Episode 30: A Night Visit to the Temple

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The temple’s obsidian gates gleamed coldly beneath the moonlight, like a clot of hardened blood.

Lu Chen pressed himself into the shadows behind the gate, his fingertips resting on the hilt of the totem blade, his heart pounding like a war drum. Old Saber crouched beside him, prying at the sand-crystal lock in the hinge with a bone knife. It was a new invention of the S Tribe: writhing grains of sand were embedded inside the keyhole, and the slightest touch from an ordinary person would trigger an alarm.

“Click.”

A flash of red light ran along the bone knife. The sand-crystal lock gave a soft sound, and the grains inside shrank deeper as though scalded. Old Saber grinned, gestured to Lu Chen, and the two slipped inside like cats.

The temple’s interior was more spacious than they had imagined. Countless chains hung from the domed ceiling, suspending sand-crystal lamps in midair. Their eerie blue light illuminated the murals on the walls, all depicting scenes of sacrifices performed by priests of the S Tribe throughout the ages. The final mural showed a gigantic sand scorpion with a woman wearing a silver bird necklace clenched in its jaws—the very image of Alicia’s mother.

“Those madmen,” Old Saber cursed under his breath, spinning the bone knife once in his palm. “They treat the sacrifice of living people as an honor. Sooner or later, they’ll pay for it.”

Lu Chen did not answer. His attention had been drawn to the patterns on the floor. Totems traced in golden sand were glowing faintly, forming a gigantic array. At the center stood a raised stone slab, its edge engraved with the words “Third Underground Level.”

“The entrance Alicia mentioned should be here.” Lu Chen tapped the slab with the back of his blade. A hollow echo came from beneath it. “Careful. Williams must have stationed heavy guards below.”

Old Saber took out a small magnet and pressed it against the edge of the slab. The golden-sand totems immediately dimmed. With a thunderous rumble, the slab slid sideways, revealing a pitch-black passage. A chilly wind rushed out, carrying a sickly sweet, fishy odor, as if countless hands were burrowing into their nostrils.

The two climbed down an iron ladder. Rust covered every rung, and each movement produced a creaking groan that was especially piercing in the dead silence below. When they reached the third level, Lu Chen suddenly grabbed Old Saber by the shoulder and motioned for silence.

A faint whimper came from below, intermittent and broken, like a wounded beast crying.

They crouched low and slipped out of the passage. The sight before them made both men draw a sharp breath.

The underground chamber was as large as a football field. Sand-crystal cages were embedded in the rock along all four walls. Each cage stood half a person’s height, and inside each one crouched a vague human figure. The bars were covered in carvings that read “Awaiting Sacrifice.” Their ghostly blue light shone through the bars, making the prisoners’ faces as pale as paper.

“There must be hundreds.” Lu Chen’s voice trembled. In the nearest cage, he recognized an old herdsman from the X Tribe. He had vanished while tending his flocks six months earlier, and everyone in the tribe had assumed that sand-bone beasts had devoured him.

A yellow talisman bearing a scorpion-shaped totem was pasted to the old herdsman’s forehead. His eyes were tightly shut, yet his lips kept moving as though he were reciting some spell. Iron chains coiled around his wrists and ankles, their sand-crystal spikes buried deep in his flesh. The beads of blood that seeped out were immediately sucked away by the crystals, condensing into tiny red droplets along the chain links.

“They’re being drained of their life force.” Old Saber’s bone knife suddenly began to glow red. He approached one of the cages and lightly touched its bars with the blade.

A bizarre scene unfolded.

The sand-crystal cage suddenly turned transparent, like melting ice. The figure inside jerked its eyes open, revealing irises webbed with blood vessels. When he saw Old Saber, he let out a hoarse, heart-rending cry.

“Priest Old Saber! Save us! They’re going to sacrifice us to the sand scorpion tomorrow!”

Lu Chen felt as though a sledgehammer had struck his heart.

It was A-Mu, a young hunter of the X Tribe. Three months earlier, he had led a team out in search of water and had never returned. Now his hair had turned completely white, and his face was covered in wrinkles. He looked like an old man. Only the despair in his eyes still retained a trace of the youth he had once been.

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“How did you end up here?” Lu Chen’s voice shook with disbelief. “What did Williams capture you for?”

“Sacrifice!” A-Mu’s cry broke into sobs. “They said our blood carries the mark of the Sand Guardians, making us the sand scorpion’s favorite offerings! Every day they inject us with strange drugs, making us weaker and weaker… Look over there!”

He pointed toward the raised platform in the center of the chamber. A much larger sand-crystal cage stood there, containing more than a dozen children. The youngest appeared to be no more than five or six years old. They huddled together, staring blankly at the ceiling, while the talismans on their foreheads glimmered faintly.

“They won’t even spare the children…” Old Saber’s voice was thick with suppressed fury. The red glow of his bone knife grew brighter and brighter. “Those beasts!”

At that moment, footsteps sounded from the passage entrance—thump after thump, drawing closer, accompanied by the scrape of metal.

“Someone’s coming!”

Lu Chen pulled Old Saber behind a pile of discarded cages. The two held their breath as their hearts pounded wildly against their ribs.

The footsteps stopped at the entrance.

Williams’s voice drifted over, cloyingly gentle.

“How are we feeling today, little ones?”

Through the gaps between the cages, Lu Chen saw Williams standing before the central platform. The red glow of his mechanical eye swept across the children as though he were admiring a collection of precious artifacts. A black robe hung over his mechanical arm, embroidered with a scorpion-shaped totem in golden thread that gleamed eerily in the blue light.

A small boy who looked no older than seven or eight lifted his head from the cluster of children. A talisman was pasted to his forehead, and tear tracks still glistened on his face.

“Uncle Williams, when can we go home? I miss Mama.”

Williams suddenly laughed. He walked over and gently stroked the boy’s head with the tip of his mechanical finger, his touch as tender as though he were petting a beloved animal.

“You’ll be going home very soon.” His voice dropped low, carrying a devilish allure. “Tomorrow, you’ll become a little offering to the sand scorpion. Then you’ll be able to see your mama—in the sand, where you’ll remain together forever.”

A flicker of fear crossed the boy’s eyes, but they soon became empty again, as though he had accepted the cruel truth. He lowered his head and absently scratched at the cage bars. His fingernail beds were packed with dried blood.

Williams smiled in satisfaction and turned toward the exit. His mechanical boots crushed the sand beneath them with a soft rustling sound.

“Rest well. Tomorrow will be a glorious day.”

The footsteps gradually faded until they vanished completely into the passage.

Lu Chen and Old Saber crawled out from their hiding place, both faces as pale as paper.

“The sacrifice is tomorrow.” Lu Chen’s voice was cold as ice. He stared fixedly at the children. “We have to find a way to save them.”

Old Saber shook his head and pointed with the bone knife toward the bottoms of the cages. Lu Chen followed his gaze and saw that each cage’s base was engraved with a miniature reverse-entropy array. The pattern was inverted, continuously drawing the prisoners’ life force and transforming it into ghostly blue energy, which flowed along the markings on the floor toward the depths of the temple.

“We can’t save them.” Despair filled Old Saber’s voice. “These cages are linked to the temple’s entire energy array. If we open even one, the others will trigger the alarm immediately. And…”

He pointed to A-Mu’s cage.

“Look at the talisman on his forehead. That’s a Soul-Binding Curse. The moment they leave their cages, their souls will be devoured by the sand scorpion and transformed into mindless sand-bone beasts.”

Lu Chen clenched his fists so tightly that his knuckles turned white. He looked at his tribesmen huddled inside the cages, at the children with their vacant eyes, and felt an anger and helplessness unlike anything he had ever known sweep through his entire body.

Were they truly powerless to do anything but watch as these people were sacrificed?

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At that moment, one of the children on the central platform suddenly raised her head and met Lu Chen’s gaze.

She was a little girl with two braided pigtails. The talisman on her forehead had slipped slightly, revealing a small portion of the pale-gold mark beneath it—the symbol of the royal bloodline of the X Tribe.

When she saw Lu Chen, a spark of light suddenly appeared in her eyes. Her lips moved, silently forming two words.

Lu Chen understood.

She was saying, “The key.”

The little girl quietly pointed to her neck. Hanging there was an inconspicuous wooden token engraved with a simplified reverse-entropy totem, identical to the one on Lu Chen’s arm.

Old Saber saw it too. His eyes lit up at once.

“The Sand Guardian’s token! That child is…”

Before he could finish, Lu Chen clamped a hand over his mouth.

Footsteps sounded once more from the passage entrance, this time lighter and faster, as though someone were walking on tiptoe.

The two men hid again, their hearts rising into their throats.

A slender figure appeared at the entrance. In the ghostly blue light, Lu Chen recognized Alicia. She held a silver key and crept toward the central platform, clearly intending to secretly release the children.

But she failed to notice the pair of mechanical eyes flickering red in the shadows behind her, like two hidden will-o’-the-wisps.

Williams had never left.

He was hiding in the darkness like a venomous snake, waiting for his prey to fall into the trap.

Alicia had reached the little girl’s cage and was preparing to unlock it. Her fingers trembled slightly, betraying her own nervousness.

Lu Chen’s heart leapt into his throat.

What should he do? Rush out and warn her? Or remain hidden and wait for a better opportunity?

In the darkness, Williams slowly raised his mechanical arm. Its claws flashed coldly in the blue light as he aimed them at the defenseless Alicia.

A silent struggle was beginning beneath the haunted depths of the third underground level, where despair covered everything.

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