novelraw Chapter 620 - 5: I’ll Take You Home
Chapter 620 - 5: I’ll Take You Home
Everyone nodded; before coming here, they all did quite a bit of homework. Only the guide, Que Qiu, propped his head with a stick, poking at the campfire with an uninterested expression.
Because Cheng Luo was the only girl in the group, she wasn’t assigned night watch duty. Instead, after everyone went to sleep, the assistants took turns in pairs.
Having just finished eating, no one felt sleepy yet, so they gathered around the campfire to chat. Only Que Qiu sat quietly to the side, looking at the vast desert and lost in thought.
Cheng Luo planned to take a book from her tent and familiarize herself with the Irel Ancient Country again.
As she came out of the tent, she noticed that where she had just sat seemed like someone had been sitting there.
She blinked forcefully, but the person was gone? Was she so tired that she was hallucinating?
But under the dim campfire glow, there was indeed an extra sitting shadow!
Cheng Luo was startled, carefully counted them over; indeed, there were nine shadows! How could there be an extra one? Including herself, that would mean ten people, so who was the extra one?
"Wait... Look quickly and see if my eyes are playing tricks on me. How can there be an extra figure there?" Cheng Luo interrupted a few people’s conversation.
Suddenly, silence fell over the group. Everyone involuntarily looked at Cheng Luo, then immediately stood up and counted carefully. Yes! Near the guide’s hand, where Cheng Luo had been sitting, there was indeed a dark shadow.
In an instant, everyone fell silent.
A chill rose up from their feet.
"What, what’s going on?" Cheng Luo’s voice was trembling, on the verge of tears.
"I... I don’t know. Did we see a ghost?" Zhou Qiang dared not move and stared straight at the dark shadow.
"What are you saying? Have you forgotten all about the materialism we learned at school?" Another teacher spoke, but his face was still tense.
Only the guide remained seated, calmly poking a charred stick towards the shadow, which then disappeared.
"Don’t make a fuss, it’s just an illusion. The fire in the desert casts shadows on the sand dunes, where’s the ghost?" he said indifferently.
With that, everyone breathed a sigh of relief yet still felt uneasy. The conversation atmosphere was lost as they glanced at each other. After a while, it was Professor Wu who said perhaps they were just too tired and saw wrong, advising everyone to go to sleep. Apart from the two on night watch, everyone else exchanged goodnights and returned to their tents.
Cheng Luo hugged her book, returned to her tent, tossed and turned, and it was a long while before she slowly fell asleep.
A gust of wind kicked up the yellow sand at Que Qiu’s feet, spinning a few times before disappearing.
Que Qiu reached out, grabbed a handful of yellow sand, slowly let go, and the sand trickled down through his fingers. His eyes turned somewhat wistful.
Que Qiu instructed the two remaining to finish burning the deadwood and then return to sleep, cautioning them not to stray too far from the camp. He took his sleeping bag and went to sleep near the camel team, leaving the spot reserved for him at the tent unattended.
At six in the morning, Que Qiu was awakened by the blowing sand. It was just barely dawn, but the crescent moon in the sky was still exceptionally bright. Yet now it revealed a cold sensation, as though a veil of grim white fog wrapped around it, sending shivers down their spine, ’The fuzzy moon?’
The bright moon lingered in the morning sky. This was a phantom moon!