Chapter 3 Interesting Places
"Why did you tell me earlier that I could only be free if I killed this bastard? Why did I have to wait until now?"
In the desert, Jiang Xia, who had just been reborn, had a strange smile on his blood-stained face. He reached out and touched his weakly beating heart, then picked up the kettle beside him and gulped down a sip.
After wiping the water stains from the corners of his mouth, he whispered:
"Oh, I made a mistake. I shouldn't have reminded him before that he had avoided so many dangers. Old Jiang, I am really too kind."
"Boom"
A loud bang interrupted Jiang Xia's thinking about life. He stood up from the hot sand dune, covered his aching and bleeding arm, and looked back.
In the distance, at the end of the sight, on the edge of the vast yellow sand, there is a black and yellow, terrifying thing like a tornado, blowing up thousands of sands, just like an evil dragon awakening and a disaster brewing.
The changing natural phenomena of heaven and earth made Jiang Xia's scalp tingle.
As a special industry salesman who had traveled all over the country, he had also seen the same and similar things in the desert of the Middle East.
Sandstorm.
In my current state, if I fall into it, there is no chance of survival.
He quickly picked up the short dagger that had fallen to the side, unscrewed the broken kettle, held some saliva in his mouth without swallowing it, put the kettle close to his body, and tore open his tattered gown.
He made a headscarf for himself, covering his mouth and nose tightly, and then ran all the way down the sand dunes.
While running, my mind was working rapidly.
“That Mr. Bao said that this is an unknown secret place that can only be reached through a star array. This should be another world, but from what he said, it seems that we can still go back.
But what's going on in their world?
They are clearly a group of people cultivating immortals in an ancient world, so how could they come up with this kind of world exploration mode?
It’s really interesting that even mortals can participate in it.”
It is difficult to tell the direction in an unfamiliar desert. If you go wrong, you will die. But fortunately, Jiang Xia knows where he should go.
That light.
The light that flashed in my memory just now was one or two kilometers away.
Although I still don’t quite understand what the “star array” that Mr. Bao mentioned is.
But judging from what had just happened when he was thrown into the desert, there was no doubt that as long as he found another star array, he would be able to escape from this hopeless and dangerous situation.
In the scorching desert, Jiang Xia, with his head covered, ran with one foot deep and one foot shallow.
The goal is clear, and all that remains is execution.
But as he was running, he suddenly stopped.
"Huh?"
Jiang Xia closed his eyes and looked through his consciousness. The tree that was trapped in Jiang Shusheng's consciousness with him had also undergone some changes, just like his experience.
The tree still looked the same, one meter tall, bare, without leaves or flowers, and with seven branches, but on the edge of the lowest branch, there was a cluster of small flowers.
It was pale in color, emitting a mysterious glow, and was only the size of a little finger.
Just like a bud that has just grown.
"Flowering?"
Jiang Xia looked back in astonishment at the place where he came from. He was a little unsure whether the precious tree bloomed because he had escaped from imprisonment and stimulated it.
Or it passed through the star array and came to the new world, causing it to change.
Oh, I am so lucky today. Not only did I complete my rebirth, but the golden finger that had been unresponsive seemed to have been activated.
It's a win-win situation.
I won twice.
Make a lot of money!
Jiang Xia's face was full of smiles, and his steps down the sand dune became relaxed.
But he was not grateful at all to those bastards who threw him into this desert, Mr. Bao, Manager Huang, and those guys who beat him with sticks and tortured him with ropes...
Uh, they were torturing Jiang Xia, and it didn’t seem to have anything to do with Jiang Xia.
But there was no way. Jiang Xia was a vengeful person. Since this body belonged to him, all the grudges caused by the torture suffered by the body naturally belonged to him as well.
Since you can come.
You can definitely go back, right?
Let’s put it aside for now and talk to them when we get back.
——
Almost half an hour later, Jiang Xia, panting and with his head tied like an Arab, finally arrived at his destination.
A sandstorm will arrive, making the desert cooler and preventing him from getting a heat stroke.
“It’s too quiet.”
He continued to walk towards the building half-buried in the sand dunes, looking around him. He just discovered that this desert was too quiet.
Of course not the sound.
"There aren't even scorpions in the shade, there's no vegetation anywhere you can see, and there's this smell."
Jiang Xia grabbed a handful of sand and put it under his nose, sniffing it carefully.
Although humans’ sense of smell is not as good as that of dogs, they can still distinguish many details. The sand deep in the quicksand layer has a faint smell of rust.
Jiang Xia became even more confused.
He thought of a possibility and suddenly felt a chill down his spine.
And before us, half buried at the bottom of the sand dune, is a small building with an exterior wall that has been weathered and corroded into a state of disrepair.
It looks a bit like a temple, but it also looks like a weathered fortress, and it is difficult to tell what it originally looked like.
However, the main body of the building is still intact. There are huge cracks on the dome, and sand is constantly falling. As you walk into it, a cool feeling suddenly hits you.
This is a place that can shelter from wind and rain, and it is also the place that Lao Jiang needs most now.
He walked into the dilapidated building and without wasting time, he took out the broken water bottle from his waist, took a sip of the precious water, and then used a quarter of it with heartache to clean the dusty wound.
Cut off the clothes that are close to your body and use them as bandages.
While doing this, he was also observing the surroundings. The place was not big and most of it was buried in sand. The area where people could move was only about ten meters in radius.
You can basically see it clearly at a glance.
There were some broken wooden boxes piled up in the sand in the corner, looking like they had been looted and in a mess.
On the wall in the corner, there were some ashes that looked like they were left after a fire, and there were similar ashes on the ground. When Jiang Xia saw those ashes, he suddenly felt relieved.
This is the trace of fire.
This means that there must be other people in the desert, and the possibility of being rescued is greatly increased.
After bandaging the wound, he stood up again and wandered around the building searching.
This time it was much more detailed and had a purpose.
Soon, he made a discovery.
Right in front of the building's lobby, sand was constantly falling from the dome above, burying more than half of the ground, but the sand pile showed signs of impact.
Jiang Xia squatted there, used his hands to push away the messy sand, revealing that piece of ground, and then saw something familiar.
A slab of stone embedded in the ground.
Pentagon.
There is a square groove in the center, covered with various complex patterns and lines. Two of the circular rings are connected to each other. Those patterns are some kind of text or symbols that he does not recognize.
Although it has experienced wind and rain, the surrounding stone slabs have shown signs of wind erosion, but this stone slab is still intact.
This thing is different from the stone slab that Jiang Xia remembered, in that world, that Mr. Bao activated with a strange stone. There are some details that are different, but they are basically of the same specifications.
If that thing is called a star array, then this thing must be too.
“It’s a bummer!”
A few minutes later, Jiang Xia cursed under his breath.
This thing needs energy to start.
And that pretentious, bandit-like Bao Ye didn't prepare any energy for him at all.
That's the kind of stone that glows.
This shows that either Mr. Bao did not expect Jiang Xia to come back, or he only had a vague understanding of the star array.
in other words.
It was very likely that the guy just tried it on a whim. It was not a well-prepared action at all. Jiang Shusheng, who died tragically, or rather, himself, was used as a guinea pig.
But it's no use getting angry.
He sat cross-legged beside the pentagonal star array stone slab, propped up his head, listened to the increasingly fierce sound of wind and sand blowing outside, and fell into deep thought. He urgently needed to sort out his thoughts.
There are two biggest problems now.
First, since there is a star array slate in this world, there must be a way to activate it. You have to find it yourself.
Second, how should he survive in this desert during this search?
He re-examined the things he currently had. There was a broken kettle that the fourth brother had given him. There was still half a cup of water in it. If he used it sparingly, it would last him about a day or two.
The only thing he had for protection was a rough dagger.
There was nothing to eat.
I saw it on the way here just now. Apart from the strange smell, the desert is very clean. There are no scorpions or venomous snakes at all. Even if you want to imitate Bear Grylls, you can't.
The most troublesome thing is that I don’t have a map or anything, and I know nothing about this desert.
Desperate situation.
Jiang Xia frowned. He had an even more terrifying thought in his mind. What if there was no world outside the desert at all?
What if this world is a desert?
I can’t think any further!
He stood up suddenly and tried not to think about the desperate situation.
In the past, uh, his experience of doing business in dangerous areas in his previous life told him that human thinking is a very strange thing, even if he told himself over and over again to persevere.
But once the desolate thoughts arise, they are difficult to extinguish.
Those decadent thoughts will grow little by little, like a poisonous snake wrapped around the neck, and finally crush the person.
"After the sandstorm stops, we'll go out and look for places with people. Let's rest for now."
Thinking of this, Jiang Xia dragged the rotten wooden box over, covered it on the stone slab, held the dagger in his hand, leaned his head on the box, and dozed off.
"boom"
After an unknown amount of time, there was a loud noise and the ground shook, causing Jiang Xia to suddenly open his eyes.
Lao Jiang followed his instinct and leaped forward swiftly, then lay down against the wall. He carefully stuck his head out and looked at the sand dunes outside the temple.
As a result, I immediately saw an incredible scene.
Yellow sand is rolling, a sandstorm has arrived, visibility is extremely low, just like a thick fog rising, but noisy sounds are coming from it.
That is the cry of humanity.
Although it was a language Jiang Xia couldn't understand, it still made him excited.
But then he saw seven or eight people riding strange motorcycles, speeding out from the smoke.
They wore leather coats, goggles, and bandanas covering their mouths, noses, and cheeks, leaving no skin exposed, and each of them carried a weapon.
Those motorcycles are also strange. They don't have wheels, but front and rear tracks. This is understandable. In a place like the desert, wheels are not as convenient as tracks.
But these obviously high-tech cars are dressed up in a flashy way.
There is a front part of a car, and there are decorations that look like a skeleton shell.
Something is chasing them!
The vibration of the ground was a bit abnormal, it was totally not the sound that these seven or eight motorcycles could make, it seemed like a heavy object was rushing towards them from the wind and sand.
Jiang Xia narrowed his eyes and saw the group of people rushing towards him, so he bent down again. The dagger in his hand turned a circle with his fingers and was tightly grasped.
The next moment, flames rose.
More than a dozen rockets flew out from the smoke with a sharp sound that Jiang Xia felt was familiar. Each of them drew a trajectory in the air, as if locked on, and bombarded the surroundings of the convoy in the form of a barrage of bullets.
The violent explosion caused the ground to shake again. Before the explosion, Jiang Xia curled up with his head in his hands.
A few seconds later, a wailing was heard from outside.
He stuck his head out again and saw a three-meter-tall four-legged tracked robot that did not exist at all in Jiang Xia's knowledge. It was wrapped in swirling sand and emerged from the smoke and dust with extremely low visibility.
As smoke billowed, the survivors in the convoy immediately used the collapsed pillars outside the temple as cover and began to fight back.
They carried energy packs on their backs, held gun-like weapons, various ray-like beams, grenades with flying blue plasma, and missiles continuously fired from four rocket nests on the backs of the quadruped robots.
Flames rising from the ground, soldiers shouting, weapons exploding.
All this gave Jiang Xia, who was hiding and watching, an eerie sense of familiarity.
The place has changed, the environment has changed, even the world has changed.
But the familiar feeling is exactly the same.
Sure enough, no matter which world they are in, humans are creatures that are keen on slaughtering and destroying.
However, after carefully looking at the attack mode of the four-legged robot, Jiang Xia reached out and rubbed his cheek. He touched his heart, feeling the frequency of his heartbeat.
"Well, it seems like we have come to an extraordinary place."
As he said this, Jiang Xia's face showed an eagerness to try.
What he feared most was that he was the only living person in the world.
Apart from that, he had nothing to be afraid of. As he said, he had already died once, or in Jiang Shusheng's words, he was already a "ghost."
There is hope right in front of us, there is nothing to be afraid of.
He took the broken kettle in his hand and drank most of the water he was reluctant to drink in one gulp, just like the most wonderful enjoyment before the war. Then he took a deep breath and held the dagger in reverse.
Taking advantage of the cover of smoke and dust, he rushed out of the temple.
Of course, it's not like rushing towards the robot and dying.
