novelraw Chapter 218: Songstress of the Desert Sands
Chapter 218: Songstress of the Desert Sands
Everyone watched as the hyenas efficiently carried out their harvesting operations across this oasis.
These hyenas continued to maintain their eerie state of ignoring Lin Jie and the others hiding behind cover.
"What should we do now?"
The captain of the Cairo Branch security detail, who was responsible for sentry duty, asked for instructions in a trembling voice, his face etched with lingering fear.
Retreat?
Or follow them?
"We must retreat!" One-eyed Hassan was the first to object firmly. "That place inside is the 'Devil's Dining Table'! We cannot go there! That would be seeking our own death!"
"But what about Ethan?" Julian immediately countered. "If we retreat now, it's the same as abandoning him!"
"That's still better than all of us dying here!" Hassan stubbornly clung to the beliefs passed down by his ancestors.
Just as the two sides were about to descend into meaningless argument, Yan Xilou spoke."Perhaps, we have another option."
Yan Xilou turned his gaze towards Julian.
"Mr. Belloc," Yan Xilou's question was guiding in nature, "You are the expert. Based on your knowledge, where would the antidote for such a potent toxin that can instantly paralyze a creature's central nervous system typically be found?"
Julian quickly composed himself.
"The law of nature is balance. The most potent poisons often have the antidote growing right beside them."
"So, based on the basic principle of 'immune serum'..."
Julian's speech grew faster and faster.
"...Just like the most powerful snake venom requires the serum from that very snake to neutralize. The antidote for that wasp has an extremely high probability of existing within its own body tissues, or perhaps its queen, or even within the core of the nest they all protect together!"
Julian's deduction provided a new glimmer of hope.
Everyone's gaze instinctively focused on the face of the young Eastern man who was still deep in thought.
Lin Jie did not answer immediately.
His eyes swept over the still-unconscious Ethan beside them. Thanks to Yan Xilou's secret pill, Ethan's breathing and heartbeat were temporarily stable.
Then, Lin Jie shifted his gaze towards that departing "white funeral procession."
Only one path lay before them.
A path leading straight to hell.
"Ethan's poisoning can't be delayed for long," Lin Jie finally spoke. "Mr. Yan's medicine is only temporarily sustaining his heart's vitality. If we don't find the real antidote before the poison takes full effect, then he truly has no hope."
"And as Julian deduced," Lin Jie's gaze sharpened, "The antidote, or rather, the only clue that might lift this neural paralysis, is likely inside the lair of those 'processing plant' masters."
"So, we have no other choice."
Lin Jie stood up from the sand, re-holstering the Serene Heart.
Then he issued the final pursuit order.
"Hassan," Lin Jie first turned to the grim-faced one-eyed guide. "You, your men, and the two brothers from the Cairo Branch—five of you in total—stay here."
"Your mission is to guard the supplies, the camels, and most importantly, protect Ethan's safety."
"If anything unexpected happens, immediately retreat in the direction we came from. Do not hesitate for a second."
After assigning the rear-guard duties, Lin Jie turned his gaze to the Eastern merchant.
"Mr. Xilou, the road ahead will be extremely dangerous, a true life-or-death situation."
"Your secret pill has already helped us immensely. You really shouldn't risk your life any further."
"So, I suggest you also stay here with Hassan and the others, and wait for our news."
These words were partly out of concern for an ordinary person's safety, and partly Lin Jie's final, subtle test of this mysterious man from the depths of his heart.
However, after hearing Lin Jie's "perfectly reasonable" arrangement, a determined expression appeared on Yan Xilou's face, tinged with a hint of displeasure.
"Brother Lin, what kind of talk is this?" Yan Xilou shook his head.
"Since I, Xilou, have had the fortune to meet all of you in this desert, and have been graciously accepted into this brave expedition team, then I have long been an inseparable part of this collective."
"A companion is hanging by a thread, poisoned by a strange toxin. As a friend, how could I selfishly seek safety in the rear while alone?"
"So, you must take me with you."
"Whether as a scholar who wishes to witness history firsthand, or as a companion who wants to contribute his humble effort for a friend."
Lin Jie looked at the man before him and finally nodded slowly.
"Everyone else, follow me."
...
It was a bizarre and absurd act of tailing.
Lin Jie's group trailed far behind the funeral procession composed of hundreds of hyenas.
They maintained a delicate safe distance from the terrifying symbiotic hyenas, close enough not to lose the target but far enough to avoid detection.
This oasis was far larger than they had imagined.
Guided silently by the funeral procession, they passed through abandoned villages one after another.
These villages varied in size. Some might have been temporary settlements for a few nomadic families, while others, like the first village they encountered, were once thriving Bedouin tribes with populations over a hundred.
But their final fates were all the same without exception. Every village had been transformed into a silent ghost town filled with white salt sculptures.
On the ruins of one of the largest abandoned villages, which seemed to have been the center of a regional tribe, William stopped.
His gaze locked onto the village's central square, where there were signs of battle different in style from the surrounding salt sculptures.
That battlefield was scorched black, as if plowed by some force.
The ground was covered with huge craters, their edges showing a glassy texture from being melted by high heat and then solidified.
Several sturdy mud-brick houses were flattened, leaving only blackened, smoldering ruins.
What lay scattered among the craters and ruins made everyone uneasy.
They were not human salt sculptures.
They were the mangled remains of many hyenas and wasps torn apart by immense force.
Some remains were cleanly severed at the waist.
Others had half their heads blown off, their skulls still bearing signs of fire burns.
"A terribly fierce battle took place here."
William's voice carried respect for fallen comrades.
"And judging from these traces, one side in the battle possessed extremely formidable power!"
Julian quickly stepped forward and crouched down. Carefully, he pinched some ash from the edge of a crater that hadn't yet been blown away by the wind.
He brought the ash to his nose and sniffed lightly.
"It's silver," Julian said with some surprise. "High-purity mithril powder!"
"And this smell..." He grabbed a handful of bluish-tinted sand from another crater. "It's a mixture of black powder and whale oil, with at least three different alchemical agents added to it!"
Yan Xilou, who was standing guard nearby, suddenly let out a soft sound of surprise with a strange tone.
"Gentlemen, I think you should perhaps come and see this."
Everyone looked in the direction of his voice.
Yan Xilou was standing quietly before a crumbling, damaged mud-brick wall that had been shaken by an explosion's shockwave.
The wall was eroded by wind and sand, its original color indiscernible.
On the wall was an emblem. Though blurred, the outline formed by a "sword" and a "scale" was still recognizable.
That emblem had been sprayed with a special alchemical dye mixed with mithril powder, and despite years of wind and sand, it still clung to the wall.
It was the emblem of the I.A.R.C.
Beside that emblem was a line of fragmented German words, eroded by the elements.
"—1879 German 'Sandsea Songstress' Expeditionary Force encountered large numbers of unknown swarms here."
"Communications interrupted..."
"Ammunition... exhausted..."
"May... glory... endure forever."
This discovery made everyone's hearts tighten.
So, nearly a decade ago, the Association had already noticed the existence of this cursed land.
And had dispatched an expeditionary force codenamed "Sandsea Songstress" to investigate. The team appeared to be composed of experts from the German Munich Branch.
Lin Jie instinctively shifted his gaze back to the center of the square, towards the dozen or so white statues that differed from the surrounding Bedouin sculptures. Even turned into salt corpses, their heavy German-style expedition gear and the back-to-back defensive posture they maintained until death were still visible.
They had ultimately lost to overwhelming numbers.
It seemed even the well-trained, well-equipped elite hunters of the I.A.R.C. could not escape the tragic fate of being turned into artworks by this "Living Mummy Processing Plant."
This tragic discovery made them even more wary about the journey ahead.
Finally, when the crescent moon climbed to the center of the night sky.
The silent funeral procession reached its final destination.
It was a lake.
An ancient salt lake that had been dry for hundreds, even thousands of years, its area so vast it could encompass the entire central district of London.
The dry lakebed glistened with a pale, sickly sheen under the cold moonlight.
A thick, hard crust of pure salt crystals covered the entire land. Not a blade of grass grew, and the air was filled with the aura of death.
Upon reaching the edge of the salt lake, the hundreds of symbiotic hyenas, as if obeying a silent command, reverently placed the precious food from their mouths onto the salty ground by the lakeside.
Then, like devout believers, they prostrated themselves, repeatedly bowing their heads in an ancient worship ritual towards the very center of the salt lake with awe and fear.
At that moment, an extremely dense buzzing sound came from the center of the salt lake, far louder than the one by the well, causing unease.
Around a massive salt-block altar, many small, earth-yellow points of light were rising into the air.
They were vast numbers of Canopic Wasps.
They swarmed out from the darkness, then expertly inserted their stingers into the salt corpses just delivered by the symbiotic hyenas, beginning the next crucial process: oviposition and internal organ liquefaction.
The entire edge of the salt lake instantly transformed into an open-air slaughterhouse, echoing with the sounds of buzzing and liquid rupturing.
Lin Jie and the others almost stopped breathing.
They lay concealed behind a sand dune hundreds of meters away, observing the center of the salt lake, worshipped by the monsters, through their binoculars with tense focus.
At the very center of the salt lake stood a massive altar, constructed from irregular, semi-transparent white salt blocks, resembling a prehistoric stone circle.
And beneath that primitive salt-block altar was a deep, bottomless entrance to an underground structure, partially obscured by a huge salt stalactite.
Found it!
Everyone's heart shouted the same words at that moment.
They had finally found the UMA's nest!
"Too... too incredible."
Yan Xilou broke the silence.
His face showed a mixture of shock and elation, tinged with fear and unease towards the unknown.
He raised his binoculars, adjusting the focus on the dark entrance hidden beneath the salt-block altar.
"Look at the architectural style of that entrance. Although severely eroded by salt crystals, the remnants of papyrus and lotus column motifs on its lintel... This seems to be an architectural style from the late Old Kingdom to the early Middle Kingdom?"
"If my speculation is correct..."
"We may have inadvertently stumbled into the temple of an unknown pharaoh!"
As soon as the words left his mouth, a synchronized sound of buzzing wings and low howls arose simultaneously from the edge of the salt lake.
The Canopic Wasps and the hyena pack simultaneously ceased all their work.
The wasps quickly regrouped in mid-air, forming a massive, earth-yellow cloud.
The hyenas used their large muzzles to drag the processed nursery beds, prepared by the wasps, to the edge of the dark underground entrance.
Then, they began to leave the salt flat in an orderly and quiet manner.
Within minutes.
The salt lake returned to silence.