The Leading Stars

Теmporаrу Rеsсuе Command Сеnter.

"What?! Fоund...?!" Officеr Liu аbruрtlу stооd up. Tо avoid causing emotiоnаl breаkdown аmоng thе fаmily mеmbеrs, hе wаlkеd outsidе while answering thе рhonе, lowering his voiсe to аsk, "Whose bоdу is it? Маlе оr fеmale..."

Тhе emоtiоns оf the thrеe studеnts' fаmilies instantlу shiftеd from dеspondenсy to intensе аgitаtion. Еveryonе trеmblеd uncоntrоllаblу whilе tightlу shutting their еуes. Тheу had beеn anхiоuslу awаiting thе lаtеst updates frоm the Rescue Tеam, but now theу realizеd that whеn nеws finallу arrived, no one wanted to hear it.

Liu Chengru was the first to break down. Perhaps she understood better than anyone else that Xiao Ai was the weakest and least capable of survival among the three. If there was tragic news, it was highly likely to concern her own daughter. Before Officer Liu even returned, she had already fainted into Old Meng's arms. Everyone quickly pinched her philtrum to revive her. Old Meng, weak in both hands and feet, collapsed beside his wife. His inner thoughts were roughly the same as hers—if their daughter truly met with disaster, both he and his wife would lose half their lives.

Officer Liu hung up the phone and walked back inside. Everyone crowded around him, encircling him completely. He quickly raised his hands to calm the atmosphere, saying, "Don't worry, everyone! The person found is not your child!"

The family members relaxed, but soon grew dazed again, listlessly returning to their seats. At this moment, the feeling of being worse off than dead was something they would never forget for the rest of their lives.

It turned out that the Rescue Team had discovered a male mummy. Based on the expiration dates of the food among the belongings, the time of death was estimated to be at least a year ago. It was unclear whether he had entered the desert alone or had become separated from a group and met an unfortunate end. Specific conclusions would have to wait until the Rescue Team transported the body back for examination and identification by relatives.

Other rescue teams, still searching for the three students deep in the heart of the desert, continued their rescue operations upon receiving the news.

"A mummy?" Bayunye breathed a sigh of relief. "Definitely not them."

"Day 8." Diao Zhuo synthesized the information from other rescue teams, feeling anything but relieved. Instead, the pressure grew heavier. "The students originally planned to reach Bilutu Peak in 8–9 days. So far, no one has found any trace of them near Bilutu Peak, which means they are still trapped in the desert. Moreover, the water they brought with them should have run out by now."

"Old Wang, when will we reach the location of the two Hai Zi on the map?" Brother Long asked.

Old Wang wandered around, looking here and there for a while, then sighed. "Less than six kilometers."

"Why are you sighing?" Bayunye frowned.

Old Wang shook his head, climbed into the vehicle, and said, "Let's go take a look."

Diao Zhuo and Brother Long were sharp enough to understand from his demeanor that, as an experienced desert route driver, he likely realized that the two Hai Zi had "moved."

"What are the characteristics near a Hai Zi?" Brother Long asked humbly, handing a cigarette to Old Wang. "Teach us."

"Nothing else, just lots of bugs, especially mosquitoes." Old Wang lit the cigarette, waved his hand to signal everyone to get in the vehicle, and said, "When night falls, it's something else... The desert gets very cold at night, but the Hai Zi stays warm. Mosquitoes love that."

Bayunye learned a new piece of knowledge. After getting into the vehicle, she pondered it several times and couldn't help but ask, "Why would a Hai Zi be warm at night? Is it because of the sun during the day?"Diao Zhuo drove calmly, "The evaporation rate in the desert is high. Without groundwater replenishment, the sun during the day could dry up the Hai Zi. Currently, there's an academic theory that meltwater from the Qilian Mountains and water from the Three Rivers Source recharge the underground rivers of Badanjilin through deep underground fault zones, forming some lakes that don't 'run away.' The underground environment is more stable than the surface, with less drastic temperature differences between day and night compared to the desert surface. At night, the human body perceives the Hai Zi as warmer than the sand, but in reality, the water temperature is similar day and night. This also involves the issue of thermal radiation."

Bayunye remained silent for a long time, regretting her question deeply—what nonsense was all that? If I'd known, I wouldn't have asked!

Diao Zhuo glanced at her sideways. She clasped her hands in a salute and said, "The way you just spoke reminded me a little of my sister."

"The way you look now reminds me a little of my granddaughter."

Bayunye clenched her fists and gritted her teeth. "You don't even have a son, where would you get a granddaughter?!"

Diao Zhuo pulled out a cigarette case and held a cigarette between his lips. "Call me 'grandpa,' and I'll have one."

"Diao Zhuo, if you weren't driving, I'd bite you to death."

"Come on, I can't wait." Diao Zhuo directly extended his right hand in front of her.

He Zhengren came out after his bath and half-reclined on the sofa watching the news.

"Next, here are some domestic updates: The search and rescue operation in the Badanjilin Desert continues. A male body has been discovered, which has now been ruled out as one of the three missing college students. Currently, the identity of the male body is still being confirmed..."

He Zhengren's hand gripping the remote tightened abruptly, and he slowly sat up. After spacing out for a moment, he irritably pulled out his phone, only to hear a mechanical female voice saying the subscriber was out of service. He thought for a moment, dialed another number, and the person on the other end was the captain of the Inner Mongolia volunteer team. "I saw the news. Was it our Beidou Rescue volunteers who found the victim? If so, we'll chalk up another success... No? It was a local herder?... What about Diao Zhuo? Still no news?... So, he didn't find the person? What now?... Sent directly to the police station?..."

After chatting and laughing for a while, He Zhengren hung up the phone. The smile on his face cooled, and he slowly let out a sigh.

The male body found in Badanjilin was very likely that person... He Zhengren sighed. Business is tough these days. After suffering losses and setbacks, perhaps this was the heavens' way of telling him—it was time to stop!

He closed his eyes and recalled the past. Back then, he and Rao Qinghui each led an expedition team, traveling all over, enduring hardships, often going hungry just to obtain a single piece of data. Rao Qinghui's status as an academic giant was widely recognized. Even after his death, his reputation remained undiminished. He Zhengren inherited Rao Qinghui's legacy, took over some of his projects, and wrote reports on aquamarine mines, causing a sensation in the industry and successfully replacing Rao Qinghui's position. According to his reports, besides rare metal deposits, aquamarine mines were also discovered in Xinjiang's Koktokay. However, the materials he had were limited. That car accident had nearly wiped out Rao Qinghui's entire team, and many of the expedition results and research findings had yet to see the light of day.He looked around; the room was elegantly and exquisitely decorated. Reflecting on his current life, it was incredibly comfortable. A refined life was built on money—without it, how could there be high quality? As a line from Dream of the Red Chamber aptly put it—

Everyone knows immortality is good, yet gold and silver they cannot forget!

Zheming felt his head buzzing, unsure how long he had been unconscious. Only when his tongue dried up as if shrinking into his throat did he gradually wake. The wound on his ear had begun to fester and suppurate, the pain still present, but compared to the thirst, the agony had lessened considerably.

"Zheming... you're awake..." Xiao Ai weakly crawled over.

Last night, she had checked his breathing and found he had only fainted, not died, which eased her mind somewhat. With great effort, she set up the tent, dragging and nudging him inside before collapsing from exhaustion and thirst, falling into a deep sleep. She woke several times during the night, each time thinking it was already dawn, only to check her watch and realize she had slept barely over an hour.

When the eastern sky began to lighten, Zheming woke, and so did she, but she was utterly lost about what to do next.

Though they had slept through the night, they still awoke utterly exhausted. Zheming lay flat, his eyes vacant, his lips shriveled from dehydration like two dried orange peels. They had gone without water for over twenty hours. If they couldn’t find a water source or be discovered by rescuers, they had only about a day and a half left in their lives.

Xiao Ai struggled to get up, feeling as if all her muscles had tightened, clinging tightly to her bones. "...Let's call for help."

"How...?"

"Burn things we don’t need, create some smoke... maybe... maybe someone will see it."

Zheming was now in a state worse than death; he would agree to anything she said.

Xiao Ai mustered her strength to pull their clothes from the backpack and pile them together, then dragged her heavy steps outside to try and gather some plants. However, desert plants were inherently resilient—how could they be easily uprooted by her? With a small pair of scissors, she painstakingly snipped at the branches. Though the branches appeared dry, they were incredibly tough. With little strength in her hands, after much effort, she managed to gather only a small handful.

The fire was lit, but with little combustible material, it crackled weakly. Smoke rose into the sky, seemingly dispersing halfway up, carried away by the wind. They had no idea if anyone could see it. Zheming and Xiao Ai watched with sinking hearts as the fire, lacking fuel, slowly died out after just a short while.

"Burn it all! Burn it all!" Zheming frantically threw everything he could see into the ashes.

Aside from the tent and food, everything they had was gathered together and lit again, even the wallet tossed into the flames.

Something fell out of the wallet. Zheming picked it up—it was a spare battery for the GPS. Somehow, it had slipped into the wallet and been stuck there all along.

Zheming smiled bitterly and threw the battery into the fire. If Zhang Tianen hadn’t abandoned them, they might have discovered this glimmer of hope while burning their belongings.

Xiao Ai stared blankly at the rising black smoke, wondering if Zhang Tianen had found water and whether his GPS was still functional. Deep down, she clung to a sliver of hope—or perhaps it was a fantasy—that Zhang Tianen, having found water, would return to rescue them.

In reality, Zhang Tianen’s GPS had run out of power and could no longer guide him. All he had left was a compass.In order to find water, he had traveled through the night, expending far more energy than the others, even using up all his bodily fluids. Before dawn broke, he could no longer walk. When he woke again, what lay before him was an endless expanse of rolling sand dunes, dotted sparsely with low-growing plants.

As soon as he opened his mouth, it filled with sand.

He reached out and tore off a branch from one of the plants, his palm pricked by thorns that left several small punctures, though no blood flowed. He stripped the leaves and stuffed them into his mouth, chewing desperately. The leaves held almost no moisture, their texture rough and astringent. After eating them, not only did his thirst remain unquenched, but his tongue also went numb.

Survival of the fittest, indeed! These nameless plants had adapted to such a harsh environment—first, by not retaining too much moisture in their leaves, and second, by not making themselves too palatable. Otherwise, no matter how deep their roots went, if their foliage were constantly eaten by other creatures, they wouldn’t survive.

Zhang Tianen moved his parched tongue, spat out the leaf residue, and was left with a lingering bitterness in his mouth.

If he remembered correctly, he was only 3 kilometers away from the lake marked on the map.

But soon, the ground temperature would rise. If he continued walking, his body’s water loss would accelerate two or threefold. Struggling to his hands and knees, he tried to find a shaded slope to pitch a tent beneath. Yet as soon as he stretched his limbs, his muscles tightened like overstretched rubber bands, forcing him to curl up weakly and roll down the slope, plunging into a soft patch of sand.

He discovered that the sand beneath the surface was surprisingly cool, and the plants grew slightly denser here, perhaps because they were closer to groundwater.

Knowing it was impossible to dig up water, he still clawed frantically at the sand. The deeper sand was darker in color, cold to the touch, but held no water. Perhaps digging a few meters deeper would reach damp sand, but no one had the strength for that.

He panted heavily, feeling dizzy and disoriented. He lay down in the pit he had just dug, haphazardly scooping sand over himself until only his head remained exposed. Dehydrated, his face was dry and dark, blending almost seamlessly with the sand from a distance. Like a beached whale, he lay there helpless and despairing, his mouth half-open. Some sand blew into his mouth with the wind, and his life felt like the grains in an hourglass—seemingly running out...

He didn’t know how long he lay there before his consciousness began to blur. Faintly, he thought he heard the sound of an engine approaching from afar.

Was someone there? He opened his eyes and strained his voice to shout, "Help... help..."

But the sound that emerged was so hoarse and faint that even his own ears could barely catch it.

The engine noise came and went intermittently, then suddenly ceased altogether, never to return. If it truly was a rescue vehicle that hadn’t found him in this area, the next vehicle or others following the tracks would likely not search nearby again.

Zhang Tianen wondered if he had imagined the sound. He hoped he had.