Chapter Forty-Seven: An Unexpected Method and Fear

He didn't answer. Chen Qing let the fresh blood drip onto the children's faces. As the blood fell, their expressions contorted, and the old man's body instantly straightened as if by some unseen force.

He was breathing heavily through his nose. Chen Qing asked again, “What exactly are the Yellow Sands? Don’t you know that blood will attract these…” He hesitated for a moment before continuing, “these creatures?”

At that moment, the child’s head embedded in the old man’s abdomen finally died. The old man nodded. “I know… Of course I know… But this is the price… The price that must be paid for the shrine to answer our prayers!”

The old man gritted his teeth, his face resolute. He stared at Chen Qing, his eyes wide: “No one can ever leave here… because the shrine will not allow it…”

Chen Qing ignored him. He directed his bleeding hand toward the second head and asked again, “The price—so you feed these Yellow Sands?”

A manic giggle escaped him, only to be cut short as Chen Qing’s blood splattered on the second face.

“No… Stop! Stop!”

He screamed, but his voice was swallowed by the howling sandstorm.

He went on shouting, but the blood on Chen Qing’s hand was already drying up.

“Stop…” He closed his eyes, panting for a long while before finally, hesitantly, saying to Chen Qing, “We are not your enemies… I know… You think we harmed you… You think we want to offer you as a sacrifice… No.

You are mistaken.”

He looked Chen Qing in the eyes and continued, “We understand your anger… But your companion’s fate was not our doing! Nor yours! Every one of us returns to the shrine’s protection at the end of our lives. In the moment of our ending, we transform into new life!

It was you who answered the shrine’s call! You chose It of your own will!

The Yellow Sands! They are the shrine’s way of answering our prayers! It’s also how It protects us!”

He gritted his teeth, fumbling at the two now-dead heads on his stomach. “This is… how It protects us. The price we paid was settled long ago…”

“Oh?” Chen Qing looked at the old man, half-smiling as he asked, “Do you regret it?”

“Regret?! We can never regret it in our lifetime!” The old man roared, tearing the two heads from his abdomen. Yet from the torn flesh, not a drop of blood welled.

He glared at Chen Qing, teeth bared, features twisted: “No one can regret the past… No one can change it…”

His voice dropped, his expression turning vague and dreamy. Sensing something was wrong, Chen Qing changed the subject, “What exactly are the Yellow Sands? How do they protect you?”

The old man lowered his head, thinking for a long moment before finally answering slowly, “They… keep out enemies beyond the city walls. They bring death to any who try to escape.

They are our hope… hope.”

“How do the Yellow Sands protect you, exactly?” Chen Qing pressed.

“It…” The old man fell silent, shaking his head.

“Since It arrived, there have been no more enemies, no more deaths among the people.” Suddenly, the old man grinned at Chen Qing. “I don’t know! I don’t know! Hee! Hee hee hee!”

“Today, you lost a former companion, didn’t you? That woman and her child.”

The old man shook his head, with not a hint of regret: “She regretted it! She regretted it!”

“She died because she regretted it?”

Suddenly, the old man lurched forward, crawling up to Chen Qing. “Because she lied! She wasn’t afraid at all! She wasn’t afraid of what she wrote!”

“What she… wrote?” Chen Qing took out the document from his pocket, holding it up for the old man to see. “This?”

“Yes… yes.” He nodded again. “You must write your greatest fear onto the document… You must. Only then will those things defend us from external threats! Using fear to keep out our enemies… That is the blessing the Higher God has granted us…

Write down the most terrifying thing that could happen here!

Only after the enemies are slain can anyone leave!”

Chen Qing frowned, sensing something was off. “What do you offer the shrine in exchange?”

“Everything… everything.” The old man grinned, adding, “We have given our future, our past. Everything except the present…”

Chen Qing’s brow furrowed tighter. Just as he was about to ask more, the infant heads on the old man’s body suddenly went mad, shrieking and twisting, pressing their tiny mouths against his skin.

His body convulsed with their movements, but after a few moments, their frenzy faded; their motions grew feebler, and the rise and fall of the old man’s chest slowed.

Frowning, Chen Qing took two steps forward and noticed a wooden tub, half his height, beneath the old man’s recliner. The tub was filled with blood, already beginning to congeal. He did not step closer, but gazed at the old man’s trembling beard, his mind already forming a theory.

He sighed and retreated to the outer corridor of the earth building.

As soon as he stepped out, Jiang Wan approached him, her expression curious; it seemed she had regained much of her senses.

At least now her face showed complex emotions, rather than the vacant look from before.

Before she could speak, Chen Qing pulled her aside, leaving the door ajar. After a short wait, several people entered the room.

The three newcomers appeared to be women and children from the earth building.

Each one cut off a head, soaked it in the blood beneath the recliner, then took it in their arms and left.

Jiang Wan frowned; after all, those were the heads of four or five children. The sight disturbed her.

But Chen Qing shook his head, cautioning her softly, “Those heads… aren’t human.”

He paused, then added, “At least not in the legal sense of living humans.”

She didn’t really understand, but in the urgency of the moment, she didn’t press the matter.

Once the room was empty, the two of them left and returned to their previous quarters.

As soon as they arrived, Jiang Wan started questioning.

“What on earth is going on in this place? Those Yellow Sands! Why have things become like this?”

Chen Qing frowned slightly, still worried that this strange power might keep affecting her.

“These Yellow Sands… tsk.” He scratched his head and began with the people here. “They don’t seem to be the entities we used to define. They don’t possess any extraordinary powers. They can even die.”

Jiang Wan’s face turned pale, and she looked away toward the window.

“Of course, I don’t suggest you try to save them. This place has likely been a back room for… who knows, maybe a hundred years or more. They can’t possibly be ordinary humans.”

“Then what are they?!” Jiang Wan was a little agitated, remembering the mother and child they had killed earlier.

“Perhaps…” He frowned, muttering softly, “perhaps they’re some artificial—or divine—creations.

Projections? Or perhaps clones. Maybe that’s a more accurate way to put it.”

He shook his head, sharing his deductions with Jiang Wan. “Let’s put aside how these people survive. Just think about these man-eating Yellow Sands, this isolated environment. Do you really think, with people eating people, they could have lasted this long?”

Jiang Wan listened, still uneasy, but the guilt she’d felt earlier was much less.

“And another thing… when I was interrogating—no, talking with that old man, he thought I was attacking him because I’d been hurt, so he revealed some things about…” He paused, changing his words, “that parasitic phenomenon.”

The threat of the Yellow Sands made it nearly impossible for new outsiders to show up here, let alone so many children.

They couldn’t possibly be traditional human life. So… don’t worry.”

She nodded, indicating she understood, then asked, “So… the Yellow Sands? How do we leave… no. What do they want us to do?”

She frowned, adding, “Before, every time, your goal was to find the shrine. But this time, the shrine is right there, yet it seems utterly unreachable.”

Chen Qing nodded, his gaze falling on the document in his pocket. “The shrine is indeed right in front of us… but that doesn’t mean it will help us.

There’s something odd about this place…”

He recalled the old man’s words. “Do you remember what was written at the entrance to this back room?”

Jiang Wan frowned, then nodded: “Records are truth; things outside of time may always be trusted. And listen, there are only so many records; only the earliest among them may survive.”

“But do you know what I heard at the shrine?” he asked.

She shook her head, listening.

“To chant the truthful lie! Not a word outside time may be trusted!

Remember the fleeting smoke of history, leave your own footprints, let the world sing of you…”

She looked at Chen Qing, his expression somewhat strange.

“Ever since I saw the shrine, I’ve felt like I’ve forgotten something. But I’ve never been able to remember.”

“And then, do you know what the old man told me?” he asked.

She shook her head again.

“You need to write down the thing you fear most on the document…” He pointed at the paper in his hand and continued, “He also told me… the Yellow Sands aren’t the price. The Yellow Sands are their origin… or rather, the shrine answered them, and, as a deity, gave them its answer.”

He told me to write down the most terrifying thing in this place!

That’s not the price. Maybe none of the three were lying…

Among these three statements, all of them are true!

Write down the greatest terror this place has seen, write down the truest thing here, and write down the greatest falsehood this place has known!

He looked at the document in his hand—and for the first time, set pen to paper.

“A ten-meter-tall donut, running wildly across the ground.”

As the words took shape under his pen, a line on the document began to turn yellow and wither.

Jiang Wan stared at him, her face a mixture of fear and confusion.

“Chen Qing, if you’re still half-asleep, you should go get some rest first.”