WOOY Chapter 33

The strength of two people wasn’t enough to unearth the coffin, so they couldn’t determine what was inside.

Following the drone’s flight trajectory on the screen, Chang Dong walked about one kilometer further and located the third yardang. He chipped at it with the hoe, exposing another dark corner of a coffin.

The drone had limited transmission range, but Chang Dong was determined to map out the distribution of these peculiar mounds in the area. He carried the drone and ventured in different directions, stopping every two or three kilometers to climb to higher ground for aerial photography.

At first, Ye Liuxi followed him, but later, tired of walking, she decided to rest on her own. She figured it was better to let the more capable person handle the workload—after all, Chang Dong had always been more meticulous than her. As long as they kept each other within sight, she didn’t worry about losing him.

Around noon, the two stopped to rest at the base of a Yardang mound. Chang Dong focused intently on piecing together and annotating the photos he had taken, while Ye Liuxi tilted her head back and drained her only bottle of mineral water.

Turning the bottle upside down, she squinted as the last thin stream of water trickled down the inside.

Without lifting his head, Chang Dong tossed his own bottle her way.

The central area of Bailongdui had sand deposits thicker than its outskirts. Stepping on it felt like walking on a plush carpet. The sand collected most heavily around the edges of Yardang mounds, forming natural, soft slopes that could serve as backrests if one didn’t mind.

The bottle landed neck-down in the sand, leaving only the base sticking out.

Ye Liuxi pulled the bottle out and tossed it back. “I’m not that thirsty… I just don’t want to waste anything.”

As she lowered her gaze, she inadvertently noticed faint patterns beneath the thin layer of sand where the bottle had been.

She reached out to brush the sand away, but Chang Dong suddenly said, “It’s ready.”

He handed her the composite map he had created, marked with annotations.

The map featured enhanced color contrast, with the mounds marked by asterisks and connected by red dotted lines between them. The arrangement was strikingly clear.

Against the grayish-white backdrop, there were two nearly parallel red lines in the center. They had a beginning and an end, extending for a finite length rather than indefinitely.

Chang Dong explained, “It looks like a road. The mounds are like streetlights, symmetrically distributed on both sides. The road’s width is about 100 meters across, and each yardang is spaced roughly one kilometer apart. I counted ten on each side—twenty in total.”

So there were twenty… Shadow Puppet Coffins?

Ye Liuxi frowned. “It’s not quite a road, though. It’s more like a segment cut out from one. We don’t know which end is the start and which is the finish, or where it leads. Could it be some kind of formation?”

But it didn’t fit entirely. In ancient China, formations were often based on the Eight Trigrams or Seven Stars. Parallel lines like this were rare.

Chang Dong turned to Ye Liuxi. “So far, you still don’t remember anything?”

Chang Dong had never encountered someone with amnesia before Ye Liuxi, but wasn’t it a common trope on TV? When people with amnesia were exposed to key scenes or information, they would usually start remembering things…

Otherwise, the plot couldn’t move forward.

Yet Ye Liuxi managed to turn her amnesia into a source of pride. “Nope, this isn’t your average case of amnesia. It’s ‘sawtoothed’. Recovery is practically impossible.”

She could call it whatever she wanted. Even the internet didn’t turn up any results for this term—she was probably the one and only case worldwide.

Twisting open a bottle of mineral water, Chang Dong took a sip. The water was slightly cool, sliding down his throat, but it didn’t soothe the unease simmering in his chest.

So, what next?

The current clues all seemed to lead back to the Shadow Puppet Coffin. Extracting the coffin, however, posed a major challenge—it would require more manpower, but Chang Dong didn’t want to involve people who weren’t essential.

Ye Liuxi solved the problem with a single sentence: “Fill your car’s tank, drive it over, and ram the mound. What’s the point of having a crash bar if it can’t even knock down a pile of dirt?”

…

And just like that, the matter was settled.

That left one final thing to address. Chang Dong wanted to figure out how this “Yumen Pass” kept disappearing.

He sketched circles and lines in the sand, explaining his thoughts to Ye Liuxi.

“The first time, you were cut by the salt crust during the day and bled a lot. Later that night at Hui Ba’s campsite, we saw ghost lights and shadow puppet images on the tent. After that, everything returned to normal, and we left the next morning.”

They then safely reached Lop Town, where they shopped, took showers, and even bumped into Meng Jingu and his group.

“The second time was when we entered Bailongdui. You mentioned blood dripping onto the ground. Even though your wound was bandaged, there wouldn’t have been much bleeding. Still, from the moment Fei Tang was dragged away at midnight, strange occurrences kept happening. By the next day, the car tracks leading out disappeared, and Huoyaa’s group discovered the mound with the Shadow Puppet Coffin. That night, Hui Ba and two of his men died violently.”

By morning, everything was back to normal again. That was when the northeastern adventurers arrived, their Grand Cherokee speeding into Bailongdui.

Chang Dong continued, “Including this time, there have been two and a half occurrences. Let’s try to extract some patterns.”

“Your blood definitely acts as a sort of medium. Whether it summons Yumen Pass specifically, we can’t say yet, but at the very least, it triggers some kind of phenomenon.”

Ye Liuxi nodded. She had witnessed the “head of the wind” herself, so denying it was difficult.

“The phenomena always begin at midnight. The first one was brief, but the second one lasted at least 24 hours, from Fei Tang’s dragging to Hui Ba’s death.”

“The first phenomenon happened far from where your blood dripped. After you were cut by the salt crust, we traveled a good distance, covering perhaps a hundred kilometers, before settling at Hui Ba’s campsite later that night.”

“But in the last two cases, your blood was spilled near the campsite. Can I hypothesize that the distance of the blood might influence things, like the intensity or duration of the phenomenon?”

Ye Liuxi caught on. “You mean the duration of the phenomena in Bailongdui this time should be about the same?”

Assuming it lasts 24 hours, theoretically, they could wait until midnight to witness the disappearance of this “Yumen Pass” before them.

Ye Liuxi cautioned him, “Are you sure? The cook might have seen this process and then went mad.”

Chang Dong replied, “If I go mad, you don’t have to worry about me. I don’t like being a burden.”

Ye Liuxi couldn’t understand. “Why are you so persistent? You came here to retrieve Kong Yang’s body. You’ve already searched and done what you could. Yumen Pass, Shadow Puppet Coffins—these things have far exceeded what anyone could imagine. Why not retreat when faced with the impossible?”

Most people, upon realizing the situation was beyond their control, would have given up long ago.

Chang Dong asked her, “Retreat to where?”

“Go back and start over.”

Chang Dong fell silent.

After a pause, he said, “When I was a kid and wrote essays, I had this compulsion. I had to put a period at the end of a paragraph before starting a new one.”

“The matter of Kong Yang—I originally thought it was closed. Retrieving the body was just an obsession. But after you found me, I realized it wasn’t over. And now, being here, I know it’s far from over.”

“If I retreat now, there will forever be a question mark hanging over my head. Retreating wouldn’t be starting over—it would just mean endlessly tormenting myself… it’s all self-inflicted.”

“To truly start over with sincerity, you can’t leave behind a mess. Ending with a period is a way to give yourself closure.”

Ye Liuxi listened quietly, absentmindedly gathering sand into small piles and then flattening them again.

Suddenly, Chang Dong said, “Don’t move.”

Startled, Ye Liuxi froze. Chang Dong moved her hand aside and brushed away the surface sand.

Beneath the sand was a tire track indentation.

Something clicked in Chang Dong’s mind. He asked Ye Liuxi to stand and began clearing the surrounding sand with force. Soon, the tire pattern became even clearer—the tracks were much wider than those of an ordinary car, and the indentations were much deeper.

Ye Liuxi was about to say something, but Chang Dong spoke first. “All-steel radial tires, commonly used for trucks.”

He cleared away the last handful of sand near the edge of the Yardang.

The tire tracks continued straight and disappeared beneath the Yardang mound.

Chang Dong instructed Ye Liuxi, “The distance between the outer tires of a large truck is over two meters. You go left, and I’ll go right—let’s find the other track. Unless it’s a unicycle, it’s bound to be within this range.”

Ye Liuxi quickly found it, and together, they cleared the sand covering a large area.

Two tire tracks were revealed—one was beneath the Yardang mound, while the other skirted around its edge.

What was this? A vehicle, with most of its body passing through the Yardang mound?

Ye Liuxi’s heart raced. “Could it be the truck I was driving?”

Chang Dong picked up the iron hoe beside him and struck the Yardang mound.

With a resounding clang, it was clear this was no compacted sand mound.

He glanced at Ye Liuxi. “It’s very likely. But how did you manage it?”

Something suddenly occurred to Ye Liuxi. “The tire tracks go under the Yardang mound. What about the compacted sand mounds—are there tracks beneath them too?”

——

 

The two of them tested three sand mounds in a row, clearing the sand with both hands and feet—

The sand mounds contained Shadow Puppet Coffins, but there were no tire tracks beneath them.

The Yardang mounds had tire tracks underneath, but given their composition and hardness, they likely didn’t contain Shadow Puppet Coffins.

Ye Liuxi was thoroughly confused. “Why on earth would I drive into a Yardang mound? Could it be that after crashing into the mound, I came out in another dimension?”

She referenced movies, like Harry Potter, where there was a platform—something like nine and three-quarters—that you could crash into to enter a magical world.

Chang Dong reminded her, “The tire tracks extend out the other side of the mound. That means you didn’t ‘crash into’ it—you ‘passed through’ it.”

Ye Liuxi was utterly disheartened.

Chang Dong glanced at her. “What’s wrong? Don’t you like being a mysterious woman?”

Ye Liuxi replied, “It’s fine if I mystify others, but what’s the point of mystifying myself?”

As night fell, the temperature at Bailongdui dropped sharply due to the wind and the day-night temperature difference. The two of them stayed near the sand mound they had partially unearthed, trying to shelter behind a nearby Yardang mound. Even so, they couldn’t completely avoid the wind.

Ye Liuxi tugged at Chang Dong several times to reposition. “Move over here.”

Chang Dong suspected she was using him as a windbreak. “Why do you keep pulling me?”

“To block the wind.”

Chang Dong almost laughed in exasperation. Looking down, he saw her neck practically buried in her collar. Feeling a bit soft-hearted, he shifted his body to shield her from as much wind as possible.

Once Ye Liuxi was comfortable, she became particularly attentive to her companion’s “cultural and spiritual life.”

“Chang Dong, let me tell you a ghost story.”

“No need.”

“We’ve got a long wait. Isn’t it boring if we don’t talk?”

“I’m not bored.”

He really wasn’t. Through his night-vision goggles, he could see how restless she was—picking at the mound behind her with her fingers, shoving her hands into her jacket pockets, and even puffing at the strands of hair falling across her face.

She was bound to start talking. Just like when he carved shadow puppets, she couldn’t resist mocking him. She had a personality that made people want to strangle her, yet she was still alive. He figured there were two reasons for this: one, she was good-looking; and two, most people couldn’t beat her in a fight.

Sure enough, she spoke again.

“Chang Dong, if you get scared out of your mind later, I won’t abandon you.”

“I’ll tie you up with a rope, sell melons while you perform with shadow puppets next to me. When I grill skewers, you can fan the fire for me… Even if you mess up, I won’t say anything. I’ll patiently communicate with you…”

Chang Dong sighed. “Please, just don’t bother me…”

Before he could finish, Ye Liuxi suddenly gasped, grabbing his arm instinctively. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Look!”

Chang Dong turned his head.

A fine stream of sand descended steadily from above, completely undisturbed by the swirling wind and sandstorms around it, falling softly onto the sand mound.

It was as if an enormous sandbag hung in mid-air, with a tear at the bottom, allowing sand to pour out continuously…

Chang Dong followed the column of sand upward with his gaze.

In the gray-black, chaotic sky, an eye was slowly opening. From the gradually parting eyelids, an unceasing cascade of sand spilled downwards in a mesmerizing, surreal flow.