Xi Xin's mood looked very bad, and I couldn't help but regret a little, why did I tell Xi Che such an ominous dream when she was missing and her life and death were unknown.

Two hours later, the sky here is still pitch black, with no sign of dawn, and according to Mr. Xu's pocket watch, it should be almost noon now.

"Do you smell it...... Seems to have a very strange smell? Mr. Xu suddenly asked me.

Ever since we encountered the Black Storm, my heart has been hanging in the air, and I haven't paid much attention to these details (and we haven't bathed in this great desert for a long time, and we have a slight smell of it).

However, when Mr. Xu prompted me, I carefully discerned it, and I really smelled a very subtle strange smell from the air......

It seems like...... It has a very faint fishy smell.

"Do you remember when we caught gerbils on the way?" Mr. Xu said.

I suddenly understood what Mr. Xu was going to say.

Most of the people we hired were Mongols, because they were the masters of the land, and they had lived in the steppes north of the desert for generations, and no one was more familiar with the desert than them, and of course they were suitable candidates to be guides.

That old He is actually also Mongolian, "He" is his Chinese surname, his real name is Harbara, and Mongolian means black tiger.

The journey in the desert was arduous and boring, and one of the Mongols' pastimes along the way was to catch gerbils – the full name is "Mongolian gerbils", which are small but extremely tasty.

The only time Mr. Xu and I participated, instead of digging a gerbil out of the sand hole, we dug out a snake hole with a flower snake more than two meters long.

The fishy smell in the snake's nest was very similar to the faint fishy smell we now smell in the air.

"Do you mean ......?"

I thought about it for a moment, and sweat beads appeared on my forehead.

Could it be that we passed through that red mist, and actually came to a snake den?

That would explain why it's dark here, because we're already underground!

However, if we can all smell the abnormal smell in the air, how can Lao He and those Mongolians not feel it?

I told Mr. Xu about this question, and Mr. Xu sighed and said, "Dr. Hedin told me that he knows how to get out, but he has to wait, and he doesn't know how long he will wait. Therefore, in order not to cause panic among everyone, he had to cooperate with me and stabilize everyone first. ”

At this time, we suddenly heard an exclamation, and Mr. Xu and I immediately jumped up from the ground, only to hear two screams, mixed with a few Mongolian words, all of which meant panic.

Liu Shaowu held the torch all the time, panting and running to the ancient times, shouting at me and Mr. Xu: "Oh no! Someone died! ”

Mr. Xu asked, "What's going on?" Shaowu said that he didn't know what was going on, let's hurry over, Xixin was still in a trance, I was afraid that I would be separated from her in this darkness, so I also pulled her.

When we arrived, Dr. Hedin was also on the scene with some people.

There were two corpses lying on the ground, judging by the costumes, one of them was a Mongol, and the other was a member of the outgoing team.

Why do you say it is from the costumes?

Because of the two corpses, the clothes on the top and bottom of the body were corroded by something unknown to create a fist-sized hole, which was filled with flesh and blood gushing out, becoming a "blood hole", and even the blood water was still "sizzling" and some wriggling bubbles, and the corpse's head, face, hands and other places that were not covered were even more blurred with flesh and blood, and it was impossible to distinguish the original face.

It soon became known that one of the dead was a Mongolian porter, and the other was an American named Raymond, a geologist.

Due to the lack of light sources, the only witness was another Mongolian porter.

The Mongolian porter was already a little frightened, and kept repeating the Mongolian phrase "olgoi-khorkhoi" in a frightened tone, and the Mongolian porter who heard this sentence all looked frightened.

It took us a great deal of effort to piece together the truth of the incident from the trembling and staccato language of the Mongolian porter.

It turned out that not only did Mr. Xu and I still suspect the special area we are currently in, but Raymond also has similar suspicions, he chose to dig the sand under his feet, and called two Mongolian porters to help.

But after digging not very deep, the shovel hit the bottom, and the touch was quite bizarre.

The American Raymond was very strange, so he asked a Mongolian porter to take a torch to shine, but as soon as the Mongolian porter got the torch, he heard two screams behind him, and then he saw two people with bloody faces running towards him, and he was so frightened that he immediately dropped the torch and ran away......

Our team, which had experts in biology in mind, went up to inspect the two bodies and concluded that they had been splashed with some kind of highly corrosive liquid and died quickly, and the British scientist warned us in broken Chinese not to touch the flesh and blood on the corpses, as there may still be deadly corrosive substances left in them.

When we looked at the ground they had dug up, we saw that there was only a very shallow layer of sand, and under it was a layer of dark red thick substance.

We didn't dare to touch that mysterious substance like clotted blood, believing that Raymond had dug it out of the ground to get to such an end.

After this episode, no one can stay here calmly, and seeing that the red fog equivalent to the "exit" is nearby, many people want to cross the red fog in the hope of returning to the normal world.

If you take 10,000 steps back, you won't be able to go back to where you came, and the situation shouldn't be worse than staying here.

Dr. Hedin and Mr. Xu couldn't hold everyone back, so they decided to set off together.

Ten minutes later, our group entered the red mist again.

The suffocating heat filled my body again, and this time, I don't know if it was a psychological effect, I felt that there was a strong smell of blood in the red mist, like the snake's nest that we had dug up to catch gerbils on our trek through the desert, or the substance in the "blood hole" under the sand that Raymond had dug up during his tragic death......

It can be seen that Dr. Hedin is very dissatisfied with this "reckless" behavior, and he told Mr. Xu that "now is not the time at all".

I knew Dr. Hedin had a mysterious map, but for some reason, he didn't take it out and use it again.

In the red mist, our vision is very limited, but there is a misty sense of light, so that we can see at least a meter or two around us, and the torch will automatically extinguish as soon as it enters the fog, making it unusable.

After walking for a few minutes, the people in front suddenly stopped - they ran into a wall!

A dark brown wall, and not made of masonry, but a strange substance with soft and hard tones, and I put my palm on the wall, and the strange touch that came from me was a bit like inferior leather - but more obviously stronger than leather.

Another piece of news is that the first people to discover the existence of the wall divided into several people and walked hundreds of steps to each side, but did not find the end or the fork in the road.

"What kind of material is this?"

Shao Wu said this, and suddenly flipped the shovel he had taken from the scene of Raymond's death, "Why don't I try it, maybe it's not strong!" ”

As he spoke, he raised his shovel and slammed it towards the wall.

I suddenly thought of a terrible possibility, but at this time I couldn't stop it, so I had to scream, and pushed Mr. Xu and Xixin around me backwards, and I also flew backwards.

"Ahhhhh——!h

Behind him came Shaowu's screams, and he was not the only one.

I felt a piercing pain in my calf, but I didn't have time to pay attention to it at this time, I endured the pain, and crawled away from the wall, and after hearing Shaowu's screams, Mr. Xu and Xixin also came to their senses, and they took the same action as me.

There were many screams, Han Chinese, Mongols, and a few foreigners, all of whom were terrible howls without human voices.

Me and Mr. Xu. Xi Xin glanced at each other, they were also pale and covered with cold sweat, and they were the same as me, remembering Raymond's terrifying death.

"Help me—"

A bloody hand suddenly stretched out from the red mist in front of me, less than half a meter away from me, and the voice was clearly Shaowu's voice.

But my hands and feet were already weak at this time, let alone saving him, I couldn't even retreat.

Next, I saw Shaowu.

He couldn't live without his human form—he was covered in blood, the flesh on his entire skull seemed to be dissolved, and the flesh on his face, the scalp with hair, was like melting snow on a spring roof, falling down piece by piece......

Soon, his skull turned into a bloodied skeleton, and his face almost collided with the tip of my nose!

"Uh-ho-ho-ho-......"

Shaowu let out a final cry in his throat, but he couldn't hear the content of his words anymore.

He lost the last of his strength and collapsed in front of me, an unrecognizable face just a few centimeters from my thigh.

"Let's go!"

Someone grabbed my arm and dragged me back, it was Xi Xin.

I struggled to get up, but there was a sharp pain in my left calf, and when I lifted my trouser leg, I saw a finger-sized bloody hole in my calf, and blood was pouring out—probably splashed with a drop of that corrosive liquid.

Just a drop, that's already it...... I didn't dare to think about it any further, I just felt scared.

"You stay here first, and I'll go find Dr. Hedin." Mr. Xu quickly calmed down and said.

Xi Xin tore a piece of cloth from her clothes, muffled her voice, and helped me bandage my wound.

After a short time, Mr. Xu returned with a dozen people, including the guide Lao He, Dr. Heding, and six other foreigners—I remember very well, except for Dr. Heding, the other foreigners were all adventurers who had followed Dr. Heding to discover the ancient city of Loulan thirty years ago.

That's probably two-thirds of our entire team, but, in a panic, some of them have already run away - in this red mist, no one dares to go far to find it.

Also, what is even more strange is that if someone is running away in a panic, why doesn't he make a sound?

But none of us can explain this—perhaps, in the red mist, there is something else terrible.

"We walked along the wall, on the right-hand side, and we noticed that the one on the right seemed to be brighter - I think the exit was probably over there."

After waiting in place for a while, and regaining some strength, Dr. Hedin gave orders again.

This time, there were no more accidents, and after we had walked for ten minutes, the front of us became brighter, as Dr. Hedin had said, and we were encouraged, and after a few minutes, the red mist in front of us suddenly thinned out—

We were back in the desert, with the fierce sunlight overhead, but at the moment it felt so familiar and intimate.

The experience of escaping death made some of the survivors in the team cry bitterly.

Behind us, the red mist quickly dissipated under the scorching sun, and at last it was completely gone, as if it didn't exist.

But as the red mist dissipated, from the angle of my vision, I noticed that there seemed to be something on the sand not far away, reflecting the red light.

I was about to tell Mr. Xu about this, but Xixin next to me pulled my sleeve and motioned for me to keep quiet, and then she stepped forward and stepped the shining red object into the sand.

######

This concludes the fourth diary.

The content after that has been torn off.

"How so?" I was very annoyed, because it was clear that the contents of this diary were very important!

However, it was torn off!

"What do you think?" Shen Tangzhi asked me.

I thought about it, turned the diary to the first few pages, and pointed to the line "olgoi-khorkhoi": "What does this Mongolian phrase mean?" ”

Shen Tangzhi and Hyde spent so much time studying this diary that there was no reason not to check it.

Sure enough, Shen Tang said: "This is the pronunciation of Mongolian, olgoi-khorkhoi, and the Mongolian word should mean 'Mongolian death worm'?" ”

"Mongolian death worms? What is it? The old knife didn't hear the word.

Hyde explains: "The Mongolian Death Worm is a mythical creature that lives in the most inhospitable Gobi Desert in Mongolia, and is a huge blood-red worm that looks like an earthworm magnified countless times, but its huge mouthparts are overlapping dagger-like sharp teeth. ”

"Mongolian death worms spew highly corrosive and highly toxic liquids, and in addition, these giant insects can emit a strong electrical current from their eyes, killing prey from several meters away before slowly devouring it."

"In modern times, a British explorer went to explore the existence of the Mongolian Death Worm, but found a large amount of uranium underneath Mongolia, and the explorer speculated that the Death Worm may be a giant Malu that has been mutated after irradiation."

I understood, nodded and said, "You guys guess the same as mine, right?" The huge body, the blood-red appearance, and the strong corrosiveness of the body fluids are all in line with each other. ”

Shen Tangzhi and Hyde glanced at each other and nodded in agreement.

The old knife on the side was anxious: "Hey, hey, hey, what kind of dumb riddle are you three playing?" ”

I said, "Think about what happens to the place where they are after they cross the red mist. ”

The old knife suddenly said, his eyes widened, and he said, "Wocao, this is too ...... Fantastical, right?! ”

I don't explain much, because it's just a diary, and there's nothing to corroborate, just reasoning based on the records in it.

Shen Tangzhi asked again: "What do you think is the red object that was hidden in the sand by Xi Xin in the end?" ”