The wind continued to howl, with the yellow sands still obscuring the sky.
Song Heping roughly pried open Hunter's lips—cracked and crusted over with blood due to excessive bleeding and severe dehydration—and poured in the last bit of murky, rust-flavored water that was more precious than gold.
Hunter's body convulsed unconsciously, making a sound like a broken bellows struggling to swallow.
His head was held by bandages, which had long been stained a nauseating dark brown by seeping blood, pus, and sand.
"...Water... please..."
Seeing the water, a young soldier under General Haftar's command, who looked barely seventeen or eighteen, stared blankly, his lips cracked and bleeding. His sand-covered face was a deathlike gray and pallid; his voice was so weak it was almost completely swallowed by the roar of the sandstorm.
His fingers scratched unconsciously at the scorching sand.
"There is none left."
Song Heping didn't even glance at him, acting with a kind of ruthless decisiveness and efficiency that cos from being in an extre environnt.
He quickly tightened the cap of the empty military water bottle and stuffed it back into his belt.
He surveyed the ragtag remnants of the squad trudging through the apocalyptic sandstorm.
Everyone looked as if they had just crawled out from the swamp of hell, covered head to toe in thick yellow sand, trudging unsteadily, eyes blurred, sustained only by the last vestiges of survival instinct and remaining will.
At the back of the group, two soldiers were practically half-dragging, half-carrying General Haftar, who was already half-unconscious, into a windbreak.
The general's once-powerful uniform was now in tatters, stained with blood and sand, his graying beard tangled, and his breaths faint.
"Wrench! Direction!"
Song Heping shouted with all his strength, his voice shredded and dispersed by the fierce wind, barely audible a few ters away.
Wrench was clutching a violently shaking military GPS and compass to his chest with his back and arms.
His cheeks were swollen and cracked from the flying sand, and he squinted painfully, trying desperately to make out the screen.
"It seems... slightly... west! The wind is too strong! Magnetic interference... damn it! This damn thing's about to be clogged with sand, it won't last much longer!"
His voice was full of despair.
"Boss, we were diverted by 15 degrees in the sandstorm, we estimate after the storm passes, we have to walk another 10 kiloters..."
10 kiloters...
Under normal circumstances, it's just a long-distance cross-country trek.
But here and now, it ans sothing entirely different.
In this dire situation, 10 kiloters could an the annihilation of the entire crew.
At that mont, Disaster Star approached.
"Boss, in this situation, the water will definitely not be enough... Even if the sandstorm passes, I'm afraid..."
As he spoke, Disaster Star glanced around.
"We'll die before we even get there."
An hour later.
The huge claw of the sandstorm finally loosened.
The last gust of wind, filled with sharp sand, reluctantly howled across the jagged rocks above the windbreak. Song Heping blinked away the heavy sand from his eyelashes, surveying his disintegrating team.
Everyone was curled up in the cracks of rocks and sheltered areas.
So were still retching unconsciously, expelling bile mixed with sand; others were completely limp, chests barely rising and falling, eyes vacantly staring at the dying sun; more simply sat or lay numbly, faces frozen in post-crisis survival yet deeply trapped in despair.
Thirst, like countless burning ants, gnawed at the last moisture deep in their throats, scorching their sanity.
In the silence, only the sounds of labored breathing remained, like a dilapidated bellows struggling to keep going.
"Disaster Star."
Song Heping's voice was as dry as sandpaper scraping.
He wiped his face and sand trickled down through his fingers, leaving dirty streaks on his face.
Disaster Star's eyes held a fatigue on the verge of collapse.
"Boss."
"How much water is left?"
Song Heping spat out each word with the weight of a thousand.
Disaster Star's Adam's apple moved with difficulty, as if that simple syllable had drained his last strength.
He silently unclasped a sand-covered, flattened canvas water bag from his waist, then pointed to another soldier nearby tightly holding the only relatively intact 10-liter plastic jerry can.
"Just this."
Disaster Star's voice was hoarse, carrying a sense of complete despair, "The canvas bag might have half a liter left, the can... at most ten liters. Over a hundred people..."
He shook his head, swallowing the rest of his words heavily.
The numbers alone had already pronounced the death sentence.
This amount of water, in the heart of the Sahara, was at best a fleeting comfort.
Ten liters.
Over a hundred parched mouths.
Twenty kiloters of scorching sand hell.
These cold words collided and exploded in Song Heping's sand-clogged, exhausted mind.
Each thought carried the rusty taste of blood and the searing pain of the desert sun.
The sandstorm had caused them to veer off course.
Ten kiloters turned into twenty... the sun would turn the sand to branding irons... every step would drain the last moisture from their marrow... within five kiloters, the first would fall...
Ten kiloters, half the people would beco mummies on the sand dunes...
Fifteen kiloters...
The oasis would be in sight, but no one would reach it...
Everyone, including Haftar, would beco desiccated specins.
If it were just him alone, Song Heping might make a desperate attempt.
But...
His gaze was involuntarily drawn to the crevice in the rock, where two soldiers were carefully laying General Haftar flat.
This once formidable hero now resembled a discarded ragged doll, his tattered uniform stained dark brown with blood and sand, his graying beard matted, his breathing so faint it was almost invisible.
The general's existence was the last aning and shackle for this troop.
He's dead, and everything is truly over.
Song Heping forced his gaze away from the General, scanning the faces of soldiers that were ashen, numb, left only with the instinct to survive, finally fixing on "Hunter," whose face was wrapped in filthy bandages, leaving only the cracked, peeling skin exposed—his throat emitting unconscious, dying rasping sounds.
Waiting to die?
A voice swept through his mind.
Dying of thirst on the road like a Sand Rat?
Letting everyone beco fertilizer for this desert?
No!
Absolutely not!
Another cold voice suddenly echoed clearly within his skull—
No water?
Then go find water!
If you can't find it, go take it!
Take it from the enemy's veins!
Those scraps from the GNA, the bastards from the SBS...
They must have water on them!
They've been ravaged by the sandstorm too; by now, they must be in chaos like a nest of stung sand scorpions!
The enemy's chaos...
Is the opportunity!
Is the only way for myself and these hundred-so people to survive!
Once this thought germinated, it grew like the toughest bramble in the desert, instantly piercing through all soil of hesitation, and frantically flourishing.
White Bear and Ferrari...
Four thousand n...
Well-equipped...
They've already crossed the border and are heading this way.
The original plan was to et at the oasis.
But eting anywhere requires ti!
They need ti!
And I need ti!
While the pursuers behind us are like over two thousand knives hanging above our necks, these guys would definitely not be more than fifteen kiloters away from my troops!
We must first deal with the threat behind us, seize the resources to survive, in order to hold out until reinforcents arrive!
Ti!
Water!
Initiative!
We must bite back hard before the enemy recovers from the sandstorm's blow, before they reorganize their pursuit fangs!
"Wrench!"
Song Heping turned sharply, the movent pulling at his cracked lips, a trace of salty blood seeping into his mouth.
"Boss!"
Wrench lifted his head from the pile of electronic equipnt half-buried by sand, his face bearing bloodstains made by sand grains and extre exhaustion, but his gaze still maintained its unique focus.
"Can you guess the situation of the GNA forces crazily chasing and biting us now?"
Song Heping asked coldly.
Wrench was stunned for a mont, then understood Song Heping's intention, a hint of fright flashed in his eyes, but was imdiately replaced by a near-gambler's frenzy.
He quickly fiddled with the GPS screen, grabbed the compass and shook it hard, trying to dislodge the sand inside.
"Signal... extrely poor! Interference is too strong! But... the storm sweeps from northwest to southeast... they're chasing against the wind... losses... must be heavy! Their formation must be scattered! Equipnt... must be damaged too! Now..."
He licked his cracked lips, his gaze becoming sharp.
"They're just a bunch of headless flies! No more than 15 kiloters away from us? Maybe closer! They're also looking for shelter! Utter chaos!"
"Chaos..."
Song Heping licked his dry lips, carefully savoring this word, a rusty breath of resolve spreading from him.
He took a deep breath of the air that wasn't so turbid anymore, and abruptly straightened his body.
The dry joints made slight creaking sounds, like rusty gears forcibly starting up.
"Everyone! Listen!"
His voice suddenly rose, like a rusty saber being unsheathed.
Each syllable carried a hoarseness close to tearing a throat and an undeniable power, hitting hard into each numbed soldier's ear.
Over a hundred almost non-thinking heads turned laboriously and sluggishly towards him.
"Water! It's gone!"
Song Heping raised the thoroughly deflated Military Water Bottle, shook it hard, only the sound of a few grains of sand rolling inside could be heard, hollow enough to chill.
"Direction! Off! At least twenty kiloters to the oasis!"
He stretched out his finger, pointed fiercely in the direction of the unreachable Kurtan Oasis.
"Twenty kiloters! Against the sun! Against the sand! Against thirst!"
His gaze was like a cold probe, stabbing one desperate face after another, "Tell ! Who can make it? Who can?!"
The roar clashed against the rock walls, provoking tiny dust to fall.
Dead silence.
Only heavy breathing and weathered rocks mourning silently.
"Waiting to die?"
Song Heping's voice suddenly lowered, yet like a poisoned ice pick, even more piercing: "Dying of thirst like stray dogs by the road? Becoming vulture's excrent?"
The soldiers' eyes fluctuated intensely, fear, unwillingness, a small spark being ignited struggled under despair's ashes.
"No!"
Song Heping's tone was resolute, his arm drawing a sharp arc in the air, pointing in the direction they ca from—that was the direction where thousands of pursuers were approaching.
"The way out! It's there!"
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