Episode 40: The Battle of Faith

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The altar at Blackwind Pass gleamed bronze in the morning light. The reverse-entropy patterns carved into its twelve totem pillars slowly revolved, like twelve golden serpents awakening. Lu Chen pressed the jade pendant into the groove at the center of the altar. The stone beneath his hand gave off a searing vibration, as though a beating heart were buried below.

“How much longer until it activates?” Old Dao spun his bone knife once in his hand. Its blade reflected the unnatural sight on the distant horizon—the sand was churning violently, like boiling porridge.

“At least forty minutes.” Su Qing’s fingers flew across a virtual keyboard. On the holographic display, the energy gauge had just passed thirty percent. “The reverse-entropy formation has to synchronize the frequencies of three altars. The energy node at Blackwind Pass was damaged by the Sandbone Beasts, so calibration is especially difficult.”

Chen Yu suddenly tugged at Lu Chen’s arm, his voice tightening. “They’re here! Look!”

The wave of sand on the horizon suddenly rose like a moving gray wall. Countless blue-gray figures flickered within it, their sand-crystal armor reflecting light so fiercely that it was painful to look at. Their howls carried on the wind, perfectly synchronized and filled with a chilling fanaticism:

“The Sand Scorpion devours all!”

“All who defy it shall become offerings!”

“Long live Lord Williams!”

The jade pendant in Lu Chen’s hand suddenly grew hot as a branding iron. He tightened his grip on the totem blade and turned to face the warriors behind him. The X Tribe’s warband, together with the defecting S Tribe supply soldiers, numbered fewer than eighty in all. Their weapons were a motley collection: rusted rifles, sharpened bone spears, and even woodcutting axes.

“Are you afraid?” Lu Chen’s voice was not loud, yet it carried clearly to every ear.

No one answered, but the hands tightening around their weapons said everything. Chen Yu quietly checked the fuse on his rocket launcher. Wang Lu stuffed the last few doses of Sandblood antidote into her medical kit. Old Dao used his bone knife to draw a line in the sand—their final boundary. If they retreated beyond it, the altar would fall within the attack range of the sand-crystal warriors.

The sand wave drew closer. Now they could make out the totems on the faces of the front-line warriors. Their skin seemed embedded with shards of glass, grains of sand spilling from them with every step. The ghostly blue in their eyes was more intense than ever, clear proof that they had been injected with a higher concentration of bone-core energy.

“The ones leading them are Williams’s personal guards!” Kam suddenly shouted. His voice was still hoarse from the lingering effects of the antidote. “The one-eyed man is Hiber the Butcher! He was the one who nailed our brothers to the sand last month!”

Lu Chen followed his pointing hand and saw a one-eyed sand-crystal warrior. Three human teeth were embedded in his left shoulder guard, and the chainsaw sword in his hand buzzed ominously, dark-red scraps of flesh still hanging from its teeth.

“Move!” Hiber’s roar made the grains of sand leap. He suddenly accelerated, bringing his chainsaw sword down toward the nearest X Tribe warrior. “I’m taking the first offering!”

Clang!

Old Dao’s bone knife caught the chainsaw sword just in time. Sparks scattered across the sand between them, burning a dense pattern of tiny holes into the ground.

“Your opponent is me.” The scar on Old Dao’s face shone in the morning light. “You owe me my nephew’s life. Ten years ago, you took it. Today, you pay the debt.”

Hiber’s single eye narrowed sharply. He had clearly recognized Old Dao. With a savage grin, he twisted the chainsaw. The teeth scraped against the bone knife, releasing a shrill scream.

“You old bastard, you’re hard to kill! Perfect. I’ll grind your bones into powder and use them as fertilizer for the Sand Scorpion!”

The two weapons locked together, and the collision of sand crystal and bone sent strange sparks of light flying. Old Dao suddenly ducked low. His bone knife slipped through the gap in the chainsaw and swept across Hiber’s wrist. The sand-crystal skin split open at once, revealing writhing grains of sand beneath.

“Argh!”

Hiber staggered back, howling. The chainsaw sword fell to the ground, while the sand crystal around his wrist rapidly weathered away.

“What did you put on that blade?!”

“Camel blood.” Old Dao rubbed his bone knife against the sand. “To deal with monsters like you, you need the desert’s sacred creatures.”

That brief clash ignited the powder keg. The sand-crystal warriors roared and charged. Those in front raised sand-crystal shields and formed a shield wall, while those behind hurled bone spears. The sharp whistles of their passage filled the air like hail striking the X Tribe’s defenses.

“Raise the shields!” Lu Chen pointed his totem blade toward the sky. Golden light flowed along the blade and spread across the warriors’ shields, forming a wall of radiance. The bone spears struck it, then were instantly deflected and shattered into pieces.

“Chen Yu! Break their shield wall!”

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“On it!”

Carrying the rocket launcher, Chen Yu crawled forward and set up behind a mound of sand. He aimed at a gap in the shield wall.

“Blow it open!”

The rocket streaked into the shield wall trailing fire. Before the sand-crystal warriors could react, a violent explosion overturned an entire row of shields. Sand-crystal fragments and severed limbs flew into the sky, revealing the panicked warriors behind them.

“Charge!”

Lu Chen was the first to cross the defensive line. The golden light of his totem blade carved a bloody path through the crowd. His objective was clear: break the sand-crystal warriors’ formation and buy time for the altar.

The warriors of the X Tribe followed close behind. Their totems blazed to life under the stimulation of the golden radiance—wolf heads, eagle claws, springs of water. Though faint, they were like scattered sparks that gathered into a force capable of resisting the ghostly blue.

“So this is your faith?” Hiber laughed wildly, clutching his wounded wrist. He drew a sand-crystal horn from his waist and blew into it with all his strength. “A rabble armed with broken scraps dares speak of protection?”

Before the horn’s note had faded, the sand-crystal warriors abruptly changed formation. They parted like a receding tide, revealing the “weapons” behind them: twenty sand-crystal puppets, all X Tribe herders whose minds had been devoured. Their eyes were vacant. Each held a bone spear bound with explosives, and they were chained together in a line like a string of walking bombs.

“Recognize them?” Hiber pointed at the tribal totems on the puppets’ chests. “The people you swore to protect are my weapons now! Go on, cut them down if you’ve got the courage!”

The charging X Tribe warriors suddenly froze. Some recognized their neighbors. Others saw missing brothers. Bone spears hung in midair, unable to descend.

“Hesitate and die!” Lu Chen cut down a sand-crystal warrior who tried to take advantage of the moment, then roared at the wavering fighters. “They’re still alive! Once the reverse-entropy formation activates, they can be saved! If you stop now, you’re the ones who will truly kill them!”

His words struck like thunder, shattering the warriors’ hesitation. The young herder who had recognized his neighbor wiped away his tears and turned his bone spear toward the sand-crystal warrior controlling the puppets.

“Uncle, wait for me! I’m coming to free you!”

The battle erupted with renewed ferocity. Wherever Lu Chen’s golden radiance passed, the sand-crystal warriors’ armor split apart. He deliberately circled behind the puppets, broke their chains with the back of his blade, and shouted, “Wang Lu! Inject them with the antidote!”

With her medical kit on her back, Wang Lu darted among the puppets, driving the needle accurately into their carotid arteries. The instant the antidote took effect, their movements slowed noticeably. A ripple passed through the ghostly blue in their pupils, and some even instinctively dodged the bone spears swinging toward them.

“It works!” Wang Lu cried excitedly, failing to notice Hiber’s chainsaw sword descending toward her back.

“Look out!”

Kam threw himself forward and took the chainsaw’s blow with his body. His sand-crystal armor split open at once, and blood sprayed across Wang Lu. He looked at the wound as it rapidly crystallized, then suddenly smiled.

“My son… won’t have to be an offering anymore…”

Hiber kicked Kam’s body aside and raised the chainsaw sword again.

“You’re next!”

“Your opponent is me!”

Lu Chen’s totem blade, wrapped in golden light, slashed toward Hiber’s single eye. When the blade was only a few inches from its target, a tremendous force suddenly stopped it. Williams had appeared on the battlefield without anyone noticing. His mechanical arm had seized the blade, red light flickering across its metal frame.

“Trying to buy time?” Williams’s mechanical eye swept across the altar. The energy gauge had already climbed to sixty percent. “Too bad you’re too late.”

He suddenly gestured. The sand-crystal warriors behind him retreated in unison, revealing a massive sand-crystal container. Inside, curled up like a captive bird, was a familiar figure—Alicia. Her silver-bird necklace had been torn away, and a sand-crystal collar encircled her neck. Her eyes were closed. She was clearly under their control.

“Alicia!”

Lu Chen’s heart clenched.

“Want to save her?” Williams’s mechanical arm suddenly exerted force, making the golden light around the totem blade flare violently. “Then abandon the altar. Otherwise, she will become the first ‘Sand Scorpion Bride’ and remain with the Bone Core forever.”

Alicia’s eyelids trembled. She seemed to have heard Lu Chen’s voice, and her lips moved faintly. At once, the crystal spikes on the collar pierced into her skin, forcing a muffled groan from her.

“Let her go!”

Lu Chen’s eyes burned red, and the golden radiance around his totem blade nearly solidified.

“Let her go, and every one of you will die.” Williams’s mechanical arm pointed toward the sky. Far away, the energy zone suddenly blazed with dazzling blue light. “The Bone Core has awakened. The reverse-entropy formation cannot seal it. Kneel and submit now, and you can still become respectable offerings.”

The sand-crystal warriors raised another thunderous cry, their voices shaking the altar itself.

“The Sand Scorpion is eternal!”

“Return the offerings to their place!”

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The warriors of the X Tribe began to waver. The light of some totems dimmed. Faced with overwhelming power and the threat of a hostage, even the strongest convictions began to crack.

Lu Chen drew a deep breath, then suddenly raised the jade pendant. Golden light burst from it, brighter than ever before, illuminating the face of every warrior.

“Warriors of the X Tribe, listen!” His voice pierced through all the clamor, ringing with the strength of metal and stone. “What we protect has never been a cold altar. It is the homeland behind us! It is the families waiting for us to return!”

His gaze swept over the wounded Wang Lu, over Chen Yu carrying the rocket launcher, over every warrior gritting their teeth.

“Williams wants us to believe in the Sand Scorpion? He wants us to become offerings? But the law of the desert has never been that whoever has the stronger fist gets to decide—”

“The living decide!”

The instant the final words rang out, a miracle occurred.

The warriors’ totems erupted with light all at once, answering the jade pendant in Lu Chen’s hand. Together they formed an enormous golden dome that enveloped the entire altar. The warriors who had been wavering regained their resolve. Even the defecting S Tribe supply soldiers raised their weapons, their family totems awakening within the golden radiance and giving off a faint but stubborn glow.

“Beautifully done!” Old Dao’s bone knife tore through Hiber’s throat. As he watched the sand-crystal warriors howl in agony within the golden light, he shouted, “That’s how the Guardians of the Sand fight!”

For the first time, Williams’s expression turned ugly. The red light in his mechanical arm flickered violently.

“Madmen! You’re all mad!”

He suddenly seized Alicia, pressing a mechanical claw against her throat.

“Then we’ll all die together!”

At that moment, the jade pendant at the center of the altar suddenly rose into the air and hung there. The energy gauges of all three altars simultaneously reached one hundred percent. The reverse-entropy totem revolved at the center of the dome, releasing a deafening hum.

The ghostly blue light in the sand-crystal warriors rapidly faded. Some even regained their senses and stared blankly at their own hands. But the red light erupting from Williams’s mechanical arm grew even more blinding. His body began to crystallize, resonating with the energy field of the Bone Core in the distance.

“If it can’t be sealed, then I’ll merge with it!”

Williams’s body fused with Alicia’s collar, ghostly blue and crimson light intertwining around him.

“I will become the new Bone Core! I will become the desert’s only god!”

Alicia’s eyes flew open. Within her pupils flashed both the golden radiance of the Silver Bird and the ghostly blue of the Sand Scorpion. She looked at the jade pendant suspended in the air, then summoned every ounce of strength she had left and bit down on Williams’s mechanical arm.

“Die, then!”

Williams cried out in pain and released her. Alicia seized the opportunity to throw herself toward Lu Chen. The collar shattered the instant it touched the golden light.

“Activate the reverse-entropy formation!” Alicia’s voice broke with tears. “I know how to amplify the energy!”

Lu Chen pulled her behind him, and the jade pendant fell back into his hand. He and Alicia exchanged a glance, seeing the same determination in each other’s eyes.

“Everyone, retreat inside the altar!” Lu Chen pointed his totem blade at the dome. “Let this old monster see just how powerful faith can be!”

The golden dome began to contract, keeping all the sand-crystal warriors outside. Williams’s crystallization grew increasingly severe. His body had already merged with the blue radiance of the energy zone, transforming him into a colossal ghostly-blue monster. It opened a cavernous maw and lunged toward the altar.

The golden radiance of the reverse-entropy formation collided with the ghostly blue of the Bone Core at Blackwind Pass, unleashing a cataclysmic roar.

No one knew how this war of faith would end.

But Lu Chen held Alicia’s hand. Feeling the warmth of the jade pendant in his palm, he suddenly knew with absolute certainty—

The future of the desert would never be written by the Sand Scorpion.