novelraw Chapter 213: Mirage or Death Trap?
Chapter 213: Mirage or Death Trap?
Yan Xilou meaningfully refilled Lin Jie's cup, then raised his own and, with a tone that mixed melancholy and self-mockery, sighed softly, “Brother Lin, your insight is truly ear‑shattering and thought‑provoking.”
“Unfortunately, Xilou is after all but a mere mortal, unfit to witness those grand transformations that demand blood and sacrifice.”
“All I ask is to use some brute force—using outsiders against outsiders—to buy my ailing homeland one more gasp of life, enough to hang on a little longer.”
After saying that, he drained the spicy liquor in his cup in one gulp.
That clash of wit and ideology eventually petered out, drowned by the others’ drunken chatter.
Night had grown deep.
The desert nights were bitterly cold, comparable to the icy plains of Siberia.
Everyone, unable to resist the chill and the exhaustion from days of travel, stoked the fire with dry camel dung, wrapped themselves tightly in heavy blankets, and fell into a deep sleep.
Only three people remained awake.
William, on guard for the first half of the night, sat motionless like a statue in the dark, his eyes adapted to the night scanning the silent sea of sand with vigilant attention.Lin Jie, too, could not fall asleep for a long time.
He leaned against a camel’s body, quietly staring up at the Milky Way overhead, that river of countless diamonds blazing so brilliantly it made the heart race.
The third awake person was Yan Xilou.
After confirming everyone else had slept, the merchant slowly rose from beside the fire.
He did not disturb anyone;
he walked alone to the edge of the camp and tilted his head back to gaze at the magnificent starry sky.
His eyes moved expertly across the vast starfield, first finding the guiding North Star, then quickly locking onto Antares, the hooked red heart of Scorpio.
Then Yan Xilou extended his right hand and, with his index finger and thumb, measured a strange angle in the air.
It was as if he were using his fingers to gauge the heavens and the earth.
“…The wind is going to pick up.”
A whisper drifted from his lips, barely audible, blending into the cold night breeze.
Having uttered that cryptic sentence, he casually returned to the fire, wrapped his blanket tighter, and closed his eyes.
All of this was observed from the dark corner by William.
The iron‑blooded veteran’s eyes flashed with deeper wariness—he felt this man was not as simple as he appeared.
The next morning, after the campfire conversation had ended, nature unleashed a terrifying enemy in an unstoppable manner.
A sandstorm.
A catastrophic sandstorm worthy of being called a natural disaster!
At first, it was nothing more than a pencil‑thin yellow line on the horizon.
Even the seasoned Bedouin guides thought it was merely a localized dust weather event tens of kilometers away.
But half an hour later, that “pencil line” swelled into a yellow “apocalyptic wall” hundreds of meters high, stretching from earth to sky and blotting out the sun!
“Habibi! It’s a habibi storm!”
Fear carved deep into the guide’s leathery face.
He howled, ordering everyone to form a defensive ring with the camels and to hide in the center of the caravan.
Yet before the immense force of nature, all those measures seemed trivial.
“Rumble—!”
With thunderous roar, the yellow “apocalyptic wall” slammed into their tiny caravan!
In an instant, the sky went dark, the sun and moon vanished!
The whole world was swallowed by raging yellow sand!
Lin Jie pressed his body close to a camel, shielding his mouth and nose with a heavy sand scarf.
The incoming sand was sharp and thick, penetrating every defense.
Grains hammered his back and face, burning with stinging pain as if trying to flay flesh from bone.
Visibility plummeted to almost nothing.
The shrieking wind drowned out every other sound, robbing him of hearing.
He clutched the safety rope tied to his wrist and, by sensing the tremors transmitted through it, confirmed the others still survived in the storm.
The long storm lasted an hour before it slowly abated.
When the sand settled, the survivors clawed out from under camel carcasses and buried companions, half‑covered by yellow dust. The scene before them fell into a stunned silence.
The world had been altered.
The terrain around them had been reshaped by that horrific sandstorm.
Low dunes that had served as landmarks were flattened, while new dunes tens of meters high now blocked their path like the spines of prehistoric beasts.
Worse yet…
“Damn! The comms antenna is broken!” cried a technician from the Cairo Branch, a wail of despair in his voice. “Not just the antenna! The core crystal of the Hermes portable ether communications array shattered during that violent jolt!”
Cold dread ran through everyone’s hearts at that news.
Communications were down.
That meant they had lost contact with the logistics and intelligence support at the rear!
They had become an isolated unit!
Just as this low barometer of despair and unease threatened to crush everyone’s morale, Yan Xilou raised the monocular telescope and peered toward the horizon, which had cleared as the dust settled.
Then, in a tone of surprise and quiet excitement, he said, “Gentlemen, I think we may have been saved.”
Everyone instinctively followed his finger and looked.
At the distant edge of the horizon, amid the vast sea of sand, there appeared a patch of life‑bearing green!
It was a sizable oasis.
They could even make out the silhouettes of palm trees swaying with vibrant life.
“Oasis! An oasis! Praise be to God! We’re saved!”
The surviving Bedouin guides erupted into cries of joy, survivors’ euphoria flooding out the moment they spotted that green promise of water and life.
But the most experienced guide leader in the group, the one‑eyed elder Hassan, froze when he saw the oasis outline and the strangely pallid, deathly white land around it.
His elation instantly congealed into a fear ten times deeper than when facing the habibi storm.
Superstition and reverence filled his one eye. In a trembling voice he stopped those who were about to rush toward the oasis.
“No! Stop! Everyone stop!!!”
“That… that is not an oasis!”
“That is Sabkha! It’s the devil’s salt marsh!”
“My grandfather told my grandfather on his deathbed to warn every descendant—never, ever approach that cursed land!!”
Hassan’s warning poured cold over everyone.
Ethan immediately produced the sheepskin map the High Priest had given them, which supposedly recorded every known terrain and oasis in the western desert.
But no matter how carefully he compared, he could not find any marking on the map that matched the “saline oasis” before them.
This was a phantom oasis that had never existed on any map!
What they faced might be a mirage that could save them from disaster—
or a death trap laid out for them.
The group fell into a dilemma over this eerie discovery, anxiously unsure what to do.
At that moment Yan Xilou stepped forward again.
He did not refute Hassan’s legends, but adopted a rigorous, scientifically logical approach to analyze their predicament.
“Old Hassan, I highly respect you and the wisdom passed down by your ancestors,” Yan Xilou said gently. “But legends are ultimately unverified tales from the past. What we face now is the most real and cruel problem of survival.”
He pointed to the weak camels, then to everyone’s cracked, peeling lips.
“Our reserve freshwater was reduced by nearly a third during that storm. At our current rate of consumption, we can hold on at most two more days.”
“If we cannot find a new water source within two days, there is only one outcome waiting for all of us—we will become another unknown dry corpse in this desert.”
“And this oasis before us, no matter how ominous the legends portray it, is right now the only potential water source within hundreds of kilometers.”
“So my suggestion is…”
Yan Xilou turned and finally fixed his gaze on Lin Jie.
“Rather than sit here and die because of those nebulous legends,” he said, “we should take the initiative and personally verify whether that legend is true.”
“Of course, for safety’s sake,” Yan Xilou patted his chest, “I, this insignificant outsider, will volunteer to take on the dangerous task of scouting ahead for everyone.”