Episode 50: Night Raid on the Sand Crystal Smelter

The chimney of the sand-crystal smelting furnace stood against the moonlight like a rusted bone, spewing black-purple smoke that fell to the ground and condensed into tiny sand scorpions, dissolving into dust after crawling only a few paces.

Lu Chen lay prone behind the weathered rock, the lenses of his tactical binoculars reflecting a teeth-gritting sight: scattered across the sandy ground around the furnace were countless tiny bones, the smallest no larger than a child's finger joints, clearly the remains of children. The walls oozed dark red liquid, winding down along the brick joints to pool into small puddles of blood at the foundation. Stirred by the night breeze, ghostly blue flames ignited atop the gore.

"Damn... this place is more sickening than a slaughterhouse." Chen Yu's voice was suppressed to a mosquito's hum, his laser sight locked onto the guard at the entrance, his Adam's apple bobbing violently. "Williams, that animal, he doesn't even spare children?"

Lu Chen said nothing, his knuckles whitening as he gripped Old Dao's bone blade. The sand-guard priest totem carved into the blade glowed red, as if echoing the lamentations of this land. The purification ring taken from Old Dao's grandfather's tomb three days ago burned hot on his right hand; the sand-calcified skin had already spread to his forearms, and Wang Lu's calming powder was losing its effect. Every movement felt like abrasive sand grinding between his bone joints.

"Time for action." Lu Chen's voice was cold as ice, and Su Qing's signal crackled through the tactical earpiece. "The northwest ventilation duct is confirmed unguarded. Once Chen Yu blows the breach, Wang Lu's medical team and I will rescue the hostages, while Su Qing paralyzes the furnace's energy system."

"Copy that!" The three acknowledgments overlapped almost simultaneously.

Chen Yu crawled to a sand dune ten meters away from the guard and pulled out a modified grenade. This contraption was made from a mixture of sand-crystal fragments and explosives; upon detonation, it would release camel-blood vapor, specifically designed to counter sand-crystal armor. He pulled the pin and hurled it with all his might toward the campfire where the guards were clustered.

"Boom—!"

The explosion was shredded by the night breeze, yet it was deafening enough to disorient the guards. The camel-blood vapor formed a pinkish mist that instantly boiled upon contact with the sand-crystal armor, emitting a sizzling corrosive sound. The guards shrieked and flailed their weapons blindly; some even collapsed as their armor melted, only to be impaled through the throat by their comrades' bone spears.

"Now!" Lu Chen's bone blade cleaved the ventilation grill, a golden arc slicing through the darkness. Wang Lu followed closely with her medical pack, the sand-blood antibodies in her syringe glowing faintly gold in the moonlight.

The duct was thick with a sweet, cloying stench, like scorched syrup mixed with rust. Lu Chen's purification ring suddenly vibrated violently. Looking down by the beam of his tactical flashlight, he saw that the pipe walls were plastered with human skin, still attached with unfallen hair that swayed gently in the airflow.

"These are..." Wang Lu's voice trembled as she recognized a tattoo on one piece of human skin—the wolf-head totem of the X Tribe. "These are the herdsmen who went missing last month!"

Lu Chen's breathing abruptly stopped. He recalled Kam's words: those who refused the sand-blood serum injection would have their families thrown into the sand-crystal furnace. The so-called "furnace" was not a disposal site for failed products at all; it was a slaughterhouse that refined living humans into medicine!

"Speed up!" Lu Chen's voice carried repressed fury as his bone blade chopped through the wire mesh ahead. "Delay one more second, and another person might be thrown into the cauldron!"

The interior of the furnace was even more horrifying than the outside.

A massive bronze crucible crouched like a dormant beast, its rim churning with black-purple magma that carried half-melted skeletons. A dozen military doctors in white lab coats from the S Tribe bustled about, scooping the magma with long-handled ladles and pouring it into adjacent molds. Upon cooling, it solidified into the semi-finished product of sand-blood serum—those glowing blue crystals were unmistakably smelted from human bones!

"Over there!" Wang Lu suddenly pointed toward an iron cage at the back of the furnace, crammed with dozens of civilians, young and old, male and female. Talisman papers reading "To Be Refined" were plastered across every forehead, their eyes hollow as if gouged out.

Lu Chen's bone blade transformed into a golden flash, instantly severing the wrists of two military doctors. Chen Yu's rocket launcher accurately blasted the medicine storage room into collapse, and amidst the explosions, Su Qing had already hacked into the furnace's control system, causing the energy readings on the screen to plummet off a cliff.

"Follow me if you want to live!" Lu Chen shattered the cage lock with his blade, but the civilians sat as numbly as before, ignoring him entirely. Only a blind boy suddenly raised his head, his hollow eye sockets facing Lu Chen's direction.

The boy looked to be only seven or eight years old, clad in an oversized black robe, his right hand clutching half a piece of naan bread. His skin was paper-white and his lips were chapped and bleeding, yet the moment he heard Lu Chen's voice, a look of sheer terror washed over him.

"Don't touch that furnace..." The boy's voice was thin as a thread, yet possessed the power to pierce through the noise. "Something is screaming inside... so, so many people are crying..."

Lu Chen's heart clenched violently. He looked toward the bronze crucible; sure enough, countless tormented faces surfaced within the black-purple magma, rolling and struggling like dumplings boiling in a pot.

"Move!" Chen Yu kicked away a military doctor attempting to hit the alarm. "The energy system is about to blow!"

The civilians were finally jolted awake by the explosions, stampeding madly toward the ventilation shaft. Seizing the moment, Wang Lu administered the antibodies. The instant the needle pierced the skin, someone let out a piercing shriek—not from the pain, but because the talisman papers were scorched through by the golden glow of the antibodies, revealing the bleeding skin beneath.

In the chaos, Lu Chen grabbed the blind boy's hand. The child's palm was icy cold, yet the moment it touched the purification ring on Lu Chen's right hand, it began to tremble violently.

"Light... so much light..." The boy's fingers fumbled across the back of Lu Chen's hand as if touching something intangible. "There is so much light in the sand. They are all crying, saying they can't find their way home..."

Lu Chen's purification ring suddenly erupted with blinding golden light. Lowering his gaze to the boy's forehead beneath the messy bangs, he spotted a pale-gold birthmark the size of a fingernail, shaped like a silver bird with outstretched wings—identical to Alicia's birthmark!

"What's your name?" Lu Chen's voice tightened as he remembered Alicia saying that her mother Isabella had a younger brother lost during the wars; calculating by age, he would be this boy's grandfather's generation.

"A-Yin..." Tears welled from the boy's hollow eye sockets. "Mom said that once I can see the light, she'll take me to find my sister..."

"Sister?"

"Mm-hmm!" A-Yin nodded vigorously, his small hand suddenly gripping Lu Chen's wrist, his fingernails digging deep into his sand-calcified skin. "Sister has light on her forehead too, just like mine! She's locked in a golden cage, and she said the furnace is going to eat everyone..."

Lu Chen's breathing stalled completely.

A golden cage? Alicia was locked in a sand-crystal cell, and sand-crystals glowed gold when energized! This child could not only see the spirits in the sand, but could also sense Alicia, who shared his bloodline!

"Boom—!"

The energy core of the furnace detonated. Black-purple magma spattered out, igniting raging fires upon the ground. The military doctors who failed to escape were instantly engulfed, their screams twisting into eerie melodies within the flames.

"Move!" Chen Yu dragged Lu Chen's arm backward. "This place is going to cave in!"

Lifting A-Yin into his arms, Lu Chen charged toward the ventilation shaft following the fleeing crowd. The fire chased relentlessly at their heels, scorching his back, only to be blocked by the golden barrier of the purification ring. He glanced back: the bronze crucible was collapsing, and from the black-purple magma, countless hands reached out as if begging for redemption. At the very front, one hand wore a familiar silver bird ring—it belonged to Isabella!

"Mom..." A-Yin pointed toward the furnace, tears overflowing from his hollow sockets. "Mom is in there too..."

Lu Chen's heart felt as though it had been smashed to pulp by a heavy hammer. He finally understood: Alicia's mother hadn't been treated merely as a vessel; Williams had used the entire royal bloodline as "catalysts" to brew the sand-blood serum. A-Yin and Alicia were the only remaining survivors who had slipped through the net!

The ventilation grill grew closer, yet Lu Chen suddenly halted his steps.

His purification ring burned like a branding iron, the sand-calcified skin having spread past his elbows, the golden veins throbbing frantically across his arm. Through the gaps in the flames, he saw the foundation at the bottom of the furnace cracking open, revealing a vast subterranean space from which countless chains hung down from the dark, tethering hazy shadows—ten times more than the civilians they had just rescued!

"There are more people down there!" Lu Chen's voice rasped as he tried to rush back, only to be pinned down hard by Chen Yu.

"Are you out of your mind?!" Chen Yu's goggles were blackened by soot. "It's a trap! Williams left that there on purpose!"

Su Qing's voice came through the tactical headset, laced with tears: "The core of the energy system isn't the furnace; it's the energy well beneath the foundation! It's absorbing the magma's energy and is about to detonate! We have thirty seconds at most!"

Lu Chen looked down at A-Yin in his arms. The boy's small hand gripped his clothing tightly, his hollow eye sockets still gazing toward the furnace as if piercing the flames to see those trapped souls.

"Remember their positions." Gritting his teeth, Lu Chen turned and bolted out of the ventilation shaft. "We'll come back."

A deafening explosion echoed behind them. The sand-crystal furnace collapsed entirely, and black-purple smoke billowed into the night sky like a blooming flower of death. Lu Chen rolled across the sandy ground with A-Yin, stopping only when they were far enough from the blast zone.

Wang Lu quickly examined A-Yin's body. When she lifted the boy's black robe, everyone gasped—his back was covered in whip marks, old and new overlapping, with sand-crystal fragments embedded in the deepest wounds, clearly demonstrating long-term abuse.

"Those animals..." Chen Yu slammed his fist into the sand, the kicked-up grains stained with his bloody tears.

Yet A-Yin seemed impervious to pain, his small hand gently stroking Lu Chen's sand-calcified arm, the golden veins fading slightly under his touch. "Your light is dying," the boy said with childish earnestness. "The sand says you're trading your life for others, like... like the sand-guard in the stories."

Lu Chen's heart gave a violent jerk. Looking at his arm, the glow of the purification ring was indeed dimming; forcing the ring during the rescue had accelerated the calcification to a dangerous degree.

"Su Qing, locate the energy well beneath the foundation." Lu Chen's voice was exceptionally calm. "At dawn tomorrow, we go back."

Chen Yu tried to object, but Wang Lu pulled him back. She shook her head at him, gesturing toward the purification ring on Lu Chen's right hand—the golden veins on the ring were flowing again, though the direction was bizarre, as if... absorbing A-Yin's body heat.

Su Qing's holographic map suddenly lit up. The location of the energy well was clearly displayed directly beneath the furnace ruins, its energy readings absurdly high and still climbing.

"Something's wrong." Su Qing's voice tightened. "The frequency of the energy well matches the bone core completely, but the intensity is triple... Williams isn't just refining serum with the furnace; he's..."

Her words were cut short by A-Yin's gasp of terror.

The boy pointed toward the energy well, fear flickering in his hollow eye sockets: "Black... so many black hands... they're grabbing the light in the sand..."

Lu Chen jerked his head up. Across the sandy ground of the furnace ruins, countless black-purple hands were extending from the underground, like pulling out radishes, dragging the dissipating ghostly lights down into the fissures. The energy well burst with blinding black radiance, dyeing even the moon purple.

"He's feeding the bone core!" Lu Chen's voice carried incredulous dread. "The living humans in the furnace weren't for refining medicine—they were appetizers for the bone core! The energy well is the real 'mouth'!"

A-Yin suddenly lunged, grabbing Lu Chen's arm with nails sinking deep into his flesh. "Sister... Sister's light is dimming... The black hands are catching her!"

Lu Chen's heart skipped a beat.

Alicia!

He whipped his head toward the S Tribe's temple. The night sky over there was likewise shrouded in black radiance, where a faint golden dot could be discerned struggling like a candle flame in a tempest.

"We have to save her!" Lu Chen hoisted A-Yin and prepared to charge, but Chen Yu intercepted him in a bear hug.

"You'll just be walking to your death!" Chen Yu cried, tears streaming. "Your arm is almost ruined! The energy well is going to blow any second! We can't save her!"

Lu Chen stared at his sand-calcified arm; the glow of the purification ring had dwindled almost to invisibility. He could feel his life force draining away swiftly like sand in an hourglass.

Yet A-Yin's words echoed in his mind: "Sister's light is dimming..."

"Let me go." Lu Chen's voice was cold as frost, his bone blade flaring with golden light. "She is Isabella's daughter, A-Yin's sister, and our last hope. Even if I turn to sand, I must go."

Chen Yu opened his mouth to argue, but Wang Lu pulled him away. She handed Lu Chen a syringe filled with green liquid. "This is an enhanced calming powder; it can temporarily suppress the calcification, but the side effects are severe... it might cause you to lose consciousness."

Taking the syringe, Lu Chen shoved it straight into his neck without hesitation. The icy liquid surged through his body, the calcified skin indeed receding, and the purification ring re-ignited its golden radiance—though this time, an eerie purple tinged the glow.

"Take care of A-Yin." Glancing one last time at the silver bird birthmark on the boy's forehead, Lu Chen turned and bolted toward the temple, the golden streak of his bone blade carving a desperate arc through the dark night.

A-Yin suddenly shouted at his retreating back: "Mom said when the silver bird's light meets the sand's light, it will bloom a flower that can defeat the scorpion!"

Lu Chen paused for a fraction of a second without looking back.

Little did he know that after he left, A-Yin's small hand brushed his own birthmark, where a miniature entropy-reversal array was slowly materializing, identical to the pattern on Lu Chen's purification ring. Watching this, Wang Lu recalled a line from the notes left behind by Su Qing's father:

"Hidden within the royal bloodline is the sand-guard's final line of defense."

Deep within the fissures of the furnace ruins, amidst the black radiance of the energy well, Williams's figure slowly materialized. A golden chain was coiled around his mechanical arm, tethering an unconscious figure at its end—it was Alicia, whose forehead birthmark was emitting a faint golden glow, resonating bizarrely with the black radiance of the energy well.

"Finally waiting for it." Williams's mechanical prosthetic eye flashed red as he gently stroked Alicia's birthmark. "The silver bird's bloodline, coupled with the power of the energy well's bone core... my 'Sand Scorpion Coronation' ceremony can finally begin."

Beneath his feet, countless black-purple hands cheered, and from the sand came the wails of countless spirits, celebrating this sacrifice delayed by eighteen years.

Lu Chen's bone blade continued its advance, unaware that he was running headfirst into an ultimate trap meticulously laid by Williams with Alicia as the bait.

And that flower capable of defeating the scorpion, spoken of by A-Yin—was it salvation, or another catastrophe?

Atop the temple peak shrouded in black radiance, the mournful cry of a silver bird suddenly pierced the air, piercingly desolate like weeping.