Episode 59: Redemption of the Double Agent

The rust on the iron bars emitted a cold gleam in the moonlight, and Kam's fingernails dug deeply into the gaps of the wooden fence. He stared at the scout captain in the cell opposite him—this traitor, reviled by the entire clan just yesterday, was curled up in a pile of hay at this moment, the iron chains on his wrists dragging across the ground with a soft, metallic clatter. The S Tribe's patrol had just passed, the halo of their torches casting deep shadows on his face, revealing a crescent-shaped knife scar on his cheekbone—a souvenir from a sand-corpse beast's claw ten years ago when he was shielding wounded comrades.

"Hey," Kam suddenly spoke, his voice dropping very low. "Your daughter should be turning seven this year, right?"

The scout captain's shoulders trembled violently.

This reaction made Kam's heart sink. During the interrogation three days ago, this fellow had his ribs broken in three places yet gritted his teeth without uttering a single word about his family, but now he had broken down because of a single sentence.

"Williams captured them both, didn't he?" Kam's voice softened somewhat as he pulled a dry, hard piece of flatbread from his tunic and pushed it through the gaps in the bars. "I saw the secret code in the false intelligence you passed along; the location of the sand rat hole was marked in reverse. That is our X Tribe's distress signal."

The scout captain did not take the bread, merely burying his head lower. A frayed piece of leather cord poked out from the hay, tied with a faded silver lock on which a crooked character meaning "Peace" was engraved—his daughter's name.

"Last night," Kam muttered, watching the retreating backs of the patrols, speaking at a rapid pace, "Lu Chen led a team and wiped out the S Tribe's western camp, rescuing more than thirty captured civilians. Among them was a little girl wearing a red cotton jacket, with the exact same silver lock hanging around her neck."

The scout captain abruptly raised his head, his deep-set eye sockets bursting with astonishing brilliance, like a dying man grasping at a last straw. "What did you say? An'an, she..."

"Alive." Kam nodded, intentionally weighting his tone. "Wang Lu examined her. Apart from being a bit frightened, she didn't lose a single hair. That little girl is cut from the exact same cloth as you; when she was rescued, she even bit a sand-crystal warrior's arm."

A choked sound emerged from the scout captain's throat as his rough palms covered his face, turbid tears seeping through his fingers. The iron chains collided amidst his violent trembling, making a chaotic noise that startled the guards outside into a harsh reprimand: "What's all that noise! Kick up a fuss again and I'll force-feed you sand-blood potion!"

He froze instantly, forcibly choking back his sobs while his shoulders continued to heave violently. Looking at the bulging veins on the back of his hand, Kam suddenly understood why Lu Chen insisted on sparing this traitor—behind certain betrayals lie shackles heavier than death.

"There's a loose post on the fence at the southeast corner." Kam abruptly changed the subject, tapping the ground with the toe of his boot. "There's a three-minute gap during the patrol shift change. That's enough time for you to squeeze out."

The scout captain was stunned. "You..."

"Lu Chen said a true traitor uses their family as bargaining chips, while you hid the code inside your intelligence." Kam's gaze swept over the scout's waist, where an old dagger was tucked, its hilt wrapped with anti-slip cloth strips. "The energy core map you left behind marked the pipeline weaknesses clearer than anyone else. Only a fool couldn't tell it was intentional."

A muffled explosion suddenly resounded from the distance.

It wasn't the sharp roar of sand-crystal cannons, but a heavier, earth-shaking blast. Even the floor of the cell trembled slightly. The guards' rebukes abruptly turned into screams, followed by dense gunfire and roaring—evidently, the X Tribe forces had launched a surprise attack.

"Move!" Kam suddenly grabbed the iron bars, pulling outward with all his might. The wooden post he had loosened beforehand gave a creaking snap, revealing a gap just wide enough for a person to pass through.

The scout captain did not hesitate. He grabbed the piece of flatbread from the floor, shoved it into his tunic, and bit down hard to snap the lock on his wrist chain—a thin wire he had hidden in the sole of his boot, which he had filed down for three days and finally put to use. Squeezing through the gap, he glanced back at Kam, the scar on his face standing out clearly in the firelight:

"Tell Lu Chen, the explosives in the granary are enough to blow up half the camp, covering your charge toward the energy core."

Before Kam could reply, he darted into the night like a sand fox.

The S Tribe's granary resembled a massive sand-crystal fortress, its outer walls embedded with three layers of anti-entropy runes capable of withstanding rocket-propelled grenade barrages. When the scout captain crept along the shadows to the corner of the wall, his back was already soaked in cold sweat.

He tore off the camouflage scarf from his neck, revealing the X Tribe totem underneath—a safe-passage pass Lu Chen had his loyalists hide here beforehand, capable of temporarily shielding against rune detection. The flatbread in his palm had been crushed, the powder sticking to his skin mixed with sweat like a sheet of sandpaper.

"Two minutes left." He fixed his eyes on the guards' paces, silently chanting his daughter's name. "An'an, wait for Daddy to come home."

The granary's ventilation duct was narrower than he had expected, allowing him to squeeze through only with great difficulty. His broken ribs chafed painfully, every crawl feeling like a dull blade churning inside his body. The ventilation shaft was filled with the mixed scent of grain and gunpowder, and beyond the iron mesh at the end, he could see ammunition crates piled high like small mountains—supplies he had smuggled in bit by bit three months ago under the pretext of "guarding against sand-corpse beasts."

"Bang!"

He pried open the iron mesh with his dagger. The moment he dropped to the ground, three standing guard sand-crystal warriors turned their heads simultaneously. Their eye sockets flickered with a gloomy blue hue, clearly having been injected with high-concentration sand-blood potion, granting reaction speeds three times faster than ordinary fighters.

The scout captain did not dodge. He grabbed a torch from the ground and hurled it straight into the pile of ammunition crates.

The fuse sputtered and burned, illuminating the resolute smile on his face. The instant a sand-crystal warrior's bone spear pierced his shoulder, he suddenly recalled that snowy night ten years ago when a toddling An'an tugged at the hem of his tunic, pushing a piece of melted milky candy into his mouth while saying, "Daddy is a hero."

"Boom—!"

The granary erupted in a soaring pillar of fire amidst the explosion, the anti-entropy runes on the outer sand-crystal walls peeling off like shattered glass. The shockwave blew away three nearby barracks, and the sand-crystal warriors besieging the energy core were knocked head over heels by the blast wave, creating an instant gap in their defense line.

The wind carried the aroma of scorched grain, and the scout captain felt his body growing lighter. Watching the X Tribe fighters surge through the gap amidst the chaos, a vague smile broke across the corners of his mouth—so this is what it feels like to be trusted.

Yet he could not afford to die just yet.

His gaze pierced through the firelight, landing on the distant metal structure exuding a gloomy blue mist—the sand-crystal furnace, the core of the S Tribe's sand-blood potion refining operations and the final barrier protecting the energy core. Although the previous explosion created chaos, it failed to destroy the furnace's protective shield; the anti-entropy array there was still operational.

"Just the last step left." The scout captain bit down hard on the tip of his tongue, the sharp pain pulling him out of dizziness. He ripped the dagger from his waist and violently stabbed it into his own thigh. Utilizing the intense pain as a stimulus, he dragged his broken-boned body charging toward the furnace.

The furnace's feeding inlet resembled a greedy mouth, continually devouring fresh corpses and spewing out gloomy blue sand-crystal solution. Two sand-crystal priests on guard duty were adjusting the energy valves; upon seeing the charging scout captain, they immediately raised their bone staves, their spell inscriptions forming a black barrier on the ground.

"Stop him!" The priest's roar was swallowed by the furnace's deafening thunder.

The scout captain suddenly accelerated. The moment before he collided with the barrier, he violently spun around, presenting his back to the feeding inlet like a cannonball as he hurled himself straight inside!

"Splat—"

The sand-crystal solution instantly submerged half his body, the intense heat and corrosion wringing a heart-rending scream from his throat. Yet he stubbornly wedged his shoulder into the feeding inlet, letting the liquid pour down his collar, corroding his skin and internal organs.

"Explode... blast already!" he roared with his remaining strength, his right hand firmly pressing the detonator hidden inside his tunic. It was a miniature bomb, low in destructive power, yet sufficient to detonate the unstable energy within the furnace's core.

The furnace began to violently shudder.

With the feeding inlet blocked, internal pressure spiked drastically. The gloomy blue solution began to boil, spewing outward along the seams. The two priests retreated in terror, sensing the energy core's protective shield rapidly weakening—the furnace's energy supply had been severed!

"Madman... this madman!"

"Boom—!"

The second explosion was even more violent than the one at the granary. The sand-crystal furnace blossomed like a black flower of death, fragments scattering amidst scalding solution. The energy core's protective shield flickered through the blast's shockwave before vanishing completely into the air, revealing the pulsing blue core beneath, fragile like a beating heart.

On a sand dune in the distance, Lu Chen lowered his bone knife, holding binoculars as he watched the fiery glow of the furnace explosion.

Chen Yu was about to issue the charge order when he paused in astonishment. "What is it? The protective shield is gone, this is our chance..."

"Wait." Lu Chen's voice was very soft. Within the lenses of the binoculars, he could discern a writhing figure among the furnace ruins, resembling a scorched leaf. "Give him a moment."

The scout captain felt his body melting away, his consciousness flickering like a dying candle in the wind. The final scenes he witnessed were X Tribe fighters breaching the energy core, Lu Chen's bone knife shattering the blue core's protective shell, and signal flares bursting in the sky—the signal that the mission was accomplished.

"An'an... Daddy is not a traitor anymore..."

His body sank completely into the scalding solution, and before his last shred of consciousness faded away, he fancied he heard his daughter calling "Papa," her voice as sweet as milky candy.

When the explosion of the energy core resounded, Lu Chen was squatting on the sandy ground, carving something with his bone knife. When Su Qing ran over, she saw a new name added to the sand, accompanied by a crudely drawn silver lock beside it.

"His name is Batu," Lu Chen said calmly, tucking the carved patch of sand into his tunic. "He always complained his name was too plain, unworthy of the hero monument."

Tears suddenly fell from Su Qing's eyes. "We... we didn't even have time to say we're sorry to him."

"No need." Lu Chen stood up, pointing his bone knife toward the collapsing energy tower in the distance. "He didn't want an apology; he wanted proof."

He turned to look at the charging fighters, suddenly raising his voice: "Hear this well, all of you! What blew open that protective shield just now wasn't explosives; it was Batu! The X Tribe's scout captain, Batu!"

The roars of the warriors shook the desert, carrying unprecedented strength.

Yet no one noticed that amidst the ruins of the energy core, a wisp of dark purple mist was quietly rising, drilling into the ground through the gaps between the sand grains. Within that mist, Williams's laughter could faintly be heard, carrying a frantic certainty of victory:

"Fools... saving me the trouble of doing it myself..."

The moment the mist burrowed underground, the entire desert suddenly trembled violently. Lu Chen's bone knife emitted a piercing hum, the sand-guard priest totems on the blade flashing red as if issuing a warning.

Su Qing's detector wailed frantically, the energy waveform on the screen abruptly turning jagged, far exceeding the fluctuation frequency of the bone core:

"Something's wrong! There's still something beneath the energy core!" Her voice was laced with terror. "It's... a much larger energy field, and it's being triggered!"

Lu Chen abruptly raised his head, staring at the ruins of the energy core. The sand grains there were spinning, forming a massive vortex from which dark purple mist surged out, denser than any previous emission.

He suddenly understood why Batu's sacrifice had gone so smoothly—

Williams never cared about this energy core to begin with; he intended all along to use it as bait to detonate the true trump card hidden underground.

And Batu's self-detonation had simply served as the ultimate fuse.

At the center of the vortex, a massive scorpion-like silhouette vaguely emerged, its eye sockets glowing with gloomy blue light as it slowly raised its stinger tail, aiming squarely at the charging X Tribe warriors.

Lu Chen's heart tightened violently.

That was... the true body of the bone core.

More than ten times larger than they had imagined.

The victory Batu had traded his life for was nothing more than stepping deeper into a trap.