WOOY Chapter 17

Chang Dong flipped through the pages.

It was clear that it wasn’t written in a day, but accumulated over time. Different pens were used, and the handwriting varied from messy to neat. Some entries were even crossed out, indicating initial reasoning errors.

The truth was the truth, and Chang Dong almost believed her.

But it was even more baffling.

She had a wound on her shoulder, as she noted: scars on both the front and back of the hand, about the same size, not caused by a bullet, but more like a steel rod.

Her right calf had a branded scar, made by a specific branding iron. She drew the shape with a pen, and the drawing was ugly and crude, resembling a fierce face.

She added a note beside it: ‘Whoever branded me, just wait. Your damn days are numbered.’

Chang Dong couldn’t help but glance at her. She said coolly, “How big was the grudge? Just beating me up wasn’t enough, they had to brand me too. If they thought I wouldn’t dare wear shorts anymore, they were wrong.”

It was rare to see her admit a flaw. She wrote: ‘Previous aesthetic taste was terrible,’ with the reason being: the tattoo on her left wrist was too ugly.

Chang Dong had noticed the tattoo the first time they met. It looked a bit like a snake, and at first glance, he thought it was a bracelet. But upon closer inspection, it wasn’t a snake. It had eagle claws on its body, a flat oval head with a tuft of hair sticking out, looking quite odd.

After finishing the notebook, he felt as though he was lost in a cloud of mist, his mind conjuring up many absurd ideas that only appeared in contemporary novels, such as soul possession, ancient people being resurrected, dual life memories…

It seemed like none of those; she had already dismissed them herself.

Chang Dong returned the small notebook to her. If he kept hiding things, he would indeed feel a bit guilty.

He pondered for a moment, “I mistook you for Kong Yang, and saying it was a moment of confusion isn’t entirely wrong. You and Kong Yang do have similar figures.”

Both had slender builds and were about the same height. There were many similar figures in the world; even lovers needed to observe carefully to distinguish them, especially at night when they were far apart.

Ye Liuxi waited for him to continue.

“But when that figure appeared, I wasn’t really surprised.”

——

After the sandstorm at Goosehead Sand Dune, Chang Dong promptly received rescue assistance—he had previously arranged for a driver to pick up Kong Yang. The driver lived at a mining site, two hours’ drive from the dune. Reportedly, that night, the mining site was also affected, with winds and sand howling like ghosts crying at night.

The driver was deeply worried. Early the next morning, he rushed in a panic. Unable to reach them by satellite phone, he felt something was wrong and contacted the rescue team on the way.

Upon arrival, the scene made the driver’s legs go weak: Goosehead was gone, the sand area almost completely overturned and leveled. Stumbling forward a few steps, his knee suddenly hit something. Digging it out, he found it was the tilted luggage rack on top of the off-road vehicle.

The entire car was buried!

The first rescue attempt did not find Chang Dong. In the second attempt there was more manpower and  the search area expanded. Finally they found him two kilometers away from the original Goosehead location, buried under a sand dune, his arm stretched out, unconscious.

The rescue team leader thought it was already a miracle: in such a massive sandstorm, even the heavy car was buried and flipped, not fully recovered, and the entire campsite was buried. As for the people, rescuing even one alive was extremely rare.

After he woke up, they frankly told him, “Brother, this life is a gift from the heavens. Your survival is really due to your ancestors’ virtues”

At the hospital, investigators asked him for detailed information, especially what had happened just before he lost consciousness. He said, “The wind bottles suddenly started making noise, the goose head was cut off. I was holding onto Kong Yang, trying to run towards the car…”

The tents were too light; at that moment, only the car could be relied on.

But after just a few steps, he saw a massive wave of sand surge up. A car flipped sideways like a toy in front of him. The screams of the team members were drowned out by the sand. After that, he remembered nothing.

He was emotionally distraught, his hands trembling as he spoke.

The investigators sighed, “Your emotions are still unstable. Get some rest; we haven’t given up on the search yet…”

In reality, everyone knew the truth. In the desert, the lack of water, the intense sun, and the extreme temperature differences between day and night meant that if they weren’t found in the first two days, they were likely never going to be found.

That night, Chang Dong woke up in the middle of the night. The hospital room was extremely quiet. The curtains were half-drawn, and the moon hung softly in the sky.

He suddenly recalled a scene.

It was late at night, after the sandstorm had subsided and before the rescue arrived.

He had struggled to open his eyes and saw several blurry figures standing on the high sand slope.

A vague premonition in his heart told him that they were his teammates, that they were with Kong Yang. They had died; they were leaving.

Chang Dong’s lips moved slightly, and he reached out, weakly whispering, ‘Kong Yang…’

Kong Yang turned back.

His eyelids felt heavy, and his vision gradually blurred, slowly closing until everything was engulfed in dead silence and darkness.

——

A sandstorm was approaching. Loose sand and gravel hit the car’s body with a clattering sound, and the wind filled Chang Dong’s empty tent, making it look like an overstuffed kite desperately trying to fly away, held back only by the tightly anchored ropes.

Ye Liuxi asked him, “Didn’t you tell the investigators about this?”

“How could I? I can’t even tell if it was a dream or if I actually woke up then.”

Taking it a step further, it could have been a form of telepathy between close people at the brink of life and death. Kong Yang, at that moment, might have been saying goodbye to him…

Chang Dong helped Ye Liuxi close the tent door, “Get some sleep.”

He extinguished the camp lantern and laid down in the cramped single tent.

The rescue team did not find the bodies of Kong Yang and the other teammates. This once gave him a bizarre hope: maybe that night, they really stood up, shook off the sand, and left together.

After calming down, he knew it was impossible: Kong Yang was so frail, she couldn’t survive in the desert, and among the teammates, some had just become fathers. If everyone was still alive, why wouldn’t they come home?

Before heading to Dingzhou, he once again ventured into the desert on a bike, visiting nearly abandoned villages in the desert interior, asking the locals who had lived there for generations about sandstorm legends.

Did those who died in the desert really just disappear without a trace?

He wasn’t even sure what he was hoping for.

Perhaps he was hoping that on a moonlit night, the car would stop, and he would see Kong Yang sitting on a distant sand dune, her eyes filled with sadness. Even though he could never approach her, even though she was merely a thin ghost.

But nothing of the sort ever happened.

Those who drove, herded camels, or occasionally hunted always described to him the horrors of the Gobi Desert. For example, after a sandstorm, you might discover a dried corpse unearthed by the wind, its death year unknown. Or how the desert’s mysterious magnetic fields rendered even the most advanced instruments useless.

Once, at a village called ‘Yijia Village,’ an old woman washing clothes in saline-alkali water mumbled to him about the Yumen Pass.

“My grandmother said there was once a big city, Yumen Pass, which was blown away by the wind…”

“But over the years, from ancient times to now, that Yumen Pass has long come alive.”

“In the middle of the night, when a big sandstorm hits, you must close the Yumen Pass tightly. If you wander out into the wild, you won’t even realize it, but you’ll find yourself in the pass’s cave.”

At this point, the old woman’s dry mouth moved mysteriously, “Yumen Pass is also called the Ghost Gate…”

…

The wind grew stronger, and Chang Dong wearily closed his eyes.

He didn’t know how much time had passed when, amid the fierce wind, he faintly heard the sound of a gunshot.

——

Chang Dong quickly sat up, opened the tent door, and stepped out. The wind was strong, and sand particles flew through the air, some of them grazing his cheek, leaving thin, sharp lines of pain.

With bent knees he stood, facing the wind, tilting his body to listen to the sounds carried by the wind. Ye Liuxi also poked her head out. “Chang Dong?”

He motioned for her to be silent.

Listening carefully, there were faint and distant cries and the sound of metal being struck on the car…

Chang Dong’s heart tightened, and he turned back, whispering to her, “Pack up, quickly.”

He then strode to Fei Tang’s tent, grabbed the tent’s slanted support frame, and almost lifted both the person and the tent. “Get up, something has happened.”

After a pause of one or two seconds, the zipper door was pulled open, and Fei Tang almost rolled out from inside. Being suddenly woken up at night, combined with hearing such a tone, his fear was even greater: “Dong ge, what happened?”

“It might be a robbery. Be quick.”

Fei Tang’s heart was pounding, his palms sweaty. He didn’t even bother to pack up properly, just grabbed everything and stuffed it into the car haphazardly. Setting up camp had taken at least half an hour, but now they broke camp roughly in two minutes.

Looking back to see if anything was left behind, his legs were still shaking like a sieve.

He heard Chang Dong telling Ye Liuxi, “It might be a robbery or grave robbers grabbing loot on the side. Robbers don’t work alone; they follow a line. Our spot must have been scouted. Staying here is risky.”

A fellow traveler had once told Chang Dong that people went missing in Lop Nur every year, but accidents weren’t always due to the harsh conditions of the no-man’s land. Destroying evidence of murder—people could do that too. Some illegal miners or grave robbers, when ruthless, would target solitary travelers for extra loot.

Fei Tang was timid and had never experienced such a situation. With the wind howling through the yardangs, making strange noises, he felt as if his heart could stop at any moment. “Dong ge, should we call the police?”

“We can, but the police car might not get here until tomorrow, and that’s if they even come.”

Fei Tang swallowed nervously.

He used to dislike the crowded city, but now he realized the benefits of being in a crowd. In the city, police response times were measured in minutes, but out here, even shouting for help wouldn’t get you a response.

Ye Liuxi asked, “What should we do now?”

“There are two options. First, drive away in different directions. It’s open here, but driving at night with lights on would make us visible from miles away, making us easy targets if they want to block us. Second, stay here. If they don’t come, it’s fine. If they find us, we’re done for.”

Fei Tang was dumbfounded, but finally gritted his teeth and said, “Let’s drive away then. We all have cars, we might not be slower than them”

Both their cars were four by four, so they might not lose in a chase.

Before getting in the car, Ye Liuxi pulled out a knife, a twelve-inch straight watermelon knife, wrapped in thick kraft paper.

Seeing Chang Dong look at her, she smiled at him and said, “I’m afraid there might be a fight later.”

Chang Dong thought to himself: Hopefully not.

——

The car got on the road, headlights cutting through the yellow haze, sand particles drifting sideways. Occasionally, the sound of salt crystals being crushed under the tires could be heard.

What they feared had come true.

Fei Tang was the first to notice something was wrong, his voice over the radio changed with tension: “Damn it, Dong ge, there’s a car following me.”