Episode 14: Resonance of Fear

In the dead of night, the wind carried grains of sand like countless fine needles pricking the tent, the “rustling” sound sending chills down one’s spine.

The new recruit, Amu, suddenly twitched, cold sweat on his forehead soaking the pillow into a dark ring. He was dreaming of those sand scorpions again—countless insects crawling out of the sand, their pincers gleaming with cold light, venom dripping from their stingers, climbing up his ankle. Wherever they touched, the skin instantly rotted away, revealing stark white bones beneath.

“Don’t touch me! Get away!” he shouted, swinging his fists wildly, only to strike the arm of a nearby soldier with a heavy thud. The soldier woke with a curse and kicked him sharply. “What the hell’s wrong with you? I just closed my eyes!”

Panting heavily, Amu sat up, his muscles still trembling. Instinctively, he touched his arm. His fingertips brushed over a rough, raised patch. By the moonlight filtering through the tent’s seam, he saw, to his horror, dark red rashes covering his forearm, shaped uncannily like the pincers of sand scorpions, their edges glowing with an eerie blue—exactly like the marks the scorpions left in his nightmare.

“Shit…” Amu’s voice quivered with tears. He threw back the blanket and found the same rash covering his back, dense and clustered as if someone had scraped it fiercely with their nails.

Chaos quickly erupted inside the tent.

“My face! What’s wrong with my face?” a soldier screamed, clutching a mirror. His swollen cheek was covered with a web of red veins, as if countless tiny snakes were slithering beneath his skin.

“I can’t sleep! Every time I close my eyes, those sand bone snakes wrap around my neck!”

“Me too! I feel like sand’s crawling into my ears, something’s moving inside!”

Panic spread like an epidemic. Within ten minutes, half the camp showed symptoms: insomnia, hallucinations, rashes, and in severe cases, delirium. They pointed to empty corners, shouting, “The sand skeleton beasts are coming.”

When Lu Chen kicked open the medic tent door, Su Qing was crouched before a microscope, her brows knitted tight. Under the lens, Amu’s blood sample revealed red blood cells wildly distorting—some stretched into thin threads, others shriveled into tiny spheres, with minute grains of sand crystal clinging to their edges—bearing a striking resemblance to the blood components of the Sand-Blood Warriors.

“It’s an infrasonic emitter,” Su Qing said without looking up, her voice tinged with exhaustion. “The S tribe must have set up a high-powered device, emitting frequencies that stimulate our fear center, causing subconscious fears to manifest physically.”

She pulled up the camp’s surrounding sound wave spectrum. The waveform resembled steep mountain peaks, one after another stabbing skyward. “Look, these peak values correspond precisely with the times the soldiers have nightmares. The frequency keeps adjusting. It’s already affecting blood components. If this continues…”

“If this continues, we’ll collapse on our own—no need for the sand skeleton beasts to make a move,” Old Dao cut in, his face pale with dark circles under his eyes, evidently sleep-deprived. The words “Bone Listener” on his bone blade glowed faintly red, as if protesting in weakness.

Suddenly, Amu let out a miserable scream, clutching his head and curling into a ball on the ground, convulsing violently. “Don’t bite me! Don’t bite my eyes!” His nails tore deep into his own arms, scratching the rash until it bled. “Sand scorpions… so many sand scorpions…”

“Hold him down!” Su Qing shouted frantically, grabbing a sedative from the table, but Lu Chen stopped her.

“It’s useless,” Lu Chen’s voice was icy. Staring at the rash on Amu’s arm, a thought struck him about the mimicking sand at the edge of the energy field. “This isn’t a normal physiological reaction. It’s fear amplified by the sound waves, then recorded and fed back through magnetic markers in the sand—our own fear attacking us.”

He spun around and shouted across the chaotic camp, “Calm down! Anyone who causes a ruckus will be sent back to the tribe to feed the camels!”

The roar temporarily quelled the panic, but the soldiers’ fear remained, a block of ice held close to the chest, radiating cold at every moment.

Suddenly, Su Qing’s eyes lit up. She dashed back to her gear box and pulled out a palm-sized wooden box. Inside were several dried plants emitting a faint, fresh scent, and a small porcelain bottle filled with clear liquid labeled “Oasis Spring Water.”

“This is the recipe for the ‘Calming Totem’!” she said excitedly. “My grandmother passed it down. It’s said to soothe souls disturbed by sand. Lavender dried and ground into powder, mixed with Oasis Spring Water into a paste, then placed in a sachet to carry on the body…”

As she spoke, she worked quickly as a gust of wind. The soldiers accepted the sachets skeptically, but as soon as Amu, convulsing moments before, brought the pouch to his nose and inhaled, his painful expression slowly faded, and he actually began to snore lightly.

“It works!” Xiao Chen exclaimed joyfully, the red veins on his face fading significantly. “I don’t feel so scared anymore!”

Su Qing was less optimistic. Pointing at the still towering peaks on the sound wave graph, she said, “This only suppresses it temporarily. The sachets can interfere with the transmission of fear signals but can’t destroy the source. We must find the emitter’s location and blow it up. Otherwise, the sachets will lose their effect in less than a day!”

Lu Chen stared toward the S tribe camp, where the night sky was darker than elsewhere, like a massive vortex endlessly spewing waves of fear. His right index finger began to burn again, the faint golden sand scars flowing with something like a slender river.

“Old Dao, take two with me,” Lu Chen said, grabbing the totem knife. The blade and Old Dao’s bone blade hummed softly in unison, “Su Qing, stay in camp and use the infrasonic detector to track the emitter. Keep in constant contact.”

“What are you all going to do?” Su Qing’s voice was laced with worry.

“Go pay a visit to those sound-wave-playing bastards,” Lu Chen said with a cold smile curling his lips. The totem knife gleamed sharply under the moonlight. “If they like to toy with fear, I’ll give them a little ‘surprise.’”

Old Dao chuckled, twirling his bone blade in his hand. “Just in time to get my old blade moving.”

As the three stepped out of the camp, Su Qing suddenly rushed after them, handing over three extra-large sachets. “These have a higher concentration. They’ll last longer. Remember, the emitter will definitely be guarded by Sand-Blood Warriors. Be extremely careful—”

Her words were cut short as her face suddenly paled. The infrasonic detector’s waveform went berserk, peaks bursting beyond the screen’s limit, emitting a piercing alarm.

“Not good!” Su Qing’s voice trembled. “They’ve increased the power!”

Lu Chen and the others simultaneously felt a sharp headache, like a steel needle piercing from their ears into their brains. Old Dao grunted, nearly dropping his bone blade as the red glow of “Bone Listener” instantly vanished. New screams rose from the camp in the distance, clearly the sachets’ effect being suppressed.

“Move!” Lu Chen gritted his teeth, fighting dizziness as he surged forward. “If we delay any longer, it’ll be too late!”

Their figures quickly vanished into the night, only the faint scent from their sachets lingering—a weak glow like fireflies in the darkness. Su Qing watched their backs, gripping the detector tightly, her knuckles white. On the screen, besides the massive sound source, a dozen small dots suddenly appeared around it, moving rapidly toward Lu Chen and his team.

Those were… signals from the Sand-Blood Cavalry.

Suddenly, she understood Williams’ scheme—infrasonic waves were not only to create panic but to lure them out of the camp into a well-laid trap.

At this moment, Lu Chen, Old Dao, and Xiao Chen were charging full speed toward a death trap. Awaiting them, besides the infrasonic emitter, were a group of Sand-Blood Warriors driven mad by fear waves and… a giant, never-before-seen sand skeleton beast that fed on fear itself.

In the night wind, the faint rustle of sand crystals could be heard—like the sound of Death sharpening its blade.