Chapter Forty-Six: Paradoxes and Children All Over

“The opposite outcome is not impossible. Have you ever heard of the krill paradox?”

Jiang Wan paused for a moment, then shook her head slightly.

She understood what krill were—small, low-level creatures in the ocean, living off plankton and the waste of larger fish, preyed upon by many animals.

She looked at Chen Qing and asked, “What does this paradox refer to?”

He stroked his chin, and after confirming his memory was correct, began to speak slowly: “In the 1980s, the whaling industry on Earth surged rapidly. Krill, being one of the main foods of whales, should have increased greatly in population after losing their predators, right?”

“Right.” Jiang Wan frowned. “When predators decrease, the population should rise, and after it increases, their food declines, and eventually it finds a balance.”

“But that’s the problem.” He tapped the window. “After whales were massively hunted, the krill population quickly plummeted, almost matching the decline of the whales.”

Chen Qing paused, then said to Jiang Wan, “If one day, humans were to go extinct, do you think the number of chickens, ducks, and geese on Earth would decrease?”

She looked stunned, clearly caught off guard.

“But these people…”

“Rather than saying the desert raised them, I think it’s more accurate to say they raise the desert.” Chen Qing dismissed her thought. “Look, the sandstorm has stopped.”

As the room grew quiet, people outside in the earthen building began to emerge, exchanging news and information.

They walked to the shrine at the center of the courtyard, reverently placing incense sticks into the holder.

They stood on the sand, their boots wrapped up to their thighs making soft rustling sounds. The women and children whispered beneath the walls, while the men walked on the sand, shoveling out a path with their iron spades.

Every few minutes, their gazes drifted toward the house where Jiang Wan and Chen Qing stayed. The meaning was obvious: Why are you two so oblivious? Why don’t you come out and greet everyone?

Yet inside, Chen Qing and Jiang Wan were utterly oblivious to these expectations.

“How long has it been?” he asked.

Jiang Wan glanced at her watch. About seven or eight minutes.

“Just over a minute until ten minutes.”

He nodded, then asked, “Has the interval already exceeded the time when blood was spilled?”

Jiang Wan nodded but didn’t reply.

He jogged over to the window and pushed it open. The sound attracted the attention of those outside, but just as they expected Chen Qing to come out, he merely glanced at them before closing the window and drawing the curtains.

He held some sand in his hand, protected by two layers of clothing. He let the sand fall onto the floor, forming a small pyramid. For a moment it stood still, but as he withdrew his hand, the sand began to slide away, the sharp peak shrinking rapidly.

It displayed a remarkable vitality and energy.

Though it was hard to distinguish the difference from gravity alone, it was unmistakable—the sense that the sand was probing its surroundings.

Seeing this, Chen Qing immediately took some blood from himself, letting drops fall onto the sand.

As the blood met the sand, the grains clumped together, forming a sticky little lump of mud.

It writhed, as if trying to free itself from the blood’s restraint, but as the clump writhed, it drew in more surrounding sand.

Only when the last grain on the ground had been absorbed did its struggle slowly subside, and its movement became noticeably sluggish.

Chen Qing frowned, wrapped his finger in cloth again, and touched it. The lump of sand, now an orange-red, had hardened considerably.

He picked up the clump and tapped it twice on the floor—it sounded much like porcelain.

“Does blood make this sand lose its vitality?”

Jiang Wan stepped closer, curiosity on her face. “This seems to match what we saw earlier…”

Earlier? He was surprised but didn’t want to probe further, hesitating out of worry it might trigger a painful memory for her.

“In my heart I think…” he muttered to himself, “This power is far stronger than any traditional god…”

He shook his head to clear his thoughts, then looked at the now inert sand and nodded calmly. “So our guess about the sand was correct…”

Chen Qing looked up, his finger resting on a document.

He hesitated for a moment, but in the end did not write anything down.

“The sand seeks blood, but blood brings death to the individual grains.”

Chen Qing hesitated, then laughed softly. “It really is just like the krill paradox.

Krill lose numbers to baleen whales, but gain more food from their waste.”

He spoke quietly, and already the sound of children’s laughter could be heard outside. Turning, he saw several children peering in at the window.

They stared in with wide, bulging eyes, clutching the windowsill so tightly the wood creaked.

He listened quietly as the children outside suppressed their voices.

“Did they die? I’m so hungry. I want to eat meat.”

“Shh! Don’t make a sound! If you bother them, I’ll eat you instead!”

“Can’t they give birth to another one soon… Yesterday I only got half a bite of Little Brother’s meat. Not tasty at all.”

Their words were jumbled, repeating the same phrases over and over.

They chattered on until, after about ten minutes, the adults outside called for them, and reluctantly the children left the window.

Chen Qing frowned and exchanged a glance with Jiang Wan, pointing at another door inside the room. “Where does that door lead?”

She followed his gesture, thought for a moment, then shook her head. “An old man came by earlier, but you were still asleep. I didn’t dare leave.”

“Let’s have a look.” He dropped the sand and was the first to push open the door.

Beyond the door was a corridor stretching out of sight. Every five to ten meters on the right side was another door, while the left side was an unbroken mud wall.

The passage slanted slightly to the right, and Chen Qing quickly deduced it was a space between the round building and the adjoining house.

He walked forward until he reached its end, where a staircase led upward to the second floor of the building.

Looking around, they saw that all the inner doors on the second floor were tightly locked, each bound with thick iron chains from the corridor. The chains, as thick as a bowl, secured every wooden door, making the scene unsettling.

Continuing on, near the end of the corridor, they found a door without a lock. As they approached, the sound of someone inhaling some kind of vapor came from within.

Jiang Wan wrinkled her nose. “Shall we take a look?”

Her expression was one of disdain, the smell of tobacco mingling with the sounds inside. She clearly disliked it.

Only a lifelong smoker could fill a room with such a stench, the odor seeping into every corner.

“Let’s go in.”

Chen Qing nodded and pushed the door open, its hinges stiff from years of disuse.

They slipped inside, the room filled with choking smoke, thick enough to obscure the upper half of the room entirely.

The stench of tobacco wafted from every piece of furniture.

Chen Qing frowned; Jiang Wan fared even worse. She clung to the doorframe, her grip leaving two or three millimeter-deep marks from her nails. Gasping for breath, she quickly retreated.

Her voice came from outside the room. “Good luck. It’s too much for me—I’ll wait outside.”

Chen Qing tilted his head, puzzled.

In their line of work, they were used to long nights with tobacco as a companion.

Still, though curious, he didn’t dwell on it.

He ventured a few steps deeper into the room and saw an old man reclining in a chair, his face pale, with more than a dozen children attached to his body.

The children’s bodies were fused with his, or rather, their bodies were his. Their heads and necks grew from his skin, bobbing as they sucked greedily on the opium pipe he passed to them.

“What do you want?”

The old man’s voice was hoarse and ancient, as though he hadn’t drunk water in months.

“What is this place?” Chen Qing asked calmly.

“This place? Does it matter where this place is?” The old man looked at Chen Qing and gave a strange laugh, his face growing even paler. He seemed to want to move, to lift himself a little.

But the children’s heads—especially the four on his belly—were displeased. They twisted their pipe-smoking faces and bit down hard on his belly.

Blood gushed, but the children looked satisfied.

“This yellow sand… How did things become like this?” Chen Qing frowned, wanting to ask about the old man’s condition.

But the old man just laughed, his voice dry. “It all ends up like this… Everyone here becomes like this. It’s a blessing, a grace bestowed by the god above.”

Staring at Chen Qing, he suddenly seemed puzzled.

“You… why don’t you have their scent on you?”

Chen Qing frowned, glanced at his own palm, then stepped forward and drew his sharpened thumbnail across the old man’s chest.

No blood flowed from the cut.

“Heh… heh heh.” The old man gave a dry laugh, but there was a touch of disgust in his eyes.

“When did the yellow sand arrive?” Chen Qing asked, his gaze lingering on the old man’s body. He scraped open his own arm with a fingernail, and the blood that welled up made the old man even paler.

“What? What yellow sand?”