Episode 64: The Curse of the Sand Scars

The energy ripples of the second altar were still echoing among the sand dunes. Lu Chen’s military boots crushed the scorching sand grains, the treads on the soles nearly melted by the heat.

"Cough, cough..." Chen Yu leaned against a broken wall, retching. His bare arms were covered in dense, sand-like patterns, resembling a dusting of uneven gold powder. "What the hell is this? It's itching like crazy!"

Just as he reached out to scratch, Su Qing’s tweezers struck the back of his hand. "Don't touch! The more you scratch, the faster it spreads!"

The medical tent was packed with groaning soldiers. None of the men who had just participated in activating the altar were spared; they all rolled on the ground, clutching their arms or necks. The sand scars beneath their skin emitted a faint golden glow, rising and falling slightly with their breathing, as though countless microscopic grains of sand were writhing under the flesh.

Su Qing’s detector let out a piercing alarm, the energy waveform on the screen twisting like a crazed snake, every peak corresponding to the flashing frequency of the sand scars. "It’s an imprint of energy erosion! A side effect of the anti-entropy array—the altar's energy leaves a permanent mark on the host’s skin, much like..."

She paused, her voice strained. "Much like being tagged by the sand source."

"Tagged?" Alicia’s voice trembled. A faint sand scar had also emerged beneath her silver bird totem, creeping along her collarbone toward her chest. "What will this do? Rotting skin? Or mutation like the sand-crystal warriors?"

The detector suddenly flashed a gene-chain diagram, and Su Qing’s face turned instantly pale. "Worse than that. The sand scars embed themselves into the genetic sequence, staying with the host for life, and even... passing down to descendants."

The groaning in the tent suddenly ceased, and all eyes focused on Su Qing’s detector. Lu Chen looked at the three-ring totem in his palm; those golden lines were slowly merging with the newly emerged sand scars to form a more complex pattern, an itch mixed with a stinging sensation crawling up his blood vessels and consuming his entire body.

"You mean our children will carry this thing too?" Chen Yu’s voice tightened as he abruptly grabbed Su Qing’s wrist. "Is there a way to remove it? Even if we have to chop off the arm..."

"Chopping it off is useless." Su Qing jerked her hand away, bringing up a more detailed scan showing that the roots of the sand scars had already penetrated the bone. "They're like plant roots, spreading through the bone marrow all the way into the body. Unless you burn a person to ashes, they can never be removed."

The tent flap flapped violently in the wind, and fresh screams echoed from outside. Lu Chen lifted the flap and saw several perimeter guards rolling on the ground, scratching at one another. Their faces were covered in sand scars, their eyes bloodshot from strain, and their fingernails caked with torn flesh.

"This is the price." Lu Chen’s voice was very soft. The totem in his palm suddenly grew hot, as if responding to his words. "So this is what the sand-keeper's hereditary sand scar curse was all about."

Alicia walked to his side, the sand scars standing out sharply against her fair skin. "Regret it? If we had chosen Williams's path back then..."

"Choose him? To become those ash-gray puppets?" Lu Chen suddenly smiled, reaching out to brush a grain of sand from her cheek, his fingertips intentionally brushing against the sand scar on her collarbone. "At least this way we survive, and we get to watch our child grow up. When Nian'an is old enough to understand, I'll tell her this sand scar is a hero's medal."

"A medal?" Alicia laughed through her tears, which slid past the sand scars and gathered into golden droplets at her chin—tears mixed with the energy of the sand scars. "By then, she's bound to ask why other kids don't have this medal."

"Then I'll take her to see the oasis." Lu Chen gazed at the distant, green-tinted horizon. Following the activation of the anti-entropy array, the Populus euphratica forest outside the dead sand zone was sprouting new buds. "I'll tell her how many trees, how many streams, and how many children just like her smiling as they grow up were bought with this medal."

Su Qing suddenly burst out of the tent, the detector in her hand flashing red. "No! The sand scars are accelerating their spread! And..."

She pointed at the energy readings on the screen. The previously stable waveform was now violently oscillating. "They're resonating with some external energy source! It's like... they're being drawn to something!"

Before she finished speaking, dense gunfire erupted in the distance, mingled with the cries of children. Lu Chen instantly raised his binoculars, the lenses reflecting a shocking scene—

A civilian convoy was surrounded by sand-behemoths in a dried-up riverbed!

At least fifty sand-behemoths formed a perimeter, their shells glowing with the same golden light as the sand scars, clearly drawn by the energy. The convoy’s defense net had collapsed, several trucks were burning fiercely, and a woman holding a child was being hoisted up by the tail-spine of a sand-behemoth, her desperate screams piercing enough to hurt the eardrums.

"They're refugees escaping from the dead sand zone!" Chen Yu suddenly recognized the convoy’s insignia, the special emblem used by Tribe X to settle refugees. "How did they end up running all the way here?"

Lu Chen’s pupils abruptly constricted.

The route of the civilian convoy had clearly deviated from the safe zone, as if guided by some force to precisely blunder into the hunting grounds of the sand-behemoths. Even weirder were the sand-behemoths—their attack targets were exceptionally specific, exclusively picking out individuals with sand scars on their skin while temporarily ignoring children without the marks.

"It's the sand scars!" Alicia’s voice carried terror. "They can smell the scent of the sand scars!"

Su Qing’s detector suddenly pointed toward the northwest, where the energy readings were ridiculously high. "The source is over there! A strong energy field is simulating the fluctuations of the sand scars, luring the sand-behemoths toward the convoy!"

Lu Chen’s bone knife leapt from its sheath. "Chen Yu, take the medical team and stay here to monitor the spread of the sand scars! Alicia, come with me to save them!"

"Wait!" Su Qing suddenly grabbed his arm, a set of terrifying data popping up on the detector screen. "The shells of the sand-behemoths contain bone-core fragments! They've been modified, and normal attacks are useless against them, unless..."

"Unless we use the energy of the three-ring totem." Lu Chen finished for her, vaulting onto his horse as the totem in his palm already ignited with golden light. "Just in time to test the power of this curse."

The sandstorm suddenly veered, whipping dust toward the riverbed. Lu Chen’s warhorse galloped furiously across the sand; he could see more and more sand-behemoths emerging from behind the dunes, gathering toward the civilian convoy like iron filings pulled by a magnet.

"Hold on tight!" Lu Chen shouted back to Alicia, who was tightly gripping the reins with her remaining hand, the silver bird totem glowing with an eerie blue light against the backdrop of the sand scars.

As they approached the riverbed, a thick stench of blood washed over them. Lu Chen swung his bone knife, slashing out a golden blade-arc that cut a sand-behemoth lunging toward a wagon clean in half. Yet the monster's two severed halves wriggled and reassembled on the sand, dense sand-crystal spikes bursting from the cut ends as it grew even more ferocious.

"They really have been modified!" Lu Chen’s brow furrowed tightly, the golden light of the three-ring totem surging along the blade. "Alicia! Splash their eyes with silver bird blood! That's their weak point!"

Alicia didn't hesitate; she bit the tip of her tongue and sprayed her blood onto the arrow shafts, drawing her bow to its full circle. A silver-blue arrow feather precisely pierced the compound eye of a sand-behemoth. The monster let out a harsh shriek, the armor across its entire body rapidly losing its luster before disintegrating into ordinary sand grains within the golden light.

"It works!" Alicia’s eyes brightened as she nocked another arrow and drew the bow. "Their modification core is in the head!"

Taking advantage of the opening, Lu Chen charged into the encirclement, his bone knife spinning among the pack of sand-behemoths. The golden blade-arc formed a moving barrier, shielding the panicked civilians behind him. A blind little boy suddenly grabbed his trouser leg—it was the child he had rescued during the raid on the sand-crystal furnace. A faint sand scar had also appeared on his forehead. "The light in the sand is calling... they're afraid of your hand!"

Lu Chen lowered his gaze to the totem in his palm; those patterns fused with the sand scars were flashing violently. He suddenly pressed his palm against the shell of the nearest sand-behemoth. Golden light poured madly inward from the point of contact, and the monster's shell turned black and shattered like oiled paper ignited by fire, exposing the melting flesh beneath.

"So that's how it is..." Lu Chen suddenly understood. The sand scar curse and the energy of the three-ring totem shared the same origin; they could be utilized by the bone cores, but could equally counteract the modified sand-behemoths in reverse. "This isn't a curse; it's a key!"

His shouts were drowned out by more cries. A carriage laden with children was burning, its wheels pinned to the ground by a sand-behemoth's tail-spine. A young mother was using her body to shield against the continuously lunging monsters, the sand scars on her back soaked entirely in blood.

"This way!" Lu Chen’s bone knife hacked a bloody path, and Alicia’s arrow feathers precisely cleared the sand-behemoths near the carriage. "Hurry and pull the children out!"

At that moment, the sand in the center of the riverbed suddenly collapsed, revealing a pitch-black opening. A giant monster, three times the size of an ordinary sand-behemoth, crawled out from within. A fragment of a black bone core was embedded in the top of its head, its compound eyes flashing with the same scarlet glow as Williams's.

"It's a brood-mother!" Alicia’s voice tightened as she recognized the monster—a sand-behemoth brood-mother recorded in the ancient texts of the sand-keepers, capable of continually hatching new individuals. "We have to destroy its bone-core fragment!"

The giant sand-behemoth suddenly spat venom from its tail-spine. Lu Chen shoved a nearby child aside, taking the spray of venom on his left arm. The moment the sand scars touched the venom, they burned fiercely. He let out a heart-rending scream, yet he gripped the stabbing tail-spine tightly and pressed the three-ring totem right against it!

"Shatter for me!"

Golden light and black-purple venom exploded atop the brood-mother's head. The giant monster's armor peeled away layer by layer, exposing the pulsing flesh-core beneath. Alicia’s silver-bird arrow followed closely behind, accurately piercing the bone-core fragment within the core.

The brood-mother let out a deafening wail, its massive body rapidly shriveling in the golden light before turning into a pool of foul-smelling mud. The surrounding sand-behemoths lost control, their movements growing sluggish, and were soon cleared away by Lu Chen and the supporting warriors.

The medical team rushed forward to treat Lu Chen’s wound. The skin on his left arm was already rotting away, the sand scars and venom fusing into an eerie black-gold color like a spreading blotch.

"It must be amputated immediately!" Su Qing’s scalpel was already unsheathed. "The venom is spreading along the sand scars toward the heart!"

"Wait." Lu Chen pressed down on her hand. A cool sensation suddenly emanated from the decaying area, and the black-gold color slowly receded, revealing fresh pink granulation tissue underneath. "It's... self-repairing?"

Everyone was dumbfounded.

Far from being fatal, the contact between the sand scars and the venom had triggered a sort of self-healing ability. The rotting skin healed at a speed visible to the naked eye, leaving behind only deeper golden patterns.

Su Qing’s detector suddenly blared wildly, the energy waveform of the sand scars on the screen perfectly matching the three-ring totem to form a stable curve. "It's a fusion! The sand scars are absorbing the energy of the venom, completely fusing with the three-ring totem!"

Lu Chen flexed his left arm; the wound was entirely healed, and he couldn't even feel any pain. He looked toward the surviving civilians, who were helping each other board the vehicles. The children's cries had turned into curious gazes, and a little girl with twin buns even reached out to touch the sand scars on his arm, asking in a babyish voice, "Mister, your hand is glowing, are you doing magic?"

He suddenly recalled the scene he had seen earlier in the sand mirror—Lu Nian'an five years later, bearing similar sand scars on her cheeks yet smiling brighter than the sunshine.

"Yeah." Lu Chen squatted down, the totem in his palm lighting up with a soft golden glow before the little girl. "This is magic that can protect everyone."

At that moment, a hurried call came through Su Qing’s walkie-talkie. "Captain! Abnormal energy fluctuations have appeared at the boundary of the dead sand zone! It looks like something is breaking through the seal!"

Lu Chen’s smile instantly froze.

The dead sand zone? The sealing ground of the sand source?

He jerked his head up to look toward the northwest, where the sky was turning into an eerie purple-black, identical to the scene of the sand source awakening in the sand mirror.

Alicia’s silver bird totem suddenly grew burning hot. She pointed at the purple-black canopy of heaven, her voice carrying unprecedented terror. "That's not an energy fluctuation... It's a rift! The sand source is coming out!"

A fresh wave of commotion broke out among the civilian convoy, and children pointed at the sky and began to cry. Lu Chen raised his binoculars. Across the purple-black sky, a massive rift was slowly tearing open, within which countless pairs of golden eyes could be vaguely seen, like a pack of beasts waiting to hunt.

Even more terrifyingly, the sand grains at the edge of the rift were condensing, gradually forming a hazy human silhouette—neither human nor sand scorpion, but a contour made of pure gold sand, identical to the totem in Lu Chen's palm.

"It's imitating..." Su Qing’s voice trembled. On the detector screen, the energy waveform of the sand scars generated a perfect resonance with the silhouette in the rift. "The sand source is sensing our existence... through the sand scars!"

Lu Chen’s heart contracted violently.

The sand scars were a protective layer, but also a homing beacon?

Had the salvation they thought they'd won ultimately become the guidepost for the sand source?

The figure in the rift suddenly spread its arms, and a deafening roar came from the direction of murmurous dead sand zone as countless golden sand grains surged toward the rift like a tide, forming a pillar of sand connecting heaven and earth in midair.

Williams's manic laughter was transmitted along the sand pillar, carrying a settled triumph:

"Lu Chen, thank you for helping me open the seal of the sand source! Now, let's see who is truly the master of the great desert—"

At the peak of the sand pillar, Williams’s figure slowly emerged. His sand-crystal armor was embedded with golden crystals condensed from the energy of the sand scars, and the black bone core on his chest resonated bizarrely with the sand source in the rift.

Lu Chen tightened his grip on the three-ring totem in his palm, from which the will of the sand source transmitted—cold, greedy, carrying the excitement of a "finally found you."

He suddenly understood the ultimate secret of the sand scars.

This was neither a side effect of the anti-entropy array nor a curse of the sand source.

It was the bloodline bond between the sand-keepers and the sand source, the continuation of that unfinished fusion ritual from a thousand years ago.

And he was the chosen... vessel.

The silhouette of the sand source in the rift suddenly reached out toward Lu Chen, and the golden sand tide of the dead sand zone accelerated toward them. Wherever it passed, even the golden light of the anti-entropy array rapidly faded.

Lu Chen looked at the panicked civilians around him, at Alicia’s flashing silver bird totem, and abruptly made a decision.

He pushed the energy of the three-ring totem to its absolute limit, the golden radiance building a sturdy barrier before the sand tide: "Chen Yu! Take everyone back to the safe zone! Hurry!"

"What about you?!" Chen Yu roared.

"I'm staying." Lu Chen’s voice was as calm as a frozen lake, as he gazed at the increasingly clear silhouette of the sand source in the rift. "Some debts are due."

The moment the sand tide collided with the golden light barrier, the entire desert seemed to tremble. Lu Chen could feel the will of the sand source invading his mind, the memory fragments belonging to the sand-keepers intertwining with the chaotic consciousness of the sand source like a storm tearing apart his soul.

The last image he saw was Alicia breaking free from Chen Yu’s grasp, her silver bird totem bursting with blinding blue light as she ran toward him, the sand scars trailing a golden-blue trajectory behind her.

"Lu Chen! I'm going with you!"

The sand source silhouette in the rift suddenly let out a deafening roar. The golden sand tide surged violently, instantly swallowing the golden light barrier and consuming Alicia as she ran.

Lu Chen’s pupils abruptly constricted.

No—!

He wanted to charge forward, but his body was firmly locked in place by the will of the sand source, leaving him to watch helplessly as Alicia’s figure vanished into the sand tide, leaving only half a silver bird pendant flashing in midair before it fell.

The will of the sand source laughed maniacally in his mind, carrying the delight of a successful prank.

Lu Chen’s consciousness began to blur; he knew he was being devoured by the sand source, the light of the three-ring totem growing dimmer like a candle in the wind.

Yet he did not stop struggling.

Because he knew Alicia was still alive.

That half of the silver bird pendant was their promise—no matter what happened, they had to live to return to the oasis and watch Nian'an grow up.

The instant the sand tide completely submerged him, Lu Chen used his remaining strength to compress the energy of the three-ring totem into a single point, injecting it through his blood vessels straight into his heart.

This was the sand-keepers' final trump card—using the heart as an array to perish together with the sand source.

The sand source silhouette in the rift suddenly froze, and the golden sand tide began to churn violently, as if struggling in agony.

Williams's screams came from the top of the sand pillar: "What is happening?! The sand source is rejecting me?!"

A faint smile curved the corners of Lu Chen’s mouth.

It's not rejecting you.

It's welcoming me, old friend.

A bond of a thousand years deserved a conclusion.

Within the golden sand tide, a faint golden light suddenly ignited, purer than any before, like a single star in the dark.

That was Lu Chen’s heart, slowly bursting within the body of the sand source.

And in the final moment before his consciousness dissipated, he seemed to hear Alicia’s voice, as clear as if she were right beside his ear:

"Lu Chen, don't forget... we still have to go see the oasis."

The roar of the sand source suddenly turned into a wail. The golden sand tide began to disintegrate, and the rift slowly closed amid violent tremors.

The great desert returned to silence, leaving only widespread devastation and the weeping of the survivors.

No one knew that at the core where the sand source had dissolved, half a silver bird pendant and a cooling golden heart rested quietly against each other like a pair of sleeping lovers.

And in the distant oasis, a little girl who had just learned to walk suddenly pointed toward the northwest, babbling something. On her cheek, a faint golden sand scar flickered in the sunlight.

The story was far from over.