After Lao Jiang took out the compass to find the direction, we urged the camels to gallop all the way.
At this moment, everyone was in a panic. Only Ayim Khan comforted his camels and shouted in a northwest accent: "Wait for me, you are going to torture this old man to death, how can you We’re on our way like this.”
Although we feel sorry for him because of his age, no one dares to slow down.
Maybe we really scared ourselves and rushed for several hours, but nothing happened along the way.
That night we chose to camp under a sand mountain that could provide shelter from the cold. Ayim Khan was really a master at desert survival. He simply used the blankets on the camels and some tools to build a few makeshift tents for us. Small tent to live in.
Looking at the starry sky, we can finally have a good sleep.
But something strange happened that night!
At night, when I was lying on the blanket and sound asleep, Yin Linger's scream suddenly came from outside. She didn't care, she rushed in and shook me awake.
I rubbed my eyelids, woke up and asked her what was wrong.
Banban was also confused, staring in confusion and looking like he was not asleep, but Yin Ling'er was so frightened that her face turned pale, she kept gesticulating with her hands, and stammered: "I, I've seen a ghost..."
"What the hell?"
When I heard these two words, I immediately became energetic.
But how is this possible?
I asked Yin Ling'er if she had a nightmare. Yin Ling'er wiped her face and said plausibly: "It's true! I really saw it, on the opposite mountain."
She pointed in a direction with a look of horror on her face: "I saw the foreigner in the daytime standing under the moonlight, with a pale face, waving to us."
"It scared me to death. It really scared me to death."
Yin Ling'er's shoulders were shaking, and her little face was pale, without any blood.
I immediately rushed out of the tent to check, but apart from the flat sand in the distance, there were no ghosts anywhere, and no ghosts restless in the middle of the night, waving at us?
Yin Ling'er's actions woke everyone up. After hearing what Yin Ling'er saw and heard, everyone agreed that it was a nightmare or, at worst, a hallucination.
"Girl is young. After seeing what happened during the day, it is normal for her to have dreams at night." Xiang Wanli analyzed it matter-of-factly.
Even Lao Jiang, who had always loved Yin Ling'er, just patted her shoulder and comforted her softly: "It's understandable for girls to sleepwalk. It's already very brave not to wet your pants."
Yin Ling'er was about to cry but had no tears, but He Lanxue held her shoulders and said that he would be watching over her for the rest of the night.
We all took the time to catch up on our sleep, as we had to travel a long distance the next day.
Not long after he lay down, he was interrupted by another scream. This time it was from a man!
As soon as I rushed out, I found Xiao Wu, who was holding up his pants and shivering, sneaking back, pointing his finger in the direction Yin Ling'er just said: "Ghost, there is a ghost."
It turned out that Xiao Wu, who had just been awakened by Yin Ling'er, felt the urge to urinate, so he planned to drain the water. However, when he was halfway through urinating, he felt that there were eyes staring at him from behind.
Vaguely, there was a slight sound of feet stepping on the sand.
He turned around suddenly and was immediately faced with a pale and ferocious face!
The foreigner who had died completely during the day was now less than one meter away from him. His eyes were blood red, his chin was blue, and even his chest still looked like it had been dissected, and his intestines were sticky and pulled together. Not to mention that there was nothing there. How scary.
Xiao Wu was almost half-crying before he finished all this intermittently. The whole grown man was frightened into a little quail.
I looked at Yin Ling'er beside me. The first time the same thing happened was a nightmare, but the second time it was definitely not a coincidence...
But how could there be ghosts in this world?
Lao Jiang also frowned deeply. He asked us to stay in the tent while he ran into the cold night with a black knife in his pocket.
I don’t know how long it took, but I vaguely heard a knife coming out of its sheath in the wind, and Lao Jiang’s roar.
Just as he was about to get up to help, he saw Lao Jiang had already lifted a corner of the blanket and barged in, panting.
I asked him how he was doing?
Lao Jiang squeezed out the first sentence in a hoarse voice: "It was too dark, I couldn't see clearly."
The second sentence made me feel relieved, and his tone became solemn: "But I'm sure something is following us."
I handed over the water bag and waited for Lao Jiang to finish what he just said: "When I almost caught it just now, I shined a flashlight on it and saw only a white shadow disappearing into the sand mountain..."
Xiao Wu was still in the fear just now and couldn't calm down for a long time. He asked tremblingly: "Aren't those ghosts all wearing white clothes?"
Then the voice became sharp: "I know, he must have claimed the life of that foreigner and came to claim our lives again! Otherwise, why would such a good person be suddenly frightened to death?"
Dawu slapped him on the back of the head: "Shut up! Look at your cowardly look, you really embarrass our Wu family."
With such a big hat on, Xiao Wu didn't dare to say a word no matter how scared he was.
The rest of us also tacitly agreed to keep quiet. No one said anything, and we just sat there until dawn. During this period, the thing seemed to never come again.
When the first ray of morning sun appeared, everyone climbed out of the camp one by one.
However, at that moment, the faces of all of us became surprisingly ugly, and we saw that the open space in front of the camp where the camels were tied was flatly placed with a cowboy hat, which was worn by the dead gringo.
Xiao Wu couldn't control it anymore, and even Yin Ling'er was so scared that she shrank behind me and my companion, but Lao Jiang pretended to be calm and stretched his body: "It's nothing, I was just blown here by the wind." That’s all…”
There were still people in the team who wanted to say something, but Master Diao scolded him: "Keep on going!"
That deep and sharp voice, with its irresistible toughness, really blew away the haze in the team to a certain extent.
Although they knew that what Lao Jiang said was impossible, the intervention of Lao Jiang and Diao Ye undoubtedly played a role in stabilizing the morale of the army.
Especially since the camel was still joking with a loud voice, everything didn't seem so scary anymore.
We have been driving camels all the way, hoping to leave this land of right and wrong as soon as possible.
But the further I walked, the more familiar I felt. Although the scenes in the desert were almost the same, I always felt like I had seen the sand mountain in front of me somewhere before.
I looked at Lao Jiang and asked worriedly: "We won't get lost, right?"
Lao Jiang checked the compass and replied with certainty: "It's unlikely."
But when we turned halfway up the sand mountain, everyone was stunned!
Everyone could clearly see the traces of our previous camp. What was even more terrifying was that the hat was still lying flat there, as if it was mocking us and could never escape its grasp.
Crying gradually began to sound in the team, and the young man's immature voice trembled slightly: "Are we lost?"
"Did we encounter a ghost and hit a wall?"
"If we can't get out, we won't be able to get out again!"
……
Seeing that the team was getting more and more chaotic, Ayimhan also looked sad: "It was thundering and lightning in broad daylight. It was strange. This is the first time in decades that I have led the team that I encountered a ghost hitting the wall. Are there still ghosts coming and going during the day?" ?”
Lord Diao yelled: "Everyone be quiet."
"If you want to go home and cry, why come here to cry? Do you still think you are a little red guy who hasn't grown up?"
The slightly mocking tone shattered the unique pride of young people and poked at their weaknesses. Although they were still scared, everyone tried their best to control their crying.
Lao Jiang held up the compass and shook it: "It's weird, I didn't lead the wrong way. Is it because the compass is broken? Look at yours."
He looked at Diao Ye and Xiang Wanli. Both of them were leading camels, but when they met, they discovered that each other's compass pointed in the same direction as Lao Jiang.
But facts have told us that this direction is not north and is false.
Seeing this scene, Master Diao couldn't help but laugh!
Suddenly, he pulled out the bent knife from Shahu's waist, walked down the slope alone, and split a withered poplar tree in one fell swoop.
I went over to take a look curiously: "Master Diao, is this the first time in your many decades of traveling across the northwest that an eagle pecked your eye, so you came down to chop down a tree to vent your anger?"
Mr. Diao said angrily: "Take vent, you big-headed devil!"
He pointed to the sun in the sky and patiently explained to me: "Everything in the desert will lie to us, but the sun cannot lie. There is an iron law in nature. The side facing the sun will be very dense, and the side facing away from it will be very dense. The side where the sun grows is very sparse, and so are their growth rings."
Immediately, he threw the chopped poplar tree into my hand.
I suddenly realized that the side with dense growth rings is the north, and the side with sparse growth rings is the south!
Diao Ye smiled slightly: "Boy, you're not that stupid!"
Lao Jiang ran down in a panic, compared the growth rings of the poplar tree with the compass, and finally discovered something fishy. Although the difference between the two is very small, it is still a full fifteen degrees.
"Li Jinglan, do you know what the fifteen-degree difference means when marching in the desert?" Lao Jiang sighed.
I shook my head.
Lao Jiang sounded like a senior and completed the unfinished half of the sentence: "It means that we will keep going in a circle here and never get out."
Xiang Wanli also poked his head out and asked, "Is it because there is a magnetic field nearby?"
Lao Jiang replied with certainty: "No, I suspect we have been tricked."
Xiang Wanli swallowed and asked a question that usually sounded like an idiot but was very possible here. He asked Lao Jiang: "Are we being tricked by people or ghosts?"
Lao Jiang narrowed his eyes and hesitated for a moment, or rather he was thinking.
After a long while, he finally spoke slowly: "In Chinese folklore, have you ever heard of a monster called a demon? A demon, a demon, a demon."
Before Xiang Wanli could react, I seemed to have realized something: "What do you mean?"
Lao Jiang nodded and continued: "It is said that some sprites are raised in the desert. They may not have strong attack power, but their brains are not stupider than humans at all. They often use some clever tricks to make business travelers come and go. Get lost and watch them die of thirst and starvation.”
"I suspect that the foreigners Ling'er and Xiao Wu saw were just the demons who came here to scare us on purpose. There were too many people in the team, and it wanted everyone to panic before they could unknowingly fall into its trap. And there should be something similar to a magnet on its body, disturbing us all the way. "
Xiang Wanli started to ask again: "Then what's the purpose of doing this?"
Lao Jiang replied: "Play us to death, or take us somewhere. Now I have a deeper first sleep, leaning towards the latter."
At this time, my mind suddenly reminded me of the coordinates on the notebook, and I quickly reminded Lao Jiang.
After Lao Jiang made some calculations with tools, he immediately showed an expression as if he had seen a ghost: "Everyone, we are now less than fifty meters away from that strange coordinate..."
