The place we are going to is a chaotic quicksand, in which there is no telling what will happen in the next moment.

Zijun was sleeping soundly, and a few strands of hair hung on his lips. Ahead were sand dunes, and the scorching sun took up half of the sky. The road went farther and farther, and the fortress became a yellow dot in the sea of sand.

When our off-road vehicle entered the disorderly quicksand, we saw a team of steel-toothed special forces, with scimitars hanging on their waists and black gauze covering their faces, about a dozen people, walking towards the opposite side. The buggy was parked under a wind-eroded cliff. We really got into the chaotic quicksands, with nothing but some dry food and water.

Climb over the sand dunes and look out over the cliffs. We walked through the invisible quicksand, sleepy in fatigue. We survived the sandstorm and got out of the sand. Finally we came to a rocky valley. This is not our end, we are here to rest. Exhausted, like a bruised wild dog.

Half a month has passed.

Give it up, we won't find the stele. I'm almost going to say it. Looking into their eyes, confused but unwilling.

"I'm afraid it's not the way for us to look for it like this," Ting Xiong Yan took a small sip and looked at us.

"Even if you find the stele here, you won't be able to transport the water to Twilight. I said.

"Now that everyone is tired, don't rush the decision. I suggest that everyone come back to the discussion after a good night's sleep. Zijun has laid a sleeping bag on the ground.

"Okay, let's rest first. I'm tired," Mingyue said, but she stood up first, walked out of the shadow of the rocks, and looked at the vast sea of sand.

Daily meditation allows me to stay awake without having to sleep too much. Zhao Pu too, always sits quietly not far away, silent like a stone monument.

The slightly hot wind blew the bright moon dress, and she stood straight, like a lonely white peony by the window.

She said that there was a friend of hers in the team that died that day.

Male or female, I asked.

Woman, she looked at me and didn't understand why I was asking.

Mingyue said: I came to this desert after graduating two years ago. She is a graduate naturalist student, living by the sea and going deep into the mountains, and has seen countless animals and plants, but she has never been to the desert. She plunged headlong into the land of the dead like a child, going crazy for every species in it. The team was originally not allowed to go to the girls, but she insisted that I go to the military commander, and she said that there would definitely be more species where there was a water source. I didn't expect to never come back since.

People always die, I said.

She's the only friend I'm with, and if I can get her back, it's a corpse or a relic. Help her bring it back and bury it in her hometown.

Well, I nodded.

This was the first time Zhao Pu took the initiative to talk to me, when the stars lit up the night sky. He said that Qi is the foundation of the existence of all things, and that people understand how to use it through cultivation. And because of the different physical qualities, the use of qi is also different. It is like a fire, and it is like ice. His ancestors have been practicing Jiuyang Gong since the beginning, and his temper has always been mild, but his qi is always uncontrollable.

I said, if you think too big of yourself, it's like this unruly desert. Huge as the ocean, all of them are composed of grains of fine sand. If you control the shape of the dunes, you can't control the natural flooding, but if you look at every grain of sand, it's very different.

Zhao Pu wants to know my secret about qi control, and if I tell you a few details, I'm afraid it will be difficult for even me to explain it myself.

That night, Zhao Pu grabbed the sand and looked at it for a long time, like an archaeologist who had found a secret scroll and was powerless to crack it. Although I was wrapped in a sleeping bag, my mind was very clear, and the moon in the sky was shuttling among the clouds. I felt the sand flowing under my back. I woke up Mingyue, but it was too late. Quicksand swallows us up like a huge whirlpool.

When I woke up, a bright light was shining on me, preventing me from opening my eyes.

"No, wake up" Zijun slapped me in the face.

"The flashlight is gone, and I can't open my eyes," I said.

"Oh, I'm sorry"

"What about the others," I asked.

"I've just woken up," Zijun said, "and we seem to have fallen into an underground palace." ”

"Huh?"

"The one we fell off together shouldn't be too far. She said, getting up and looking around. They were all buried under the sand, but fortunately they were all unharmed.

Zijun said that she saw her brother, and he was under this ground. She said she would find it here. She said her sixth sense had always been accurate.

It's been five years since her brother died.

We came out of the stone chamber, and in this subterranean world, we were like headless flies. Finally stop in front of a large stone door.

Mingyue looked at the white tiger on the door and told us that this is called Menghu. This is the gate of the underground palace. So we agreed to open it.

The moment the palace door opened, we were so frightened by the horrific sight before us that we couldn't speak for a long time. The ground was strewn with the corpses of human soldiers, and the death was strange and terrifying. At the end of the palace, a stone-carved dragon chair is eerie. Zijun took a flashlight one by one, hoping to find traces of his brother.

Suddenly, a gust of cold wind blew from the wind vents on both sides of the dragon chair, making people's cold hairs stand on end. It's like a ghost about to burrow into a person's soul. The palace lights were lit at some point, and my father sat on the dragon chair drinking, dressed in fine clothes and with a sturdy face. Surrounded by palace maids, the mother nodded and smiled at the ministers in the palace. She asked me to go up and have a drink with my father, and she was always against me drinking. She said that today is a big day and that it doesn't hurt to have a drink.

I asked her what the joy was. She blamed me for being so sloppy on her wedding day. I saw Tao Yao and Zijun Feng Guanxia and come over. The horn suona is endless. Zijun said, we are all your wives after today.

Just as we were drinking a glass of wine, Tao Yao's face changed to Mingyue. She pointed her middle finger at my forehead, and there was blood on her fingers. "What are you doing?" I was about to shout.

"No, wake up, I'm Mingyue"

"Ahh

"You look me in the eye," she shone with a flashlight, this damn flashlight.

"Oh, my eyelids are so heavy.

The glittering palace is gone, and it is still an underground palace full of horrific corpses. Zijun knelt on the ground and wailed in shock. Tingxiong smiled, like a big wedding. Zhao Pu kept hitting the stone pillar, but he had some scruples. They were like bodies in another world.

"They... I asked, confused.

"You've fallen for the devil's eye, a form of sorcery that hallucinates people. ”

"It turns out that everything is fake," I said.

Mingyue bit her finger again and recited a spell and tapped it on the foreheads of Zijun, Tingxiong and Zhao Pu.

This ghost-eyed wolf wind is a kind of witchcraft of Steel Tooth, and it seems that this palace was built by Steel Tooth people, Mingyue said.

Zijun said that she had seen her brother and that he had been killed by a sandworm. She awoke from witchcraft, her eyes hollow, like a defeated soldier. Tingxiong woke up and looked at Zijun as if he had lost his soul. Zhao Pu said that he had just comprehended the mystery of qi, and he was able to use qi freely. I said it was all an illusion. They were thoughtful.

The bright moon makes us lucky to resist the wolf wind, don't breathe for the time being. We walked behind the throne and it was from there that the wind blew.

I carried Zijun on my back, who was not yet fully awake, and supported Tingxiong through the throne with my right hand, and a corridor appeared in front of me. We see a lot of people. Some of them were struggling, some were screaming, some were running and some were scolding. When I looked closer, it turned out to be a stone sculpture, lifelike, with the same proportions.

So we stopped and hoped to find a clue to the stone monument in the stone statues. At this time, Zijun suddenly screamed.

"Brother, it's my brother. ”

It was a young soldier in special forces armor. He holds a nunchuck, his eyes are resolute, and his teeth are clenched, which shows the horror of his opponent.

"Zijun, it's just stone carvings. Maybe it just looks like your brother," Mingyue said.

Zijun woke up from witchcraft, and we let her rest. But she's always ahead of the curve. Zijun has always been stable in our minds. But now there seemed to be a force pushing her to make her delirious.

Zijun's father is in business and travels all year round, and his mother is always not around. She said that her brother was almost everything to her. Tongyue secretly told us once that she said that Zijun's brother and sister have a good relationship. said that Zijun and Tingxiong were together just to borrow the corpse to return the soul.

Zijun shook his head and stroked the face of the statue, "No carver would carve this kind of appearance." ”

As we all held our breath, wondering about the strange sight in front of us. Mingyue suddenly shouted

"Let's get out of here," her eyes widened, as if she had seen a terrible sight.

I asked her what was wrong.