Episode 46: The Double Agent

The campfire at the Tribe X encampment crackled furiously against the torrential downpour, its sparks instantly smothered by massive raindrops like a swarm of crushed moths. Lu Chen stuffed the final beast-bone parchment into his waterproof pouch, his knuckles whitening from the exertion. The reverse-entropy array at the Crescent Spring altar had already activated, piercing the curtain of rain and burning an eerie fissure across the horizon. Yet, his mood was gloomier than this wretched weather—Zhao Wu, the scout captain, had been missing for seven hours.

"Still nothing?" Chen Yu wiped the rainwater from his face, spinning his rifle in his grip before the butt slammed heavily against a tent pole with a dull thud. "The old fox is usually sharper than a desert wolf; there's no way he could just get lost."

Wang Lu was busy bandaging a wounded soldier as the canvas of the medical tent fluttered wildly in the gale. She looked up at Lu Chen, her eyes shadowed with anxiety. "Captain Zhao is in charge of the Blackwind Pass intelligence network. If something happens to him, we're effectively flying blind."

Before her voice could fade, a young scout stumbled breathlessly into the camp, clutching a soaked leather bag tightly to his chest. Rainwater streamed down his hair, pooling into tiny puddles on the ground. "Cap... Captain's gear! Found it in the sand at the Valley of Lost Souls!"

Lu Chen's heart plummeted.

There was no corpse inside the leather bag—only a blood-stained scout token and a soggy, bloated cipher scroll. Using his bone knife to pry open the wax seal, the residual glow of the campfire illuminated the handwriting the moment he unfolded the paper. It was Zhao Wu's penmanship, yet it bore contents that made everyone's spine freeze:

*“To Lord Williams: Tribe X has fallen into the trap at the Valley of Lost Souls. The activation time of the reverse-entropy array is postponed to the hour of the rat, at which point the sand-remnant beast swarm can be annihilated in one fell swoop...”*

"Traitor!" Chen Yu's roar shook the very frame of the tent. He snatched the cipher scroll away, crushing the paper between his rigid fingers. "This old bastard actually defected all along! Last month's ambush at Blackwind Pass—he must have fed us the fake intelligence that wiped out half our squad!"

The camp erupted in instant pandemonium.

"No wonder every operation of ours kept getting anticipated! There was a mole in our midst all along!"

"That old fox Zhao Wu always put on the most loyal act, but who would have thought he's just a dog for Tribe S!"

"We have to investigate! Who knows how many more traitors are hiding among us!"

Waves of furious shouting drowned out the sound of the rain. The warriors swept suspicious and hostile glances across each other's faces. Some stealthily tightened their grips on their weapons, the shadows of the campfire leaping across their features like a pack of ravenous beasts.

Lu Chen's suppression ring suddenly grew scorching hot. He stared fixedly at the signature at the bottom of the cipher. Right beside Zhao Wu's name was a blurred scorpion-shaped seal—identical to the insignia of Williams's personal guard. Yet for some reason, the strokes of the signature were far heavier than usual, and the final stroke even punctured the paper, as if attempting to transmit some hidden signal.

"Everyone, be quiet!" Lu Chen's voice cut through the clamor. His totem blade came down heavily upon the rock beside the campfire, sending golden sparks flying. "Right now is not the time to hunt for moles! The undead defense line at Blackwind Pass is collapsing; we need to reinforce it immediately!"

"Reinforce?" A bearded warrior suddenly stepped forward, his left arm wrapped in bandages—a survivor from the previous ambush. "Who knows if this is just another trap set by Zhao Wu? For all we know, Williams is waiting for us to walk right into his net!"

His gaze abruptly shifted toward Su Qing, carrying undisguised suspicion. "Come to think of it, isn't Su Qing's father a scientist from Tribe S? Back in the day, he even helped Williams research bone cores! Who's to say she isn't in cahoots with Zhao Wu?"

Every eye instantly converged on Su Qing.

The girl's face turned instantly pale as the detector in her hand slipped with a sharp *clatter* to the ground. She opened her mouth to retort, but her throat felt choked, able to produce only a fragmented whimper. Her father's research had always been her greatest vulnerability; those classified files regarding the bone cores wrapped around her spine like a poisonous snake.

"You're talking nonsense!" Wang Lu immediately stepped in front of Su Qing, the straps of her medical pack cutting red into her shoulders. "Su Qing hasn't closed her eyes for three days trying to decode those beast-bone parchments. If she were a traitor, she would have sold us out long ago!"

"Who knows if she was just acting?" The bearded warrior pressed forward relentlessly, his bone spear scraping a harsh screech against the sandy ground. "Zhao Wu's cipher says the reverse-entropy array's activation was delayed, and just yesterday she claimed the energy levels were stable. That can't just be a coincidence, can it?"

Su Qing's tears finally spilled over. She snatched up the detector from the ground, its screen still displaying the energy data for Blackwind Pass. "I didn't! The data shows everything is normal. It was Captain Zhao... it was him who forged the intelligence!"

"Empty words prove nothing!"

"Just lock her up and interrogate her; we'll find out the truth!"

"That's right! Better to kill an innocent than let a traitor slip through!"

Waves of anger surged once more, and several impulsive warriors had already closed in, their weapons flashing with cold light. Su Qing backed away in terror until her spine hit the tent pole, staring despairingly at Lu Chen as the grievance in her eyes welled up like a tide.

***

Lu Chen moved suddenly.

He stepped directly in front of Su Qing, blocking her from the enraged crowd, and snatched up the cipher scroll. Amidst everyone's stunned gazes, he tore the paper forcefully in half with both hands!

*Rip—*

The paper was shredded into fragments, drifting down onto the ground with the rain, quickly swallowed by the mud.

"Brother Lu! What are you doing?" Chen Yu cried out anxiously, stamping his foot. "That's evidence!"

"Evidence?" Lu Chen's gaze swept across the bearded warrior, across every suspicious face, and finally landed on Su Qing. "Zhao Wu went through hell and high water with me for ten years; Su Qing nearly went blind trying to decode that array. Whether they are traitors or not, I know better than any of you!"

He picked up the discarded scout token from the mud and raised it toward the campfire. The carved markings on the back of the token were clearly visible in the firelight—the secret signal of Tribe X scouts, where three diagonal slashes represented "surrounded and trapped," not defection.

"Zhao Wu was captured, and this letter was written under duress." Lu Chen's voice carried an unquestionable authority. "That final stroke piercing the paper was his way of telling us 'the letter is fake'!"

The bearded warrior opened his mouth to argue, but froze under Lu Chen's piercing glare. "Right now, our brothers at Blackwind Pass are bleeding, and you're here infighting. Does that play right into Williams's hands?"

He raised his old bone knife, the Sand-Guardian Priest totem glowing with golden light through the rain. "Do you trust me, or do you trust this anonymous cipher? Do you trust our brothers fighting in the blood, or do you trust the whispering undead in the sand?"

The warriors fell silent. Rainwater slid down their cheeks, indistinguishable from tears. The bearded warrior lowered his head, his bone spear dropping to the ground with a dull *clatter*, his voice heavy with shame. "I'm sorry, Captain Lu... I was too impulsive."

"I'm sorry, little Su."

"We were wrong..."

Su Qing's tears fell even faster, though not from grievance, but from sheer relief. She looked at Lu Chen's broad back, suddenly recalling a note left behind by her father: *"The first rule of a Sand-Guardian is never to be overly suspicious of the enemy, but to trust your comrades."*

At that exact moment, the sound of a cane tapping against the ground echoed from the rainy mist at the entrance of the camp.

The Sand-Speaker elder appeared from the gloom, the hem of his dark robe caked in mud. His cloudy left eye stared fixedly at the shredded pieces of the letter on the ground, while the golden radiance in his right eye lingered on Su Qing for a fleeting second.

"Finished bickering?" The elder's voice rasped like grinding rusted iron. "The sands never lie; people do."

He walked slowly toward the campfire, leaving a trail of golden footprints with every step. "Zhao Wu is indeed a traitor, but he was not turned."

Everyone's breathing halted instantly.

The Sand-Speaker drew a small crystal vial from beneath his black robe. Inside it sealed half a drop of black liquid, casting a dim blue glow in the firelight. "This is the bone core's psychic venom. When dripped into food, it subtly manipulates a person, making them blurt out hidden secrets or even believe they have genuinely defected."

He tossed the crystal vial to Lu Chen. "Zhao Wu was grazed by a sand-crystal thorn during his reconnaissance three days ago; the venom has already invaded his brainstem. That letter was indeed written by him, but it was penned under Williams's conscious control."

Lu Chen's heart felt as though it had been struck by a heavy hammer. He remembered that three days ago, when Zhao Wu returned, there had indeed been a minor, unassuming scratch on his arm, which they had dismissed as a mere scrape from gravel...

"Not just Zhao Wu." The Sand-Speaker's gaze swept across the camp, his golden gleam flickering over several warriors. "Among you, three others have also been poisoned, though the dosage is lighter and symptoms have yet to manifest."

The complexions of those three warriors turned ashen, and they instinctively touched their own wounds—all sustained from sand-crystal lacerations during recent skirmishes.

"Williams's goal isn't conversion; it's the cultivation of suspicion." The Sand-Speaker's voice carried a chilling undertone. "He knew a direct assault couldn't pierce the reverse-entropy array, so he chose this method to make us slaughter one another."

Su Qing suddenly recalled something. She grabbed her detector and rushed toward the three warriors. Sure enough, the genetic chains on the screen displayed fluctuations similar to Zhao Wu's, albeit significantly weaker. "It's treatable! Sand-blood antibodies can neutralize this venom!"

Wang Lu immediately opened her medical pack and distributed the remaining antitheses to the three men. The moment the serum entered their veins, the three let out muffled groans of agony, black sweat beading on their foreheads, but their eyes gradually cleared.

***

"Th... Thank you, Captain Lu..." one of the warriors said, still shaken with lingering fear. "Just a moment ago, I honestly felt like Su Qing was acting suspicious. Now I realize there was a voice inside my head forcing me to doubt her..."

Though the truth was out, the atmosphere in the camp grew even heavier. Williams's tactics were far more insidious than they had imagined, employing even neurological manipulation. Who knew who the next infected target might be?

Lu Chen gripped the vial containing the venom tightly, suddenly recalling Alicia's warning within the sand-crystal cage: *"Williams is lying to you... What he wants isn't assimilation; it's a sacrifice..."*

"What do we do now?" Chen Yu's voice carried exhaustion; continuous combat and internal strife had worn him down to the bone.

The Sand-Speaker suddenly pointed toward Blackwind Pass, where the crimson light was fading rapidly. "The undead defense line won't hold much longer. Williams deliberately leaked fake intelligence just to stall us, waiting for the defense line to collapse before making his move."

The elder's golden right eye suddenly flared with a piercing brilliance, projecting an image directly into the rainy veil—Zhao Wu bound inside a sand-crystal cage, Williams's mechanical claw pressing down upon the top of his head. A scorpion totem flashed across Zhao Wu's forehead as dark blood spilled from the old man's mouth, yet he glared fiercely at the projection as if transmitting one final piece of intelligence.

"He's looking at the direction of the altar!" Su Qing shouted suddenly. "Captain Zhao's pupils are contracting! He's counting the number of stone pillars! One, two, three... seven! Seven pillars at the Blackwind Pass altar have been tampered with!"

Lu Chen's gaze turned as sharp as a blade. "Chen Yu, take half the men to Blackwind Pass and dismantle those seven pillars! Wang Lu and Su Qing stay behind, use the antibodies to screen everyone and ensure no one else is infected!"

"And you?" Su Qing instinctively grabbed his wrist, her fingertips brushing against the wound hidden beneath his combat gear, which was still throbbing with dull pain.

Lu Chen's bone knife traced a golden arc through the rain. "I'm heading to the Valley of Lost Souls. Zhao Wu is still alive; I won't abandon him to Williams."

The Sand-Speaker suddenly pressed a hand onto his shoulder, a complex glimmer flashing within his cloudy left eye. "Williams has set a trap in the Valley of Lost Souls. Not only is Zhao Wu there, but waiting for you is... a 'surprise' you could never expect."

"What surprise?"

The elder merely shook his head, turning to stride into the rainy downpour, leaving behind a single sentence echoing in the wind:

*"The sands will tell you the answer... but some answers are truths you might not wish to bear."*

Lu Chen stared into the direction the elder had vanished, the suppression ring burning unbearably hot against his finger. He had a premonition that the "surprise" the Sand-Speaker spoke of might be even more terrifying than Zhao Wu's betrayal, potentially shattering everything they had ever believed.

The crimson lights at Blackwind Pass finally went dark completely.

Chen Yu's roars and the thunderous blast of rocket launchers echoed from afar; the battle had evidently broken out. Lu Chen cast one final glance at Su Qing. The girl's eyes were red-rimmed, yet she nodded resolutely, the determination in her gaze like an unquenchable star.

"Be careful," she whispered softly, yet it reached his ears clearly.

Lu Chen smiled, then turned and plunged into the direction of the Valley of Lost Souls. The golden radiance of his bone knife cleaved through the curtain of rain, leaving a trail of resolute footprints in the sand.

What he did not know was that after his departure, the Sand-Speaker quietly returned to the camp, standing silently behind Su Qing. His golden right eye flashed across her detector screen, causing a string of garbled code to briefly erupt before vanishing as though it had never existed.

Su Qing's fingers paused on the keyboard, her brows furrowing slightly. Had something just flickered across the screen?

The rain continued to fall, washing away the bloodstains and suspicions of the encampment, yet failing to disperse the ever-thickening atmosphere of conspiracy hanging in the air. The sounds of explosions at Blackwind Pass drew closer, while the Valley of Lost Souls remained abnormally quiet—quiet as an open grave, waiting for its prey to step willingly inside.

And that shredded piece of cipher paper slowly pieced itself together in the mud to form a vague pattern—not a scorpion totem, but the outline of half a silver bird, identical to the necklace worn by Alicia.

The sands truly never lied, but those who interpreted the sands did not necessarily speak the whole truth.