Episode 44: The Totem Pole of Slaughter

The bars of the sand-crystal cage oozed with freezing sweat, and Alicia's fingernails carved faint white marks across them.

She jerked awake from the chaos, a roar that did not belong to her still choked in her throat—the three consciousnesses had just been fighting for control of her body, almost tearing her nerves into three pieces. The iron chains on her wrists had already embedded themselves into her flesh, and the sand-crystal thorns were growing wildly with the energy fluid Williams had injected, weaving half a crystal armor along her forearm, glowing with an ominous deep blue.

"There's still a chance..." Alicia bit down hard on the tip of her tongue, the sharp pain bringing her scattered consciousness back into focus. She stared at the shadow in the corner of the cage, where the sand-crystal density was lower than elsewhere—a crack torn open during the recent energy burst.

She had to transmit the coordinates.

Her silver bird necklace had long been torn off, but the half jade pendant hidden inside her collar was still there. It was the ancestral jade pendant of Lu Chen, a fragment left over from the last time they pieced it together. At this moment, it was growing faintly warm with her heartbeat, establishing a weak resonance with the main jade pendant at Black Wind Pass.

Alicia's gaze swept over the sand-crystal thorns on her wrist, and an idea suddenly formed.

Enduring the agonizing pain, she plucked off the thinnest crystal thorn, the deep-blue liquid at its tip burning against her fingertips. Utilizing the dim light filtering through the top of the cage, she began to carve a pattern on the inner side of the bars—not words, but an energy totem unique to the Sand Wardens: three intersecting triangles surrounding a star, precisely a simplified version of the anti-entropy array.

With every stroke she carved, the crystal thorn burned her fingertip, and droplets of blood fell onto the totem, causing the sand-crystal bars to emit a faint golden glow. Her mother's genes were at work here; the bone-core energy had formed a bizarre symbiosis with her bloodline, turning ordinary scratches into a beacon capable of transmitting energy.

"Hurry... faster..." Alicia's breathing grew more and more rapid. She could hear Williams's footsteps approaching from afar, his mechanical boots clicking against the sand-crystal ground like a death-knell.

The instant she finished the final stroke, she pressed the half jade pendant against the center of the totem. The jade pendant suddenly burst into a piercing red light that spread along the grooves of the bars, exploding into a tiny blossom of blood at the crack before going completely silent.

The footsteps stopped outside the cage.

"Working on something, dear niece?" Williams's voice carried a mocking tone, the red glow of his mechanical prosthetic eye piercing through the shadows to illuminate Alicia's blood-stained fingertips. "Are you leaving a last will and testament for your little lover?"

Alicia quickly hid the crystal thorn in her sleeve, lowering her eyelids to mask the panic in the depths of her eyes. "I was just wondering... when I'll become a true sand-scorpion vessel."

Williams took the bait as expected, his mechanical arm pulling back his dark robe to reveal the pulsing blue bone-core on his chest. "Soon enough. Once the totem pillar absorbs enough energy from the dead, you and I will complete the ultimate fusion." He suddenly leaned closer to the bars, the red light drifting across her face. "Speaking of which, I erected that pillar with my own hands, thirty years ago..."

Alicia's heart skipped a beat, but she forced a disdainful smile. "A broken pillar piled up from sand? Deserving to be called a totem?"

"A broken pillar?" Williams burst into arrogant laughter, his mechanical claw slamming heavily against the bars. "When you see the 'meritorious achievements' carved all over it, you'll know who truly rules the Great Desert!"

His footsteps gradually faded away, and he was still humming a bizarre tune, as if celebrating an impending victory. Alicia collapsed limply to the ground, watching the energy totem on the inner side of the cage slowly fade away, leaving only the bloodstain left by the jade pendant glowing faintly.

It worked.

At the temporary camp in Black Wind Pass, Lu Chen's jade pendant suddenly burst into red light.

"We have a signal!" Su Qing's detector instantly captured the fluctuation, and a string of flashing coordinates popped up on the holographic screen. "In Soulbroken Valley to the northwest! It's Alicia's energy signature!"

Lu Chen grabbed Old Dao's bone blade and bolted outward, the suppression ring on his finger burning hot as if echoing that cry for help. Chen Yu hoisted his rocket launcher and followed closely behind, while Wang Lu carried her medical pack at the rear. The shadows of the trio were stretched long by the setting sun on the sandy ground like sharp blades.

"Soulbroken Valley? Wasn't that place buried by sandstorms ages ago?" Chen Yu's desert boots sank into the quicksand. He forcefully pulled his foot out, the sole still clinging to a fragment of decaying fabric. "My grandfather said it's a forbidden zone, and no herdsman who ever went in came back out."

Lu Chen's bone blade abruptly pointed toward a sand dune on the left. "This way. Old Dao's map notes there's a hidden wind-eroded trench that leads straight to the heart of the valley."

The wind-eroded trench was steeper than imagined, its rock walls on both sides covered with honeycomb-like holes stuffed with animal skeletons. Wang Lu accidentally kicked loose a stone, startling a swarm of black flying insects that hurled themselves at Chen Yu's goggles, instantly dissolving into a puddle of dark green juice.

"Corpse moths!" Wang Lu's voice tightened. "They feed on decaying flesh, and if they touch you, they'll rot right down to the bone!"

Lu Chen slashed his blade to cut through the swarm of flying insects, the golden light exploding a fan-shaped safe zone within the gully. "Don't touch the rock walls! Pick up the pace!"

The three of them sprinted amidst the pursuit and interception of the corpse moths, finally bursting out of the wind-eroded trench before nightfall. The sight before them made them all hold their breath simultaneously—

In the center of Soulbroken Valley stood a ten-meter-high totem pillar made entirely of dark blue-black rock, its surface densely covered with intricate relief carvings. Moonlight flowed down the length of the pillar, illuminating shocking and disturbing scenes:

At the very base, dozens of children were being thrown into a boiling sand pit, their little hands scratching futilely at the sand surface. Standing by the pit was a robed figure chanting while holding a bone flute;

In the middle tier were Sand Wardens bound by iron chains, anti-entropy totems thrust through their chests, their bodies nailed to sloping sand dunes. The sun stretched their shadows long, their skin cracking and peeling under the scorching heat;

At the top layer was an altar piled high with human skulls, each socket embedded with a sand crystal that gleamed with an eerie blue light in the moonlight. The skull in the center of the altar was much larger than the surrounding ones, with a familiar silver bird totem carved onto its forehead—it was the skull of Alicia's mother!

"What the hell..." Chen Yu's rocket launcher almost slipped from his hands. He pointed at the robed figure in the relief. "That's Williams when he was young! Look at the scorpion-shaped badge on his chest!"

Lu Chen's fingers brushed against the cold stone, his fingertips touching a recessed indentation of carvings. He scraped the sand grains off with his bone blade, revealing a row of distorted signatures—none other than Williams's name, accompanied by another line of smaller text carved in the ancient script of the Sand Wardens:

"The first batch of sand-scorpion rations, tastes quite good."

"Rations..." Lu Chen's voice sounded like it had been tempered in ice, his bone blade vibrating loudly in his hand. "He started thirty years ago! Not for the tribe, but to feed the bone-core!"

Wang Lu suddenly covered her mouth, her stomach churning violently. She saw a Sand Warden in a relief holding an infant in his arms, the silver locket hanging around the infant's neck identical to the keepsake left behind by her father.

"My dad... my dad was a Sand Warden..." Wang Lu's tears rolled down mixed with sand grains. "He said he was going to Soulbroken Valley for a survey, but actually..."

Lu Chen pressed a hand onto her shoulder, his gaze sweeping across the sandy ground surrounding the totem pillar. The sand grains there possessed an abnormal oily sheen; scraping away the surface layer with his bone blade revealed overlapping layers of skeletons, some still wearing the leather armor of Sand Wardens, with broken anti-entropy totems jammed through their chests.

"This isn't an ordinary totem pillar," Lu Chen said in a deep voice. "It's an energy stake poured from the flesh, blood, and bones of Sand Wardens, used to gather the resentment of the dead as nourishment for the bone-core."

Chen Yu suddenly kicked the totem pillar, the rock emitting a dull thud. The skull altar at the top swayed slightly, causing a sand crystal to fall off. The moment the sand crystal hit the ground, the surrounding skeletons suddenly emitted a light clicking sound, as if responding.

"Something's wrong!" Lu Chen's suppression ring suddenly grew scorching hot. "This pillar is absorbing our emotions!"

Before the words faded, the totem pillar suddenly lit up with red light. The scenes in the reliefs began to flow; the weeping of children and the screams of Sand Wardens seeped out from the rock, so real it felt as though it were happening right beside them. Flashes of his younger brother being swallowed by sand crystals flickered before Chen Yu's eyes, while Wang Lu saw her father struggling in the sand pit, the gazes of both turning hollow instantly.

"Don't let it influence you!" Lu Chen's bone blade unleashed a golden slash, striking the totem pillar. The red light flickered violently and the screams stopped abruptly. Chen Yu and Wang Lu shook their heads, cold sweat soaking through their backs.

"This pillar is alive!" Chen Yu raised his assault rifle. "Blow it to hell!"

"No!" Lu Chen stopped him. "Alicia took the risk to transmit those coordinates; she definitely didn't just want us to look at this. She's hinting that... the source of Williams's power is right here!"

His gaze fell upon the eye sockets of her mother's skull, where the sand crystals shone brighter than anywhere else, resembling some kind of switch. Lu Chen took a deep breath, leaped onto the altar, and reached out to pluck that sand crystal.

The instant his fingertips made contact, the totem pillar shuddered violently.

Countless cracks split open across the dark blue-black rock surface, from which dark red liquid oozed out like flowing blood. The sand grains throughout the entire Soulbroken Valley began to spin, forming a massive vortex that sucked the surrounding skeletons toward the totem pillar. The moment those skeletons touched the rock, they merged with the reliefs, becoming new "rations."

"Stop right now!" Wang Lu's detector wailed with a piercing alarm. "The energy field is getting out of control! It's going to turn the entire valley into an altar!"

Lu Chen did not stop. He could sense fragments of Alicia's consciousness transmitting from the sand crystal—not a cry for help, but a warning:

"The other half of the Requiem Bone Flute is at the base of the pillar... Williams is lying to you... What he wants isn't fusion, it's sacrifice..."

The sand crystal suddenly shattered, revealing a pitch-black cavity. Lu Chen reached his hand inside to grope around, his fingertips touching a freezing piece of bone—precisely the missing half of the Requiem Bone Flute!

The moment he grasped the bone flute, all the skulls at the top of the totem pillar suddenly turned toward him, the sand crystals in their eye sockets lighting up simultaneously to form a giant scorpion-shaped totem, its poisonous stinger pointing straight at his heart!

"It's a trap!" Lu Chen jerked his head up to see a column of dark purple fire rapidly closing in on the sandy horizon at the mouth of the valley. Williams's frenzied laughter drifted over on the wind, carrying the madness of guaranteed victory:

"Lu Chen! Thank you for helping me activate the totem pillar! Now... let us complete the ultimate sacrifice!"

The bone flute suddenly erupted with dark purple flames that spread along Lu Chen's arm, resonating with the wound on his chest. The golden light of the suppression ring flickered violently, yet it could not hold back this familiar tribulation fire—it was of the same origin as the sand-crystal bone spike that had pierced him!

Fragments of Alicia's consciousness screamed in his mind:

"The bone flute is a trap... He wants you to merge with the totem pillar... to become the new ration..."

Lu Chen's body began to stiffen, dark purple flames climbing up his neck to engage in a tug-of-war with the golden light of Old Dao's bone blade. The reliefs on the totem pillar all came to life; the hands of Sand Wardens reached out from the rock, seizing his ankles and dragging him toward the pillar.

Chen Yu and Wang Lu rushed forward to pull him back, but they were blasted away by a sudden burst of red light, crashing heavily onto the sand.

"Go!" Lu Chen roared, throwing his bone blade to Chen Yu. "Take Wang Lu to the Crescent Spring altar! Activate the anti-entropy array! Don't worry about me!"

The dark purple flames had already devoured half of his body, intertwining with the red light of the totem pillar like a bizarre death totem. Williams's figure grew increasingly clear within the fire pillar, and on his mechanical arm, two other rings were lighting up simultaneously.

Three rings and one flute—finally assembled.

Yet Lu Chen suddenly smiled.

He looked at the increasingly bright suppression ring on his wrist, recalling the Sand Speaker's words: "The key to sand-shaping isn't power; it's obsession."

His father's smiling face, his daughter's silver bird pendant, Old Dao's bone blade, Alicia's warning... All the memory fragments exploded in his mind, transforming into a wave of warm energy that flowed through his blood all over his body.

The dark purple flames suddenly stalled.

Lu Chen's eyes turned purely golden, and the hands with which he gripped the totem pillar began to glow. The hands of the Sand Wardens that had grabbed him suddenly let go, turning instead to attack the robed figure within the reliefs—the resentment of the dead, guided by obsession, began to turn against the true murderer!

Williams's arrogant laughter stopped abruptly.

He stared at the golden light suddenly erupting on the totem pillar, watching those rebellious hands of the dead. For the first time, fear surfaced within the red glow of his mechanical prosthetic eye:

"No... This is impossible..."

A cold smile curved the corners of Lu Chen's mouth. He slowly raised the hand holding the bone flute, the dark purple tribulation fire spinning within his palm yet unable to harm him in the slightest.

"Old Dao said," Lu Chen's voice pierced through the fire pillar, transmitting clearly into Williams's ears, "sand remembers everything. Including the blood debt you owed thirty years ago."

The totem pillar suddenly burst into unprecedented golden light, forcefully driving back the dark purple pillar of fire. The reliefs on the pillar began to peel away, revealing the true anti-entropy array wrapped inside—it turned out that the massacre Williams used to cover up was precisely the unfinished sealing array from a millennium ago!

Fragments of Alicia's consciousness cheered in the golden light:

"It's a love sacrifice... Your obsession has awakened the true seal..."

Yet right at that moment, the fingers of Lu Chen's hand holding the bone flute suddenly began to turn to sand.

Not eroded by the tribulation fire, they actively transformed into golden sand grains that seeped along the grooves of the bone flute—the two halves of the Requiem Bone Flute were merging, and his body was becoming the medium connecting them.

"Lu Chen!" Chen Yu's roar was heart-rending.

Lu Chen did not look back. His body had already become semi-transparent, revealing the complete anti-entropy array taking shape behind him. He cast one final glance at the approaching Williams, his golden pupils devoid of fear, filled only with relief.

"Tell Alicia," Lu Chen's voice grew lighter and lighter, turning into golden sand grains that integrated into the totem pillar, "vessels can choose their own destiny."

The golden light erupted completely, swallowing the entire Soulbroken Valley. Williams's screams distorted within the light, and the three rings and one flute simultaneously broke free from his control, forming a perfect resonance at the center of the array.

When the golden light dispersed, the totem pillar had vanished, leaving behind only a massive anti-entropy array branded onto the sandy ground. The dark purple tribulation fire rolled in agony outside the array, yet it could no longer advance a single step.

Chen Yu and Wang Lu rushed over, only to find the suppression ring dropped onto the sand. The anti-entropy array on the ring was still glowing faintly warm, as if recounting the miracle that had just occurred.

In the distance toward Black Wind Pass, Alicia's sand-crystal cage suddenly shattered.

She stood within the golden rain of light, a pair of huge silver bird wings unfurling behind her—the left half carrying her mother's gentleness, the right half her father's fury. Within her gold-and-blue pupils, the golden light from the direction of Soulbroken Valley was reflected, alongside a figure smiling amidst the sand grains.

Yet her smile suddenly froze.

The feathers on her wings began to shed, transforming into black tribulation fire—though Williams had been repelled, at the very last moment, he had injected fragments of the bone-core's consciousness straight into her heart.

"A vessel... is a vessel after all..." Black blood overflowed from the corners of Alicia's eyes and mouth, her pupils switching frantically between gold-blue and deep purple.

The anti-entropy array in Soulbroken Valley flickered violently, as if in warning. Chen Yu picked up the suppression ring, suddenly discovering a new line of text engraved on the inner side—left behind at the very end by Lu Chen:

"The sand scorpions are searching for a new altar; beneath Crescent Spring lies the tomb of the Sand Wardens..."

Before the words faded, the entire Great Desert trembled violently.

Everyone felt that some colossal entity was awakening beneath the Crescent Spring ruins. Its power was older and more terrifying than the bone-core, carrying an aura that could destroy heaven and earth.

That was the ultimate trump card buried by the Sand Wardens a millennium ago.

And also... a new disaster.