Chapter 14

Ling Yu took Chen Mo to a small coffee shop nearby to wait while Pei Jin dealt with his business, choosing a seat by the window, glancing out from time to time.

Chen Mo kept his eyes on his phone instead of the street. He had no mind for anything outside—he wanted to know what Pei Jin had actually done back then.

He opened the forums and searched Pei Jin's name. What filled the screen was page after page of condemnation; only after scrolling to the end did he finally find a thread where someone had laid out the whole incident.

Curious, he clicked in. The pinned post told the whole story, start to finish.

It said Pei Jin had come back from abroad with credentials far beyond the average, so plenty of people had gone to him specifically back then; he had been quite well known around the Vengeful Ghost City. Then, for reasons no one knew, on that day a sandstorm had risen over the Ghost City and caught Pei Jin completely off guard—the dust was strange, and in an instant it swallowed them all whole.

Most important of all—that same day, Gu Weidong had also met with disaster, buried beneath the sand. In the end both men survived; as for the others, not one body was ever found.

Chen Mo read, absorbed, and the deeper he read the tighter his brow knitted. He was nearly through the pinned post when Ling Yu spoke over a sip of coffee: "I don't think you should be researching the man's history right in front of him."

Guiltily, he put the phone down. "Miss Ling, I'm just worried this Pei Jin really might get us killed. One person saying so could be a lie, but this many people..."

Ling Yu smiled. "We all signed contracts before entering the desert. Accidents are to be expected—and conditions out there are never certain."

In the end it all came down to fate. If the King of Hell demands you die at the third watch, he isn't leaving you alive for the fifth.

Chen Mo said, "I'm only looking out for my own life. Honestly, I'd rather have gone in with just you, Miss Ling, and no one else."

Ling Yu took a sip of coffee. "If you put it that way, you're laying the flattery on rather thick. But Chen Mo, out in the desert I can't possibly look after you every second of the way. Having one more guide like Pei Jin saves a great deal of trouble."

Hearing this, it did make a kind of sense. Chen Mo picked the phone back up and went on studying.

...

Who knew how much later, Ling Yu finally spotted Pei Jin moving toward the coffee shop, the old man following close behind.

Good. From the looks of it, the talk had produced a result.

By the time the two had entered and taken seats beside them, the old man had already produced his phone, put on reading glasses, tapped at the screen a few times, and then handed it to Ling Yu with a beaming smile.

"What am I supposed to be looking at?" She glanced at the phone. The screen was solid black.

Pei Jin explained: "We just talked. He says he saw something very strange out in the desert too."

Ling Yu looked at the phone, half exasperated, half amused. It had to be a privacy screen protector—of course it looked black.

She shifted to view it from the side. The phone was looping a Live Photo over and over—

A sandstorm. Something seemed to be lying in wait inside it; under the Live effect, that thing was rapidly merging with some kind of structure standing in its path.

Then nothing more.

She asked quickly, "And what does this have to do with what I want to know?"

The old man looked up at her. "The thing is... there are people inside that sandstorm."

Ling Yu had already guessed. "So the video wasn't meant to be shown to me in full?"

The holding-back was painfully obvious. The old man gave an awkward laugh: "Of course I'm holding something back. After all, what was promised to me was that you would help me find my daughter's remains."

Ling Yu understood Pei Jin's game better than ever: what he wanted now was to make amends for his past failures—which only proved the three of them wanted the same thing.

She coaxed gently, "But holding things back like this may not be good for your daughter's situation. Better to put everything out where we can all share it."

It was only natural for the old man to be wary, but Ling Yu's words gave him one more layer of certainty. He glanced at Pei Jin, then immediately took the phone back and opened the full video for her.

She watched the footage straight on. The noise in the video was tremendous; the onlookers had no intention of falling back.

The dense wall of the sandstorm came rolling in fast; the Live sequence appeared again, and at the very end a car could actually be seen emerging inside the storm.

A car appearing safe and sound was strange enough—let alone the thing forming in the sky within the sandstorm, which was stranger still.

"What forms afterward is the Vengeful Ghost City. The Ghost City's very existence is hair-raising. Gu Weidong, who was with me back then, reportedly ran into the same thing—but later... it was resolved."

Ling Yu asked, worried, "And you? Why wasn't yours resolved?"

Pei Jin blanked for a second. "A matter of odds. No one ties one man's outcome to whatever became of his contemporaries." He showed a reassuring smile.

Ling Yu's expression cooled. Out of moves, she looked at the phone again, and Pei Jin continued unhurriedly: "Though they say Gu Weidong's girlfriend was strange too. They say the two of them passed quickly into another world."

Another world?

She seized on the unusual detail at once: "No wonder they kept connecting it to me. But is this world they entered any different from the Ghost City?"

No one there could answer that.

Because no one had followed Gu Weidong in.

Silence fell over the table.

Then Ling Yu thought again of the car in the video—something about it felt vaguely familiar. If she wasn't mistaken, it was Pei Jin's car.

The old man had been nearby when it was filmed, and he had seen Pei Jin come back with his own eyes—which made him all the more certain all of this was real.

Maybe that was part of why he had been so easy to talk to.

The old man set the phone down and sighed. "I know this is a difficult business. Truthfully, seeing that scene in person was terrifying. I never meant to make trouble—the families' group chat pushed hard, and plenty of us were pushed the same way."

Pei Jin said, "This is my responsibility to bear. That goes without saying."

Ling Yu asked, "Then... Uncle, how about I rent you a place to rest for now? If anything comes up we'll keep in touch with you, and I promise we won't run. All right?"

Her view of the old man had softened, so she thought she might say a few words on Pei Jin's behalf—call it helping herself too.

The old man shook his head. He asked for nothing anymore—only to find his daughter's remains, or get some more certain news.

"Be careful out in the desert."

He didn't know to whom he said it, but you could see an indescribable sorrow in his eyes. "Even guides this good have met with disaster."

...

They watched the old man leave the coffee shop. Pei Jin said "I'm sorry," and Ling Yu offered a suggestion: "You should have seen him safely home first."

Pei Jin answered, "I asked—he lives nearby. It shouldn't be a problem. If anything comes up, I'll arrange it." The fatigue on his face was plain.

Ling Yu poured him some water. "Want to rest a little longer?"

Pei Jin rubbed his forehead. "I can't spare a single minute right now."

"From what Uncle just said, am I right that you stayed here because of this?" she asked. "But from the moment we first met, that didn't seem to be your reason."

Pei Jin didn't deny it.

At first he had thought the connection lay mostly with the desert itself—specifically, perhaps, with the disappearances.

But when everything truly linked together, he had known he had to see it through.