The pile of weathered stones looked utterly suspicious.
The six of them exchanged a knowing glance and took their positions. Li Zhuohua stepped forward first to scout for danger, while Wen Shuangbai covered Xie Ziyin as he went to gather the Ghostly Mirage Grass. Shen Hefeng, Lu Jiayao, and Yin Xuan formed a perimeter around the stone formation, staying alert for any movement, ready to strike at a moment’s notice.
They moved with such caution that the spectators watching through the Mystic Heaven Mirror hardly dared to breathe, fearing some sudden disaster.
And they were certain disaster would strike.
Wen Shuangbai and the others felt the same way. Yet, strangely, even after Xie Ziyin safely collected all thirteen stalks of Ghostly Mirage Grass and the group retreated hundreds of paces from the stone pile, nothing happened.
The desert at night was eerily calm—so calm it unsettled them.
Under the faint glow of the starstones, the six of them crouched behind a small dune, deep in doubt.
Wen Shuangbai even wondered if it had all been a dream. She hesitated to move. "Friends… was tonight… too smooth?" Suspiciously smooth.
Xie Ziyin frowned slightly. "Did we miss something?"
Li Zhuohua nodded gravely. "Could this be a trap?!"
Her sword hadn’t even left its sheath tonight. That wasn’t right. It was downright unnatural!
Wen Shuangbai turned to Xie Ziyin. "Are you sure the Ghostly Mirage Grass isn’t cursed?"
Xie Ziyin was certain. "No."
Wen Shuangbai muttered, "Weird. Really weird."
"Honestly—" Yin Xuan propped her chin on her hands and yawned. "You’re all overthinking it."
"Exactly!" Lu Jiayao, ever the optimist, grinned. "Not every night has to be life-or-death, right? Smooth sailing is good!"
"What do you know, you dirt-for-brains?" Shen Hefeng stroked his imaginary beard, speaking in cryptic tones. "Fortune and misfortune are intertwined. Too much luck might just be bad luck in disguise."
Wen Shuangbai gazed at the distant silhouette of the stone pile in the darkness, thoughtful. "Shen the Second, do a divination. Tell us if we should go back."
"Wen Two-White, you’re such a hassle." Shen Hefeng grumbled but sat cross-legged on the sand and began casting the divination.
After a long silence, Wen Shuangbai studied the symbols on the turtle shell and immediately stood up. "We’re going back. No question."
Late into the night, Four Hundred (the turtle) had nearly dozed off.
Then its master’s sudden movement startled it awake. It blinked sleepily at the shell’s surface.
There, vividly etched, was a simple drawing:
A group of stick figures had picked up sesame seeds but left behind a giant watermelon.
Four Hundred jolted fully awake. Ha! It knew exactly what this meant!
---
First, they sneaked back to the stone pile and searched—nothing.
Then, they strolled through it openly—still nothing.
Frustrated, they started digging, shoveling out a massive pit—yet again, nothing.
"Unbelievable! Not even a single sandworm?" Li Zhuohua kept digging deeper, refusing to give up.
Wen Shuangbai put away her shovel and checked the sky.
Damn. Dawn wasn’t far off.
She rubbed her temples, exasperated.
No way. She refused to accept a peaceful night.
"Where’s this so-called watermelon?" Shen Hefeng had said it was nearby, but they couldn’t find it.
Hearing this, Xie Ziyin glanced at her.
The starstone hung at her waist, its soft glow rippling like water with her movements, making her shine brilliantly.
Xie Ziyin stared at her, then suddenly said, "Turn off the light."
Tonight had been suspiciously uneventful, and Xie Ziyin felt like he’d overlooked something.
Now, seeing the starstone, he remembered—starstones repelled dark creatures.
The Ghostly Mirage Valley should’ve been teeming with spirits, yet none had appeared. The starstone was likely the reason.
Wen Shuangbai followed his gaze to her waist.
She understood instantly. After warning the others, she immediately stashed the starstone away.
Sure enough, as the last light vanished, darkness swallowed them whole.
The wind howled violently, whipping sand into their faces, carrying a damp, sinister chill.
They huddled together, back-to-back.
Lu Jiayao clutched his spirit flute, flanked by Yin Xuan and Shen Hefeng.
He strained to see in the blackness when suddenly—someone exhaled icy breath against his neck.
He shuddered, hair standing on end. "Brother Shen! Not the time for jokes!"
Shen Hefeng was baffled. "You—Lu Dirt-Three! Don’t blame me for your nonsense!"
"Then who just breathed on my neck?!"
"...Definitely not me."
Lu Jiayao froze.
He slowly turned his head, but the darkness was absolute.
Then he felt it—something long, soft, and wet, like a tongue, licked the side of his neck.
Freezing cold. In an instant, Lu Jiayao felt like he’d fallen into an icy abyss.
Worse—where the tongue had touched, his skin began to itch violently. Something wriggled beneath, as if trying to burrow inside.
Lu Jiayao’s scalp prickled. He leapt three meters back, shrieking, "AAAAAHHHH!!!"
The others, unlike him, reacted instantly to the unseen threat.
Wen Shuangbai cast a faint light spell with her left hand. In the dim glow, she turned—and found a lifeless face pressed right next to hers.
The face was ghastly pale, streaked with blood from all seven orifices, its eyes closed.
Then, abruptly, they snapped open.
No pupils—just countless tiny, writhing worms.
Shitshitshit!
These were sandworms, common desert creatures of the Xuantian Continent. Harmless, afraid of light, they fled from humans.
But these were different.
She swore the worms were grinning at her.
Without hesitation, Wen Shuangbai conjured a fireball in her right hand and hurled it at the worm-face.
The third level of the Dawn Spirit Art—its essence was dissolution.
Extreme heat, melting all creation.
Tonight was her first time using it.
The fireball engulfed the worm-face, and Wen Shuangbai heard a sharp, brief scream.
The next moment, the creature collapsed.
Scuttling, rustling—countless sandworms fled the charred remains, vanishing into the dunes.
Wen Shuangbai frowned at the sight and quickly moved aside to assist Lu Jiayao and Shen Hefeng, the two more vulnerable members of their group. The other three had their own methods of handling things and didn’t require her help.
Before long, the sun rose on the horizon, and the swarm of insectoid creatures hastily burrowed into the sand dunes, vanishing underground before daylight fully arrived.
—
Morning dawned over the Valley of Divine Mystery, bathed in a faint golden glow.
Shen Hefeng sat beside Xie Ziyin, who was busy refining pills, lazily crossing his legs as he inspected the sole of his shoe. It was covered in tiny, dense marks left by the sand insects. "Good thing our sect is wealthy now," he mused. "Elder Cao got us these new shoes—impenetrable by blades or arrows. Otherwise, I’d have been invaded by these damned bugs last night! Lucky, so lucky."
Lu Jiayao, however, wasn’t so fortunate. He crouched opposite Xie Ziyin, clutching his neck, on the verge of tears. The bugs had already gotten to him.
The pink-robed youth trembled as he asked, "Senior Brother Xie, am I going to be okay? The bugs crawled inside… Will I turn into one of those insect people?"
Before Xie Ziyin could answer, Shen Hefeng chimed in with a dramatic gasp, "Oh yes! The sand insects will lay eggs inside you. Soon, your body will be teeming with larvae, gnawing at your organs, bones, and blood!"
Lu Jiayao’s face turned deathly pale. "Senior Brother Xie… is that true?"
"True," Xie Ziyin confirmed, closing his pill furnace and tossing a freshly refined pill to Lu Jiayao. "But you’re in luck. I happen to have the antidote."
Some of the herbs he’d brought along—ones he’d assumed would never be useful but packed anyway, given the ample space in his storage ring—had actually come in handy.
Shaking his head, Xie Ziyin put away his furnace and walked over to where Wen Shuangbai and Li Zhuohua were huddled together, whispering.
The two women were "studying" the corpses of those who had been parasitized by the sand insects.
Noticing his approach, Wen Shuangbai looked up and asked, "How’s Lu Jiayao?"
"He’ll be fine. He just needs to expel the bugs," Xie Ziyin replied, crouching beside her. "Find anything?"
Wen Shuangbai, still focused on stripping the armor from the corpses, answered without turning, "Nothing yet, except that they’re from the City Lord’s estate."
The bodies were riddled with holes from the insects’ feeding and charred from fire attacks, but the armor remained intact—proof of its high quality.
Moreover, Wen Shuangbai had noticed that the armor was specially designed for desert conditions: windproof, cold-resistant, and insect-repellent. The only vulnerability was the neck, where the bugs could slip in.
"People from the City Lord’s estate came down here too?" Xie Ziyin naturally joined in removing the armor. As a former surgeon, his nimble fingers worked faster than even Wen Shuangbai and Li Zhuohua combined.
"Mm," Wen Shuangbai murmured, deep in thought. "I thought they just hired outsiders to gather the Divine Mystery Grass. Didn’t expect them to send their own people."
Unfortunately, the corpses were too ravaged to determine the time of death, so it was unclear whether they’d arrived in the valley before or after their group.
"Two possibilities," Xie Ziyin continued her train of thought. "One: they sent scouts first, realized the casualties were too severe, and then hired outsiders. Two: this team wasn’t here for the grass but for something else entirely."
Li Zhuohua listened intently as she worked, but soon found herself lost in their conversation.
She also noticed that the more the two talked, the closer their heads leaned together.
Well, might as well leave them to it.
With a decisive motion, Li Zhuohua stood, gathered the nearby corpses, tied them into a bundle with a rope from her storage ring, and hauled them over her shoulder. She carried them to where Lu Jiayao was still vomiting up insect eggs, dropped them unceremoniously, and resumed her work.
Not long after, Wen Shuangbai—still deep in discussion with Xie Ziyin—heard Li Zhuohua call out, "Junior Sister! Come take a look! We found a map!"
