Episode 53: Identity of the Sand Speaker

The canvas of the meditation tent fluttered violently in the night wind. The Sand-Whisperer sat cross-legged at the center of the anti-entropy totem, his black robe rising and falling slightly with his breath. Moonlight leaked through a tear in the roof of the tent, casting a silver patch of light on his chest just over the half-exposed necklace at the collar of his black robe.

When Su Qing entered carrying the testing equipment, she ran right into this scene.

It was a necklace polished from a spine, and the pendant was a blue crystal the size of a pigeon egg, shimmering with an eerie blue light under the moonlight—the exact same necklace she had seen on the neck of the bone-core mummy!

"Lord Sand-Whisperer?" Su Qing's footsteps paused. The detector suddenly emitted a faint hum, and the energy waveform on the screen generated a bizarre resonance with the bone-core sample in the Memory Sanctuary.

The Sand-Whisperer slowly opened his eyes, the turbidity of his left eye and the golden gleam of his right eye starkly contrasting in the moonlight. He seemed unaware that the necklace at his collar had been exposed, simply gesturing to the cushion beside him: "Sit. Are the test results out?"

Su Qing's heart hammered like a drum. She placed the equipment on the ground. The screen displayed the analysis of the Sand-Whisperer's blood sample—three hours ago, when the Sand-Whisperer had coughed up blood, she had secretly collected a little, originally just hoping to find a way to ease his cough, but she had never expected...

"Your blood..." Su Qing's fingers slid across the screen, her fingertips turning white from the pressure, "contains gene fragments of the bone-core. Not the contaminated kind, but... homologous."

The Sand-Whisperer's breathing visibly paused. He raised a hand to pull his black robe tighter, trying to cover the necklace, but Su Qing was quick to press down on his wrist. The girl didn't have much strength, but her gaze was exceptionally firm, like a drowning person clutching at a straw.

"This necklace." Su Qing's voice trembled. "I've seen the exact same one on a bone-core mummy in the Soul-Broken Valley. Who on earth are you?"

Dead silence fell inside the tent, broken only by the continuous hum of the detector. The Sand-Whisperer looked at the jumping gene sequences on Su Qing's screen. On those helical chains, fragments perfectly matching the bone-core were marked, like an undeniable string of evidence.

He suddenly laughed, his laughter tinged with the fatigue of one who had seen through worldly affairs: "Lao Dao that kid wasn't wrong. You youngsters have sharp eyes."

The Sand-Whisperer slowly removed the necklace, the blue crystal refracting splintered light in the moonlight. He placed the necklace on the testing platform. The instant the crystal touched the device, the screen suddenly burst with blinding blue light, and the gene sequence completely overlapped with the bone-core sample, down to the minutest mutated fragment without the slightest discrepancy.

"The direct descendant of the first-generation Sand-Guarding Priest." The Sand-Whisperer's voice was very soft, as if telling someone else's story. "The Spokesperson of the Sand Soul is not some inherited position; it is a bloodline curse. Our lineage is naturally capable of resonating with the bone-core, and naturally... cannot live past forty."

Su Qing's mind went blank.

The first-generation Sand-Guarding Priest—that legend in the murals who sealed the bone-core with the Three Precepts, turned out to be the Sand-Whisperer's ancestor? And the so-called Spokesperson of the Sand Soul was not a sacred mission at all, but a shackle carried in their blood?

"Why?" Su Qing's voice tightened as she recalled the Sand-Whisperer's violent coughs and the golden sand-traces vaguely visible beneath his black robe. "Why does purifying the sand soul hollow out the body?"

The Sand-Whisperer tapped the testing screen with his fingertip. Numerous tiny sand-particle images emerged within the blue light, each grain wrapping around a painful human face: "What do you think the sand soul is? It is the resentment of the dead, the fragmented curse-seal of the bone-core. The price for us being able to understand their whispers is... having to use our own vitality to pacify and purify them."

He rolled up the sleeve of his black robe, revealing forearms densely covered in golden patterns, like countless little snakes slithering beneath his skin. "These are not sand crystals; they are the sand souls we have absorbed. For every one we purify, the patterns deepen by a fraction, and our vitality diminishes by a fraction. In the end..."

The Sand-Whisperer suddenly broke into a violent fit of coughing, covering his mouth with a handkerchief. The snow-white fabric instantly stained with a glaring red. Su Qing saw clearly that what he coughed up was not ordinary blood; it was mixed with tiny golden sand grains that turned into smoke the moment they hit the ground.

"In the end, it becomes like this." The Sand-Whisperer's voice carried heavy panting as he pointed to the image of the bone-core mummy on the screen. "Like my grandfather, sucked dry of flesh and blood by the sand souls, turning into a puppet whose only purpose is to guard the tomb. This is the destiny of our lineage."

***

Su Qing's tears fell without warning. She thought of the Sand-Whisperer's back shielding them in the Soul-Broken Valley, of his pale face after every spellcasting, of how he always said, "The sand remembers everything"—she had never realized those seemingly nonchalant words concealed such a heavy price.

"Then why do you still..."

"Because someone has to do it." The Sand-Whisperer interrupted her, putting the necklace back around his neck, the blue crystal resting against the skin of his chest. "Williams thinks he can conquer the Great Desert by controlling the bone-core. He doesn't understand. This thing is alive, and the resentment locked inside could overturn the entire desert. If we don't purify it, are we supposed to wait for it to explode on its own?"

The detector suddenly emitted a sharp alarm.

The gene sequence on the screen began to flash frantically, and eerie red threads mixed into the previously stable blue light. Su Qing magnified the view, horrified to find that those red threads were devouring the bone-core's gene fragments, leaving behind a trajectory that was unmistakably a scorpion totem!

"This is..."

"Williams is tampering with the bone-core." The Sand-Whisperer's face turned instantly pale. He stood up abruptly, the hem of his black robe sweeping across the sand on the ground, causing the sand to automatically cluster into a miniature anti-entropy array. "He wants to forcibly strip away the Sand-Guarantor's consciousness within it, leaving only the resentment of the sand scorpion!"

Deafening roars suddenly echoed from outside the tent. Chen Yu rushed in, lifting the curtain, his face smudged with soot: "The energy tower in the northwest has blown up! It wasn't us, it looks like... self-detonation!"

A golden glow suddenly erupted from the Sand-Whisperer's right eye. He stared at the northwestern night sky, where a black-purple pillar of smoke was rising like a writhing venomous snake: " He is forcing us to show ourselves. The shockwave from the self-detonation of the energy tower will temporarily suppress the anti-entropy array, and the bone-core's resentment will take the opportunity to spread."

Su Qing suddenly grabbed his wrist. On the detector's screen, the red threads within the Sand-Whisperer's gene sequence had spread all the way to the position of his heart: "You can't go! Your body..."

"Not go?" The Sand-Whisperer smiled, coughing making his voice intermittent. "And wait to watch the sand souls go out of control, turning everyone into puppets? Don't forget, child, this is our lineage's job."

He suddenly pulled an oilcloth bundle from his black robe and shoved it into Su Qing's hands. Inside the bundle were three small bone pieces carved with different anti-entropy patterns: "These are the array-eye keys left by the first-generation priest, capable of temporarily stabilizing the three altars. You and Chen Yu go to Black Wind Pass and activate the backup array-eye."

"What about you?" Su Qing's voice was laced with crying.

"I'm going to meet an old friend." The Sand-Whisperer's gaze fell upon the pillar of smoke in the northwest, where a massive scorpion-shaped shadow was faintly visible. "Williams thinks he has the bone-core by its vital spot. He doesn't know... that the fiercest fire among the sand souls is the blood of us Sand-Whisperers."

He turned and walked out of the tent. His black robe billowed in the night wind, revealing the golden sand-traces on his back—those patterns had connected into a complete anti-entropy totem, like a burning suit of armor. The spine necklace on his chest emitted a bright blue light, echoing from afar with the black-purple smoke pillar.

Watching his back disappear into the night, Su Qing suddenly recalled a sentence from the test report: The length of the Sand-Whisperer's DNA telomeres was equivalent to that of a fifty-year-old man, and his cell division count was nearing its absolute limit.

He hadn't failed to live past forty; rather, he had... already pushed far beyond his limit.

Chen Yu's voice came from outside the tent, carrying panic: "Su Qing! Look at the energy readings! The bone-core resentment index is skyrocketing, and... it's gathering toward the Sand-Whisperer's direction!"

Su Qing lunged toward the testing console. The red dots on the screen surged toward the northwest like a tidal wave, forming a massive vortex at the Sand-Whisperer's location. Meanwhile, the Sand-Whisperer's vital signs were dropping at a speed visible to the naked eye, like a candle about to burn out.

"He's... using himself as bait?" Su Qing's fingernails dug deeply into her palms.

***

At that very moment, the bone pieces in the oilcloth bundle suddenly grew hot. Su Qing picked up one of them, and the patterns on the bone piece came alive, branding a golden seal onto her palm—it was the Sand-Whisperer's bloodline imprint, which resonated with the energy amplifier left by her father.

"So..." Su Qing suddenly understood. "My father's research wasn't meant for Williams; it was meant to... break the Sand-Whisperer's bloodline curse!"

The roaring sound outside the tent grew closer and closer. Chen Yu's howl carried a crying tone: "Su Qing! The Sand-Carcass Beast Tide is coming! Ten times more than last time! The Sand-Whisperer, he..."

Clutching the burning bone piece tightly, the moment Su Qing rushed out of the tent, she witnessed a scene she would never forget—

The Sand-Whisperer stood before the Sand-Carcass Beast Tide, his black robe already torn apart by resentment, revealing a body covered entirely in golden sand-traces. He raised the spine necklace high, the blue crystal erupting with the brilliance of a sun. The Sand-Carcass beasts hurtling toward him turned into golden sand the instant they touched the golden light, blown away into the night sky by the wind.

Yet his own body was also turning transparent, like an ice sculpture melting under the golden light.

"Child, remember!" The Sand-Whisperer's voice pierced through the roars of the beast tide, clearly reaching Su Qing's ears. "In the sand, there is not only resentment, but also... hope!"

At the moment when the golden light reached its peak, the Sand-Whisperer's body completely transformed into floating golden sand across the sky, merging with those purified sand souls to form a massive anti-entropy array in the air, firmly trapping the Sand-Carcass Beast Tide within.

The spine necklace fell from the air and was steadily caught by Su Qing. Within the crystal, the smiling figure of an old man could faintly be seen slowly fading away.

Su Qing suddenly remembered what the Sand-Whisperer had said: "The Spokesperson of the Sand Soul is not an inheritance; it is blood."

Then what were they, those who had inherited the bone pieces and the research?

Were they the successors who had taken up the bloodline, or... the next batch of sacrificial offerings about to be devoured by the curse?

The black-purple smoke pillar in the northwest suddenly exploded, and Williams' wild laughter echoed in the night sky, filled with frenzied excitement: "I've finally waited for it! The bloodline energy of the Sand-Whisperer! Bone-core, it's time to truly awaken!"

The anti-entropy array trapping the Sand-Carcass Beast Tide flickered violently, black-purple calamity fire beginning to mix into the golden radiance. Su Qing looked down at the golden imprint in her palm, where a burning pain radiated, as if something was about to drill out from within—

Was it the Sand-Whisperer's residual bloodline energy, or... the "key" Williams desired?

The roars of the Sand-Carcass Beast Tide drew closer, and the light of the anti-entropy array grew dimmer. Gripping the spine necklace tightly, Su Qing suddenly realized that the time bought by the Sand-Whisperer with his life might simply have pushed them toward another, even more terrifying abyss.