WOOY Chapter 32

The sandstorm grew stronger.

Chang Dong packed up the tent, and everyone moved into the car. The cook curled up into a ball, shivering.

Chang Dong took out the high-powered flashlight, masks, night-vision goggles—prepared in advance for three people—as well as two black windproof softshell jackets.

Ye Liuxi put on the mask and goggles, then picked up one of the jackets to examine. “Which one’s the better brand?”

“The one with the arm pocket on the sleeve…”

She took it and put it on.

Chang Dong glanced at her. Ye Liuxi really turned his understanding on its head: in the past, when he led teams, he found it frustrating to deal with people who prioritized themselves over others.

But with her, he seemed to have gotten used to it.

Ye Liuxi tied her hair up with a loop of rope, then gestured toward the cook. “What about him? Are we taking him?”

“Leave him. He’ll be safer in the car.”

Ye Liuxi thought it over. “Maybe we should bring him. If we end up discovering the Shadow Puppet Coffin or Hui Ba’s body, perhaps the shock of being on-site will prompt him to say something new.”

Chang Dong hesitated for a moment, feeling that this seemed rather cruel.

Ye Liuxi always had her peculiar logic: “He’s already out of his mind, so scaring him a little more won’t make a difference. Who knows, we might stumble upon something—two negatives make a positive—and it might scare him back to normal.”

——

After getting out of the car, Chang Dong led the way. Ye Liuxi tied the cook’s hands and used a rope to lead him from behind.

The cook preferred Chang Dong—he didn’t talk much and never spoke harshly. Ye Liuxi, on the other hand, had no patience. If he disobeyed even slightly, she would glare, scold, and kick. After being kicked twice, the cook became as obedient as a caged chicken.

Chang Dong tried to recall the route they had taken that night while tracking Hui Ba. He walked and stopped intermittently, shining his flashlight repeatedly along the midsection of the mounds. If his memory served him right, Hui Ba and his group had followed markers that day.

As the flashlight swept across again, Chang Dong suddenly spotted a red-painted arrow on one of the yardangs.

His heart skipped a beat, and he blurted out, “It’s here.”

When Fei Tang left, he had clearly said, “The markers are gone.”

Ye Liuxi responded with a simple “Let’s follow it and see if the Shadow Puppet Coffin is still there.”

Chang Dong had the same thought.

The three of them continued in the indicated direction.

The cook remained silent the entire way, but at one point, he suddenly refused to move, lying on the ground and refusing to budge. Even after Ye Liuxi kicked him twice, he wouldn’t get up. Left with no choice, she called Chang Dong for help. Together, they dragged the cook forward about ten meters. Perhaps the pain of being dragged across the ground was too much, as the cook eventually got up and started walking on his own again.

After walking a bit further, Chang Dong began to feel that something was off—they hadn’t seen any markers for a while.

Ye Liuxi shared the same doubt. “That night, when we were tracking Hui Ba, we didn’t walk this far, did we?”

Chang Dong checked his watch. That night, they had followed for over half an hour. But now, they had been walking for nearly an hour.

Thinking back carefully, Chang Dong suddenly focused on the cook. “When he refused to move earlier, how long ago was that?”

“About fifteen… twenty minutes ago.”

“Let’s go back. It should be around the spot where he refused to move.”

——

Sure enough, after walking back some distance, the cook threw another tantrum, this time even more aggressively, clinging to Chang Dong’s leg and refusing to let go. Chang Dong shone his flashlight ahead, and they could still see the long drag marks left behind from earlier when they had pulled the cook.

By the time Chang Dong finally freed himself from the cook, Ye Liuxi was already there, observing silently for a long while.

The distribution of the yardangs before them was almost entirely different from that night. Chang Dong found it odd. “Is this the place?”

Ye Liuxi used her flashlight to point to the ground. “It is.”

Chang Dong saw a rectangular indentation.

Indeed, in this saline-alkali terrain, footprints might be hard to leave behind, but that night, when the Shadow Puppet Coffin landed heavily, the weight of the coffin would have left a mark—like tire tracks—that would be hard to erase for a long time.

Closing his eyes, Chang Dong used this indentation as a reference point, mentally mapping out the positions of the coffin, the people present that night, and the placement of Hui Ba and his companions’ corpses.

When he opened his eyes again, the yardang they had excavated that night was not only restored but had also changed in shape: it was previously tower-like but now resembled the crouching form of a beast.

The area where Hui Ba’s corpses had been was once an empty space. Now, it was a small mound connected to the larger nearby formations, bulky yet ordinary in appearance.

No wonder he and Ye Liuxi hadn’t recognized the place during their earlier pass. The shapes of the mounds and the width of the path had all changed.

But the cook was different. He knew that the “Master Ba was buried,” had seen the changes here with his own eyes, and recognized the terrifying place, which was why he adamantly refused to move further.

After some thought, Chang Dong walked to the edge of the newly added small mound. Using the bottom of his flashlight, he struck the surface forcefully. The cook stayed far away but couldn’t help glancing in their direction.

Ye Liuxi asked curiously, “What are you hammering for?”

“I remember there was an iron hoe placed against the wall at the time…”

Before he could finish speaking, part of the mound cracked open, and clumps of sand and gravel tumbled down, revealing the handle of the iron hoe. Chang Dong grabbed it and yanked it to the side with force. The mound’s surface split apart, and the hoe was pulled free with effort.

Raising the hoe, he thrust it toward the spot where he remembered the Shadow Puppet Coffin had been located…

The hoe’s sharp edge pierced several inches into the soil. The blade, along with its handle, hovered in mid-air, trembling slightly in the wind.

Ye Liuxi questioned, “What are you trying to do? We can’t dig out the Shadow Puppet Coffin by yourself.”

Chang Dong replied, “No, I think I’ve overlooked something…”

He suddenly looked up. “Do you remember what Fei Tang said about how Hui Ba’s group discovered the Shadow Puppet Coffin?”

She did. It was by accident—Huoya and his companion had gotten into an argument and started swinging the iron hoe at each other. One of them missed and struck the pale-colored yardang, chipping a piece off, which revealed a dark corner of the coffin.

Chang Dong said, “If I’m not mistaken, the main composition of Bailongdui’s yardangs is sandy mudstone with layers of gypsum. Wind and water erosion can carry away loose sand, but the remaining parts are fairly hard. How could a single hoe strike chip off a corner?”

He then pulled the hoe free and walked to the edge of another nearby mound, swinging it down.

The clash of metal and stone produced a sharp ringing sound, the impact numbing his hands.

Turning back to Ye Liuxi, Chang Dong explained, “This mound hiding the Shadow Puppet Coffin blends in with the others, but it’s not a natural mound. It’s just a pile of hardened dirt.”

 

——

How could a mound of hardened soil end up blending in with the naturally formed Yardang mounds?

It was as incongruous as finding a Taihu stone suddenly growing out of a Danxia landscape.

Then there was the small connected Yardang mound. When Chang Dong tested its soil, it turned out to be another hardened soil mound. He chose not to dig further. If Hui Ba and his companions truly were buried beneath it, digging there would amount to desecrating their graves, something he couldn’t bring himself to do.

He called out to Ye Liuxi, “Let’s head back for now. It’s hard to see much at night—there might be more clues in the daylight.”

By the time they returned to camp, it was nearly midnight. Chang Dong sat in the front seat with the cook, leaving the back seat for Ye Liuxi to sleep.

That was a thoughtful gesture, almost enough to make Ye Liuxi feel grateful. But she was too exhausted—her eyes closed, and she drifted off to sleep immediately.

She didn’t know how much time had passed when she was dimly aware of light. Struggling to open her eyes, she saw the cook sprawled out in the passenger seat like a spider on its back. The car’s main lights were off, but a faint nightlight glowed on the dashboard as Chang Dong worked on assembling something.

Unconsciously, she murmured and pulled her blanket higher. Chang Dong noticed, tilting his head slightly toward her before reaching out to turn off the nightlight.

Closing her eyes again, an image lingered in her mind—the fleeting moment when the light had disappeared, leaving only Chang Dong’s profile, faintly outlined.

Although Chang Dong’s shadow puppets were intricate and beautifully crafted, she didn’t particularly like them. The women always had identical “arched brows, slender eyes,” and the men had either “straight brows, loyal expressions” or “round eyes, fierce temperaments.” It was monotonous and failed to capture the fleeting, captivating emotions of a single moment.

If she ever decided to carve shadow puppets herself, she’d use Chang Dong as her model.

His facial contours were striking, a blend of elegance and ruggedness—worthy of being immortalized in art.

——

By morning, the sandstorm had subsided significantly. Daylight naturally brought a sense of safety, even though they were still in an eerie situation.

Ye Liuxi finally understood what Chang Dong had been working on the previous night: he had rented a drone before the trip, and last night he had been assembling it and familiarizing himself with its operation.

She had only heard of such devices before but had never seen one in action. Watching its sharp, claw-like appearance and hearing the loud whirring of its propellers as it moved fascinated her.

As Chang Dong tested the drone, she tilted her head to watch, feeling an urge to leap up and swat it out of the air.

Chang Dong asked, “Never used one before?”

“I’m poor.”

Chang Dong: “…”

Food supplies were running low. Breakfast consisted of only heated mineral water and half a piece of compressed biscuit.

The satellite phone and GPS had stopped working, cutting off their communication with Fei Tang. It was unclear when they would function again. Chang Dong hoped it wouldn’t take long—Bailongdui was no place for survival in the wild. If they ran out of water and food, they’d only last another two or three days.

He avoided driving to conserve the remaining fuel, which they needed to save for their eventual departure from Bailongdui. To prevent the cook from wandering off, Chang Dong tied a rope around his ankle and secured the other end to the car, allowing him limited mobility while ensuring he couldn’t get lost.

Ye Liuxi was curious about why Chang Dong had brought the drone. He didn’t give her a direct explanation, only saying, “You’ll understand when the time comes.”

——

Seeing the mound that contained the Shadow Puppet Coffin during daylight for the first time, Chang Dong felt a small sense of relief—its appearance didn’t differ much from what he had expected.

He pointed it out to Ye Liuxi, saying, “It’s hard to see at night, but during the day, there’s a clear difference. Do you notice it? The Yardang mounds at Bailongdui are mostly saline-alkali and gypsum mud. Their color is typically grayish-white, sometimes even silvery white. But this mound has a yellowish hue.”

Ye Liuxi suddenly remembered something. “The cook said sand fell from the sky, and Hui Ba was buried. Could this mound have been compacted from sand?”

Chang Dong replied, “It’s possible… What I actually want to figure out is whether this Shadow Puppet Coffin mound is unique at Bailongdui or if there are more of them. The difference in color is hard to distinguish up close but much easier to spot from a distance.”

He then led Ye Liuxi up a nearby Yardang mound. Finding a flat spot, he prepared and launched the drone.

The drone ascended steadily, reaching a height of two to three hundred meters. Most Yardang mounds at Bailongdui were under 20 meters tall. At this altitude, the drone provided a wide aerial view, and the image transmission on the screen was clear.

Ye Liuxi suddenly pointed something out. “Here—there’s another mound like it.”

Chang Dong gently pushed the joystick, directing the drone to fly straight toward the indicated location.

Both of them held their breath.

Another one appeared. Then another…

Each mound was spaced roughly one kilometer apart, forming a straight line if connected by dots. And it wasn’t just one line—it was two parallel lines, symmetrically arranged. About a hundred meters away from their current position, another such mound stood.

The drone’s transmission range was limited to about seven kilometers. Chang Dong brought it back for landing.

Ye Liuxi seemed dazed. Not until the drone touched down did she ask Chang Dong, “Do you think those mounds might contain Shadow Puppet Coffins too?”

Chang Dong replied, “There’s only one way to find out—let’s go and take a look.”

——

The two of them arrived at the mound about a hundred meters away.

Chang Dong thrust the blade of the iron hoe into the midsection of the mound and gave it a forceful pry.

Clumps of compacted gravel and loose soil fell away with the hoe’s withdrawal, sending dust rising into the air and choking them with its dryness. Chang Dong stepped back a couple of paces and saw it—a dark, shadowy corner of a coffin emerging from the soil.