“What is it?” Li Cu walked over. At this time, Wu Xie dug out the front of the truck, revealing something in front of it.
It turned out to be a wall buried under the sand. The sand on it kept collasing, and soon the wall would be buried again. Wu Xie went up to block the sand with his body and let it slide from his back to the other side.
As Li Cu slowly approached the wall, he could see more clearly that it was a concrete wall with several white characters written on it: Gutong Jing 056.
“Is there a house in this sand?” Li Cu asked.
“It doesn’t look like a house. 056 should be a number, so this is more like something else.”
“What is it?”
Wu Xie couldn’t hold back the collapsing sand anymore, and when he stepped back, the wall was instantly buried. “This should be a boundary marker. Gutong Jing boundary marker number 56. We’ve arrived in Gutong Jing.”
Boundary marker?
Li Cu was baffled. He didn’t believe it, how were they at Gutong Jing just because he said so?
Boundary markers were often used to distinguish between two administrative regions, while Gutong Jing was originally only a legendary region, not a fixed place.
“It seems that a lot of unknown stories have happened here.” Wu Xie said. “The truck was stuck here, which means there was a road. This boundary marker tells us that people must have been active in Gutong Jing for a long time.”
“Then why is there nothing here now?” Wang Meng asked.
Wu Xie didn’t answer him, and Li Cu, seeing Wang Meng somewhat embarrassed, immediately said: “I remember the notes said that there were originally three large lakes in Gutong Jing. While taking aerial photographs, they discovered this area and threw down a flag. They then sent someone to look for it, but only the flag was found and there weren’t any lakes.”
“The haizi in this bay must be one of the lakes they saw. The three haizi may be able to move freely, and when they dropped the flag and came back, it happened to be the time when all three haizi had moved.” Wu Xie said. “Lucky for us, there was still one left here. However, I’m more concerned about why they wanted to mark three ordinary haizi they saw while taking aerial photos.”
“What do you mean?”
Wu Xie explained: “At that time, aerial photography was usually for geological mapping. Generally speaking, if you see three haizi below while conducting geological surveying and mapping, so long as they are recorded, why bother sending someone to find them? I think they must have seen something unusual in or near the haizi, which made them want to come back for exploration. And judging from the boundary markers here, their exploration activities weren’t temporary short-term projects. They must have been large scale.”
With that, Wu Xie clapped the sand from his hands, climbed to a nearby dune, looked around, and then said, “But there’s nothing here. Maybe everything has been buried under the sand.”
“Boss, what are you going to do?” Wang Meng asked, “We’re in trouble right now. Whether there’s anything under the sand or not has nothing to do with us.”
“If the expedition team continues its journey to Gutong Jing, we should be able to join them in a few days as long as we stay here.” Li Cu said. He thought to himself, if we act rashly, we’ll surely die. The haizi has fresh water here, and other water sources in the desert are extremely difficult to find. It would be safer to wait for rescue beside the fresh water.
“Not necessarily. We went missing from the oasis, and they lost their equipment and a few people, so maybe the expedition will be interrupted. They’ll search for us around the oasis, but even if they continue, they’ll certainly be delayed for several weeks. We can’t afford to wait.” Wu Xie said. “Now, we are indeed in Gutong Jing, but look at the situation here. We haven’t seen anything about this man-made building on any of the data about Gutong Jing, and the sand here is white, which is different from the sand in the photo. This merely shows that this area isn’t the Gutong Jing that often appears on tourist routes. Gutong Jing is in the desert, so we may be in another area. Besides, we don’t know how big this area is.”
Wu Xie looked at the haizi: “We can’t expect any rescue, so we can only rely on ourselves. From now on, we must always pay attention to everything around us, especially this haizi, which may be our only hope of getting out alive.”
If the haizi moved again, it may move back to the place where the large army had retreated before, which was indeed their best hope for leaving here. Li Cu understood that the nearby water source may be this haizi, since this kind of moving haizi certainly had a very complex geological water source structure under the sand, and there were few places in the desert where water sources were especially abundant.
“They know we were in the haizi and that it disappeared, so they should know what happened.” Li Cu said.
“But the haizi leaves no traces behind, and the water has no fixed shape. Even if they know we drifted away on it, there’s nothing they can do.” Wu Xie said.
“What if this particular haizi never goes away?”
“Then we can either get married and have children here and spend our old age peacefully, or risk going out on our own.”
“How long will it take us to get out by ourselves?” Li Cu asked.
“At present, we don’t even have a canteen, so it’s certainly impossible. Whether we can get out by ourselves depends on what we can find in this desert. If we can sort out some equipment, we can explore the surroundings first and at least try to find the building in Lan Ting’s photo. Starting from there, we’ll have a better grasp of the direction. After all, there will be traces of human activities.” Wu Xie pointed to the raft and said to Wang Meng, “Your task is to watch this haizi, and you and the raft will stay here. If the haizi starts to move, call us immediately and we’ll come back right away. Now, the little brother and I will tidy up here again to see if we can find something useful. “
“If that’s the case, why did you make me pull up the raft? Can’t I watch the haizi from the raft?” Wang Meng asked.
“No, what would we do if you ran away?” Wu Xie replied. He then called to Li Cu, “You come here and help me move the bodies.”
Li Cu muttered to himself, I have no quality as a hostage, but he could only run over and complain, “How come there are so many trucks here? Why are there so many dead people? Did you bring out so many and still aren’t done?”
“There are a lot more all under the car. You can see for yourself what’s going on.”
MereBear's Translation 
the drama had over 20 ep before they reached the cars/trucks
and its chap 26 and they already here
lol what even happened to the drama, its completely different
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