Episode 22: An Ancient Arrow Wound

The canvas of the medical tent rattled in the wind, sounding as if an invisible hand were tugging at it from the outside.

As Wang Lu’s silver needle pierced the patient’s acupuncture point, a harsh metallic clatter erupted in the tent—the medical instrument rack in the corner had toppled, spilling tweezers and scissors across the sandy floor, where they emitted eerie, light clicks. Frowning, she turned to see the warrior A-Ji, lying on the makeshift cot, suddenly begin to convulse violently. His limbs went limp as if his bones had been extracted, and a strange, rattling "ho-ho" sound emanated from his throat, as if something were lodged in his windpipe.

"Hold him down!" Wang Lu shouted, her hemostatic forceps clattering into the tray. As the last shaman of the X Tribe, the silver chest passed down from her grandfather contained not only medicinal herbs but also bone needles etched with totems, rumored to be capable of waking those whose minds had been "bewitched" by the sand. But A-Ji’s current symptoms were nowhere to be found in her grandfather’s medical records.

Two women helping out lunged forward to pin A-Ji’s shoulders, only to be flung aside by his sudden burst of strength. A-Ji’s eyes were wide, the whites bloodshot, staring fixedly at a hole in the tent roof. Suddenly, he blurted out a sentence in a language no one recognized—it was neither the dialect of the X Tribe nor the common tongue; the syllables were short and awkward, like two stones striking each other.

"He’s speaking Ancient Qiang!" Wang Lu’s heart skipped a beat. She had heard her grandfather recite this language in her childhood; it was the oldest tongue in the desert, known only to the descendants of the Sand-Keepers. Yet, A-Ji had only migrated from the oasis last year and could not even recall the tribe’s traditional ballads.

A-Ji suddenly curled up, his hands clutching his calves so tightly that his nails seemed to sink into his flesh. The rasps from his throat became clearer, and Wang Lu finally distinguished the two words being repeated: "Bone arrow... pull out..."

"Remove the bandages!" Wang Lu grabbed the disinfectant, her fingers trembling. A-Ji’s calf had been scratched by sand grains yesterday, and she had treated the wound herself—it had been a mere three-centimeter-long superficial mark that hadn't even touched the fascia. How could it be related to a "bone arrow"?

The woman trembling as she cut the bandage revealed a sight that made everyone gasp.

The once faint wound was now swollen like a piece of fermented dough. Beneath the skin, one could vaguely see something dark yellow, long and slender, with a sharp, curved tip. Even more bizarrely, the skin around the wound was tinged with a bluish-black hue, as if soaked in venom, and the capillaries beneath the skin formed a web identical to the scorpion-tail pattern of the S Tribe’s totem.

"There really is something inside..." a woman covered her mouth, her voice quivering. "This isn't a sand scratch, it’s an arrow wound!"

Wang Lu plunged a silver needle into A-Ji’s philtrum. His convulsions ceased temporarily, but he continued to mutter in Ancient Qiang. She picked up the bone knife inherited from her grandfather; the blade was thin as a cicada's wing, shimmering with a pale gold light in the dim rays leaking through the tent roof—it was a blade used specifically for extracting evil objects from the sand, supposedly tempered in the water of the sacred oasis spring.

"Bear with it." Wang Lu pressed down on A-Ji’s knee and carefully sliced open the wound with the bone knife. Instead of the expected gush of blood, a puff of black mist smelling of rust emerged, stinging their eyes. The moment the tip of the blade touched something hard, A-Ji let out a heart-wrenching scream, his body arching like a fish out of water.

"Now!" Wang Lu exerted force from her wrist and flicked the bone knife upward!

With a soft "pop," a rust-covered object was flicked out and landed in the tray with a dull thud. Everyone stared in shock—it was half a bone arrow. The arrowhead had rusted to a dark red, and the shaft was covered in dense, fine carvings. At the very end was a miniature scorpion totem, missing one stinger compared to the current S Tribe totem, clearly an antique style from a century ago.

The moment the bone arrow left the wound, a bizarre phenomenon occurred.

The swelling on A-Ji’s leg subsided at a visible rate; the bluish-black veins receded like a receding tide, and the torn wound sealed itself, leaving only a faint white mark as if the excruciating pain and swelling had been a hallucination. Meanwhile, the bone arrow in the tray suddenly hissed and emitted white smoke; the rust peeled away rapidly, revealing a gray-white shaft beneath—it had been crafted from a human leg bone!

"Water... give me water..." A-Ji suddenly opened his eyes, his gaze hazy as if just waking from sleep. He touched his calf, his face full of confusion. "My wound... is it healed? I was clearly just scratched by sand, how could..."

His gaze fell upon the tray, but he showed no reaction to the half-bone arrow, frowning in bewilderment: "What is this? Why are you holding bones?"

Wang Lu’s heart sank to the bottom. She picked up the bone arrow; the scorpion totem on the end burned her palm like a branding iron. A-Ji’s Ancient Qiang, his obsession with the bone arrow, the mutation of the wound... this was not a common arrow wound; it was as if some memory had been forcibly implanted into his body.

"Did you have any strange dreams just now?" Wang Lu’s voice was low. The bone arrow was growing hotter, and bluish-black veins identical to those on A-Ji’s wound were beginning to creep up her fingertips. "For instance... dreaming of an ancient battlefield?"

A-Ji scratched his head, struggling to recall for a long time before shaking his head. "I only remember sand getting into the wound, it hurt so much. Other than that... I can’t remember anything." He suddenly shivered, a trace of fear flashing in his eyes. "But I think I heard someone shouting in my ear, saying something like, 'The hundred-year blood debt must be repaid'..."

Before he could finish, a commotion erupted outside the tent. A patrolling warrior burst through the flap, holding something he had just dug out of the sand—it was a bone arrow identical to the one in the tray, only more complete, with a tattered red silk ribbon wrapped around its shaft.

"Shaman Wang Lu! Dozens of these things have been dug out of the sand around the camp!" The warrior’s face was deathly pale. "Old Dao asked me to check with you—is this... is this the 'Blood Curse Arrow' described in the Sand-Keeper’s diary?"

Wang Lu’s breath hitched. Her grandfather’s medical records did indeed mention the Blood Curse Arrow—a century ago, the priests of the S Tribe had fashioned arrows from the bones of fallen soldiers. Each arrow was tempered in the secretions of bone cores. Those struck by the arrows would not only lose their lives, but their souls would be sealed within the arrows, becoming nourishment for the Sand Scorpion totem.

Why would these bone arrows suddenly emerge from the sand? And why did they burrow into A-Ji’s wound?

Subconsciously, she looked outside the tent. In the shadows of the sand dunes, the grains of sand were jumping irregularly, as if countless bone arrows were crawling out from underground, their tips pointed directly at the heart of the camp. The bone arrow in her palm suddenly vibrated violently, and the scorpion totem on its end seemed to come alive; the stinger rose slowly, aiming at her wrist—where she wore the silver bracelet passed down from her grandfather, engraved with the Sand-Keeper’s protective incantation.

"No!" Wang Lu threw the bone arrow to the ground and drew a bone needle from her silver chest. "Quickly, gather all the bone arrows and soak them in the sacred spring water! Do not let them touch blood!"

Before she could finish, the bone arrow on the floor stood up on its own, its tip trembling slightly toward A-Ji. Unaware, A-Ji continued to rub his calf, but deep within his pupils, a miniature scorpion totem was slowly emerging, identical to the pattern on the arrow's tail.

From the distance came Old Dao’s roar, filled with unprecedented panic: "All the wounded are acting strange! They are all screaming to have the bone arrows pulled out!"

Watching the trembling bone arrow on the ground, then the totem in A-Ji’s eyes, Wang Lu suddenly understood—these were not ordinary bone arrows; they were memory carriers released by bone cores. The S Tribe soldiers who died from arrow wounds a century ago were using these arrows to transmit their hatred and agony into the current X Tribe warriors.

And this was only the beginning.

As she picked up the bone arrow, the carvings on its shaft suddenly ignited with a red glow, forming a line of obscure Ancient Qiang characters that translated to only four words:

"The blood sacrifice begins."

The wind outside the tent turned icy, mixed with countless faint, shrill cries, as if thousands of ancient soldiers were climbing out of the sand, holding bone arrows, and slowly marching toward the X Tribe camp. Wang Lu gripped the bone needle, the bluish-black veins on her palm having already reached her elbow, like a greedy snake slowly consuming her skin.