WOOY Chapter 34

If it were just a tear in the sky, it wouldn’t have made Chang Dong feel this horrified.

But it clearly wasn’t just that. The tear looked uncannily like an eyeball: formed by varying shades of sandy yellow and grayish yellow, it carried an eerie, faint glow, as though the pupil held a spark of life.

Ye Liuxi whispered, “It looks like an eye. Could there be more of them?”

She imagined the night sky above, filled with massive eyes opening simultaneously. The thought alone was utterly chilling.

Chang Dong said, “It just looks like one—it might not be. It could simply be a sand cloud, shaped like an eye.”

Since it was still far away, it wasn’t entirely clear. Ye Liuxi glanced at him. “Let’s get closer to get a better look?”

Chang Dong nodded.

The two pressed their backs to the yardang mound and carefully moved to a spot with a better view. From this vantage point, they faced the sand mound, where the “eye” poured sand continuously from its center. The cascading sand draped over the partially unearthed section like an endless waterfall in front of a cave.

After watching for a while, Ye Liuxi suddenly felt her throat tighten. “Chang Dong, look at the sand…”

Chang Dong saw it too—the exposed corner of the Shadow Puppet Coffin seemed to have a magnetic pull on the falling sand. Instead of scattering freely, the sand was drawn into the open section of the coffin, gradually sealing the gap…

As the flow of sand slowed, the light and shadows around them seemed to shift subtly. Alarmed, Chang Dong looked up.

The eye, which had initially been facing downward, had somehow flipped upward. Its pupil was now staring directly at them, unblinking.

In the next instant, the eye vanished.

Chang Dong instinctively knew it hadn’t simply shut. He shoved Ye Liuxi aside, shouting, “Watch out!”

A straight column of sand shot down, narrowly missing them and slamming into the yardang mound.

When he looked again, the eye had flashed back into visibility for a moment before another column of sand blasted directly at him.

Chang Dong rolled out of the way just in time.

He quickly pieced it together: when the eye appeared to be “closed” and out of sight, it was actually spraying sand outward. While sand itself wasn’t inherently terrifying, coming from such a bizarre eye, he wanted no part of it.

Ye Liuxi seemed to catch on as well. “Chang Dong, get behind the yardang!”

Her position was closer to the yardang mound, while Chang Dong, after rolling earlier, was farther away. “You first, I’ll follow right away.”

He kept his eyes locked on the “eye” and, in the moment it vanished again, sprinted toward the yardang—

The “eye” was blinking much faster now, and suddenly a slanted column of sand sealed off his path. Chang Dong quickly turned his body, leaped onto the yardang mound, and jumped diagonally down the other side. Just as he landed, his right calf suddenly sank.

Sand had piled around his leg.

Ignoring it, Chang Dong tried to lift his leg and run, but he lost his balance and nearly fell.

His right leg was stuck—it wouldn’t come free!

In a flash of realization, Chang Dong understood: this sand was unlike regular sand. Once it adhered to a solid object, it quickly hardened, like compacted soil forming a mound.

Looking up, he saw the sand that had struck the yardang mound earlier now solidified, protruding like a new growth on the mound.

Ye Liuxi didn’t understand why he had suddenly stopped. “Why aren’t you moving?”

“I’m stuck.”

Before he could say more, another column of sand blasted toward him. With one leg trapped, Chang Dong could only dodge by rolling, while watching Ye Liuxi out of the corner of his eye. She was rushing toward him with a knife in hand.

Thinking quickly, Chang Dong shifted his weight to his left leg and delivered a fierce kick to the sand encasing his right leg. Since it hadn’t solidified completely yet, he managed to break it apart.

Freed, Chang Dong sprang up.

Ye Liuxi reached him just then, but she hadn’t anticipated him getting up so quickly. Unable to stop in time, Chang Dong barely managed to grab her waist before they both tumbled to the ground. Fortunately, both reacted swiftly, rolling into the safety of the yardang’s shadow almost simultaneously.

The rapid and chaotic sequence of events had left them both gasping for breath. Neither had the energy to speak and their backs were pressed against the yardang as firmly as possible. The sand sprayed by the “eye” seemed to move only in straight lines. Since its “sight” couldn’t turn corners, their hiding spot appeared to be a safe blind spot.

The two of them remained still, their hearts pounding like drums, not daring to peek out again for the time being.

It was unclear how much time passed before the sound of the wind began to die down.

In a low voice, Chang Dong asked Ye Liuxi, “Why did you run out with a knife just now?”

Ye Liuxi thought it was a pointless question. “To save you, of course.”

“I know you were trying to save me. I just want to know—was that knife meant for cutting into the sand mound, or cutting off my leg?”

Given her tendency to think nothing of using an off-road vehicle to ram into the Shadow Puppet Coffin mound, Chang Dong felt it was necessary to clarify.

Ye Liuxi replied, “…That would depend on how urgent the situation was.”

Chang Dong was silent for a moment.

After a while, he called her, “Liuxi?”

“Yeah?”

“Let’s set this straight now: in the future, if we encounter similar danger, please try to keep my body intact. Unless I specifically ask for it, don’t make decisions about my legs or arms. They’re not under your jurisdiction.”

——

Dawn began to break.

The pale, cold light of early morning brought a faint sense of safety. Chang Dong gestured for Ye Liuxi to stay put while he took a few steps toward the outskirts of the yardang formation and looked up.

The sky was simply the sky—low, vast, and tranquil. The “eye” from last night felt like a distant nightmare.

The two of them circled to the other side.

What they saw was ordinary, yet… unsettling.

Ye Liuxi blurted out, “The mound with the Shadow Puppet Coffin is gone!”

It was indeed gone, and there was no need to check further—this one, as well as the series of mounds they had discovered arranged in a vertical line yesterday, were likely all gone.

Yet their disappearance here didn’t seem abrupt, much like a few missing trees in a dense forest or a few lost flowers in a field.

Something occurred to Chang Dong. “Let’s check the truck tire tracks!”

Those were gone too.

What did this mean?

He had previously envisioned Bailongdui No. 2, thinking it might be a case of plate stitching—where the plates around the camp’s perimeter were silently replaced without anyone noticing. But now, it’s clear that’s not the case.

Ye Liuxi was equally baffled. “How could even the tracks on the ground disappear? I just don’t believe it. Was the ground somehow peeled away in a layer…?”

Her words suddenly triggered a realization for Chang Dong.

He asked Ye Liuxi, “Have you ever seen transparent film sheets? The kind you can write on for projection displays?”

Ye Liuxi nodded.

“If I take two transparent sheets of the same size, draw a lake, its shores, and some willows on one, and then a boat on the other, and overlay them, then there’s a boat on the lake, right?”

Ye Liuxi thought for a moment, then shook her head. “Not necessarily. Unless you design the relative positions of the lake, boat, and shore beforehand, overlapping them could easily go wrong—the boat might end up on a willow tree, or even at the bottom of the lake.”

“That’s exactly the answer I was looking for,” Chang Dong said. “That’s why the tire tracks could end up beneath the yardang mounds.”

Ye Liuxi paused, momentarily stunned.

But she quickly figured it out. “You’re saying… superimposition?”

“Exactly—layering. I’m hypothesizing that what your blood summons is Yumen Pass. The ghost lights, the Shadow Puppet Coffin—they don’t exist in the real world. They’re part of Yumen Pass.”

“When the wind rises, the real world and Yumen Pass overlap at this point in Bailongdui.”

“In the real world, there’s Bailongdui’s yardang mounds and us. In Yumen Pass, there are ghost lights, Shadow Puppet Coffin mounds, and the tire tracks. Imagine the two overlapping—it’s an incredibly eerie state, isn’t it?”

And once Yumen Pass is removed, everything reverts to normal.

From his bag, Chang Dong pulled out the drone’s image transmission screen and showed Ye Liuxi the composite photo from yesterday. “Look closely. Now change your perspective—forget about Bailongdui for a moment. Imagine it’s been stripped away and try to envision what Yumen Pass looks like.”

——

There, you would find a road more than a hundred meters wide.

On either side of the road stood sand mounds containing Shadow Puppet Coffins, symmetrically paired, stretching for dozens of miles.

The Shadow Puppet Coffins bore paintings in the style of Han dynasty stone carvings, depicting chained prisoners being led into the pass. If you listened closely, beneath the howling wind and sand, you could hear layered, wave-like chants:

—“Yumen Pass, Ghost Gate Pass, one step out and your blood flows dry. You enjoy the golden house that you’ve built for your mistress, and you don’t care that I weep entering the pass…”

Inside the coffins were shadow puppets dressed in ancient clothing, perhaps from the Tang dynasty or other eras. Groups of nine sat in silent stillness.

In the vast wilderness surrounding the area, ghostly green lights would appear. These lights carried shadow puppet camel caravans and wandering, unpredictable tendrils of sand and wind.

Above the mounds, high in the sky, strange eyes watched over everything. These tendrils and eyes seemed to be guarding the Shadow Puppet Coffins:

—When Hui Ba tried to open a coffin, his throat was slashed by the iron hoe.

—The sand spilling from the eye actually served to repair and reinforce damaged coffin mounds.

Ye Liuxi had driven her truck along this road more than once.

The tire tracks weaved and wound, so her driving had been irregular—sometimes on the path, sometimes off it, but never colliding with the Shadow Puppet Coffin mounds.

Her truck carried goods: clothes, shoes, discs, books, food, even celebrity posters, all meant for people.

But Lop Nur is called the Sea of Death—a desolate, uninhabited place. In reality, no communities live here, unless…

——

Chang Dong asked Ye Liuxi, “Have you heard of Peach Blossom Spring?”

He explained the story: during the Jin Dynasty, a fisherman wandered through a winding path, first following a stream, then entering a peach grove, and finally squeezing through a narrow mountain passage. At the end of it all, he discovered the idyllic Peach Blossom Spring.

The people there explained that they had fled to this place to escape the chaos of the Qin wars and had never left since. “When asked what dynasty it was, they didn’t know about the Han, let alone Wei or Jin.”

When the fisherman left, he marked his route, but he was never able to find it again.

Ye Liuxi said, “You think Yumen Pass might be a similar place?”

Chang Dong nodded.

If he had come alone, there was no way he could have stumbled upon Yumen Pass. Without Ye Liuxi’s blood to summon the “head of the wind,” Yumen Pass wouldn’t appear. But once it did, anyone nearby—whether it was him or Fei Tang—could catch a glimpse of it.

The fisherman may have entered the Peach Blossom Spring through sheer coincidence, borrowing someone else’s “tailwind,” but coincidences don’t strike twice. No matter how carefully he marked the way, he could never find it again after leaving.

Yumen Pass, however, might be a step beyond the Peach Blossom Spring. While the Peach Blossom Spring’s inhabitants chose to remain secluded forever, “never venturing out again,” Yumen Pass seemed to send people out—whether to gather information about the outside world or bring in supplies from beyond its gates.

But the question remained: who were these people? Had they truly entered Yumen Pass these past two times? And why was it so desolate and devoid of any sign of human life?