Chapter 306: Something Has Gone Badly Wrong

An Xuefeng’s strength was such that once he truly committed to breaking through the projection, those illusions had no means of stopping him. The only concern was that these particular illusions had existed inside An Xuefeng’s mental projection for years, and destroying them was, in a certain sense, equivalent to inflicting damage on his mind.

Letting them persist meant An Xuefeng suffered slow, chronic harm each time his comrades died in front of him again and again. Dismantling the projection meant a more severe blow to his psyche all at once. One was like a slow poison; the other was like cutting away infected flesh to the bone.

But with Wei Xun there, constantly linked to An Xuefeng, the moment any mental shock or damage arose it was shared between them.

An Xuefeng moved with extraordinary speed. In fewer than five seconds he had cut through every last illusion. When the “Wang Pengpai” screamed in disbelief and was “killed” by An Xuefeng, the entire scene shifted. But An Xuefeng paid the transformation no attention; he turned sharply sideways, voice tight with concern.

“You, how are you feeling?”

His Tour Guide. His linked Tour Guide, sharing his pain, sharing his mental trauma. An Xuefeng had moved fast enough, but the violent headache still told him that the full weight of the mental damage had not been without cost.

The Tour Guide on his back said nothing. The young An Xuefeng felt something wet against the back of his neck, and his scalp prickled.

He was crying. His Tour Guide was crying.

His Tour Guide was very sensitive to pain, and An Xuefeng only learned this after he had already caused tears. It was a wretched feeling. The young An Xuefeng was momentarily at a complete loss. Yes, this was his Tour Guide. Even without many memories, even as nothing more than a projection, he had recognized it the instant they met.

It was a strange and wondrous feeling; minds linked, thoughts flowing between them. But An Xuefeng wished their physical sensations could flow between them too, so he could take on more of the pain.

He tried to lift the Tour Guide down from his back, but the grip around him was like a slow loris clinging to a branch; genuinely, stubbornly tight. His own strength was far greater, but An Xuefeng didn’t dare use force. Standing still wasn’t a solution either.

So, An Xuefeng carried him on his back and walked slowly in circles through the cemetery. And yes, once the illusions were gone, the real cemetery had revealed itself. The dim, oppressive amber light was gone; the crushing atmosphere of despair was gone; and the cemetery turned out to be rather neat, even somewhat beautiful.

“This is Wu Lecheng’s grave.”

An Xuefeng walked with Wei Xun on his back to a headstone. Clusters of roses grew beside it. Practically speaking it made no sense, but inside a mental projection, everything was its own kind of normal.

“Wu Lecheng was twenty-eight when she died. She used to say no one ever dared give her roses.”

Wu Lecheng had been genuinely intimidating; she’d served in the military, had a righteous bearing about her, a forceful personality, and kept her hair cut short to her ears. Most people treated her like one of the guys and never thought about what she might quietly like.

“Wang Pengpai actually wanted to send them for a long time, but never worked up the nerve. He followed me for quite a while, always seemed cheerful on the surface; but underneath, that man is genuinely simple-hearted.”

An Xuefeng spoke slowly, then walked on to the next headstone. The space around this one was very clean, with only a roasted chicken set before it.

“Yu Hehui loved roasted chicken. The fox spirit influence ran deep in him. He always held himself back; he never wanted his animal nature to take over. So, while he was alive, he never once let himself indulge and eat roasted chicken. He’s been eating his fill ever since.”

“This is Tong Hege’s grave…”

“This one is Tong Hele’s…”

An Xuefeng named many people Wei Xun recognized, and some he had never heard of.

“This is Xu Ye’s grave. He worked with snakes, and we’d collaborated more than a few times. He was actually getting ready to join Return. He died opening the Pyramid.”

“This is Liu Hongyan. She was from the same hometown as Tong Hege; the two of them were close. She was killed by a Butcher Tour Guide in the Lingtan journey.”

“This is Jiang Haitao…”

As An Xuefeng spoke, the body on his back gradually stopped trembling with pain, and the sharpness in An Xuefeng’s eyes gradually returned. He remembered everything; he was no longer the young man trapped by illusions.

In the next instant he lifted Wei Xun down from his back and held him in his arms instead.

The An Xuefeng who was fully himself knew, of course, exactly how to ease Wei Xun’s pain most quickly.

An Xuefeng kissed away the tears on Wei Xun’s cheeks, and then the burning kiss moved downward and landed on his lips. Their breath intermingled, and the cemetery around them began to dissolve and blur; white replacing everything, until it became a vast expanse of glacial peaks and snowfields.

Moving from An Xuefeng’s mental projection into Wei Xun’s was not difficult; the bond between them had deepened. Nearly half a month without a link had caused Wei Xun’s pain snowfield to grow taller. The peaks An Xuefeng had cut down before had risen again, and An Xuefeng cut them down a second time.

A thunderous collapse rang out as the snowfield fell. Pristine white snow roared like a tidal wave and swept downward, yet it couldn’t touch a single hair on Wei Xun. An Xuefeng still held him, and the Return Journey Saber manifested in force, planted upright before them, blocking the cascading snow.

Wei Xun was breathing in ragged gasps in his arms. An Xuefeng’s eyes were dark and deep. The kiss came again.

Did a normal linked Tour Guide and Tourist kiss during spiritual relief?

They did not. A simple touch was all it took to complete a basic session of relief, and the process was fast. For pairs as deeply familiar with each other as Zhang Xingcang and Dreamchaser, whose thoughts meshed in near-perfect sync, a basic session could be over in three seconds, something enormously useful in the middle of combat.

But An Xuefeng preferred to leave his own presence on Wei Xun. Especially now that they had seen each other’s true hearts and grown closer. The possessiveness in him had become impossible to contain, and the dark thoughts he had long kept buried in his chest could no longer be held down.

Though it was An Xuefeng who had first proposed letting *** use his body and beginning to attempt fusion, after learning that *** had already given Wei Xun half of his heart, the red stone, An Xuefeng still couldn’t help feeling jealous.

*** was evidently better at speaking his feelings.

It was to *** that Wei Xun had confessed about the Adventure too.

And “so everything we feel is real, it always has been”; that had also been ***’s line.

Even though they were the same person, the possessiveness in him let out a jealous roar like a wounded beast. The kiss had deepened at some point without his noticing, as though trying to take the last breath from Wei Xun’s lungs.

Watching Wei Xun suffer from the lack of air, and then find pleasure in that suffering, and then at last actively press closer to him, craving more of both the pain and the pleasure, a shadow passed through An Xuefeng’s eyes. He was used to restraining himself, but he was beginning to think that perhaps letting go would be better.

******

Wei Xun was in genuine pain right now. The mental damage that erupted the moment An Xuefeng shattered the projection had nearly knocked him unconscious. The agony tore through him like a venomous snake writhing and biting inside his body, and compared to before it was significantly harder to manage, as though his pain sensitivity had been amplified several times over, affecting even his mind.

Midnight had probably passed. It was October 3rd now.

The next round of the end-of-period penalty’s deprivations was not far off; without any extension, it would arrive at midnight between October 4th and 5th. The intensifying pain was probably a kind of warning sign.

Wet tears slipped from the corners of his eyes. Wei Xun almost never cried from pain. But he had cried several times since entering the Agency. There was a theory that women lived longer than men partly because they used tears to release emotion, and felt better in body and mind afterward.

Wei Xun didn’t particularly notice that effect, but in the midst of the unbearable pain his body was shaking faintly with something else. The connection between agony and pleasure had been carved deeply into his instincts by now. His body feared pain, yet the moment he thought of the pleasure that followed it, the pain became easier to bear.

Only this time the pleasure was taking a while to arrive. The young An Xuefeng was evidently far less in sync with him than the present one, and Wei Xun had been enduring for a long time, enduring through what felt like the young An Xuefeng’s endless, rambling complaints muffled somewhere in the background. If he’d had the energy, Wei Xun would have punched him long ago.

When An Xuefeng finally kissed him, things finally felt right. Shifting from An Xuefeng’s mental projection into his own, the pain snowfield collapsing again, none of it mattered to Wei Xun anymore. The violent pain swept in alongside pleasure, and at the same time Wei Xun felt something subtler; a thread of tremendous force, flowing into him along with the pleasure.

It was An Xuefeng’s power. Wei Xun had experienced relief sessions with An Xuefeng before, and had felt the firebird feathers, but this was entirely different. It was purer, carrying only An Xuefeng’s aura with no other contamination mixed in. And it was stronger; Wei Xun even felt the pain inside him being suppressed.

Wei Xun’s whole body went rigid. Once the pain was suppressed, the balance between pain and pleasure broke entirely. A vast, almost unbearable pleasure surged upward and swallowed him whole in an instant. His mind went blank, his body trembled and convulsed, and he had no idea how long it lasted before the intensity finally began to pass, only to give way not to calm but to a dense, crawling itch.

An unbearable itch spread from his skin through to his bones, as though ten thousand small creatures were moving over and inside him. A single touch was enough to make him shudder. His body felt as though it had stopped obeying him; the moment it sensed An Xuefeng’s presence it pressed toward him without any control, as though he were the only antidote.

So, this was what addiction felt like.

What remained of Wei Xun’s reason registered this clearly.

His earlier pursuit of pain and pleasure hadn’t been addiction. [Read on RanaTranslations🌸] It had been Wei Xun actively chasing what he wanted, entirely of his own choosing, with his reason intact.

But now, when An Xuefeng’s power entered through the bond into the most tender and vulnerable and unguarded space of Wei Xun’s mental projection, that raw, instinctive pursuit and hungry craving that came in its wake; this was addiction.

Such tremendous power was like a sweet poison. One touch and you were completely tamed, completely lost, wanting nothing but more. How could it not addict a Tour Guide, given that pure and concentrated a dose of Abyss energy?

The Weeping Medium’s loyalty to his brother had reached a level Wei Xun genuinely struggled to comprehend. It was difficult to imagine the Weeping Medium remaining as devoted as ever after his brother had been sealed in the Inca Sun Gate for so many years, unwilling to even pursue the Jia-class rank; even now, with the Puppet Master dead and the Jia-3 position sitting open, the Weeping Medium clearly had no interest in it whatsoever.

Wei Xun had wondered before whether his brother had given the Weeping Medium some kind of substance, or used some special method of control. But now, hazily, a thought surfaced; what if the Weeping Medium had simply become addicted to the Puppeteer’s pure Abyss aura?

But that was hardly the kind of question you thought about at a time like this. His clarity and reason had barely surfaced before another wave of pleasure washed them away. It was too much; Wei Xun had never experienced anything close to this. His body felt as though it had broken, shaking and convulsing without stopping, the intensity driving him nearly to the edge of madness.

Instinctively he began to struggle, trying to escape the cage that was An Xuefeng. He seemed to succeed; the other person didn’t stop him too forcefully, and Wei Xun gasped for breath and tried to crawl further away. But just as he was almost out, just as the tension in his nerves began to release, a large hand seized his leg and pulled him back by force.

Then the unbearable pleasure descended again. Wei Xun’s mind went completely blank, rising as though into clouds, until he could no longer tell the difference between pain and pleasure, his perception seeming to break entirely.

It was like the interplay between hunter and prey; the relentless pursuit, followed by a sudden easing that let the prey’s nerves unknot themselves, and then the net snapping closed, a single decisive strike.

His thoughts dissolved entirely. All he could see was white, endless white. No escape, only surrender. Wei Xun’s tears fell freely, but his smile was happier than anything; he loved this feeling too much. His body felt as though it had been immersed in water at exactly the right temperature. The comfort and contentment of it made him feel like a snake just waking from hibernation, languid and drowsy, his thoughts growing slower and slower.

But a single point of cold at his heart kept the last shred of clarity alive in him. This was when his defenses were lowest, when he was most relaxed, most open, most susceptible to being drawn into saying things he hadn’t meant to say. Not engaging his mind at all, responding on instinct alone.

If An Xuefeng asked him something now, if not for that small cold point in his chest, Wei Xun might well have answered honestly.

Wei Xun had never forgotten An Xuefeng’s former profession. There were secrets between him and the Puppeteer, between him and his missing parents, things he had genuinely never told An Xuefeng.

Would An Xuefeng ask?

Wei Xun thought this in a loose, half-conscious way, with a faint edge of alertness underneath it. When the pleasure came again and he couldn’t help trying to escape, and he found that An Xuefeng let him go, only to catch him again when he was almost free and deliver another wave; Wei Xun hazily confirmed it.

An Xuefeng was trying to ask him something. Otherwise, he wouldn’t keep doing this, again and again, in the same pattern. Though he could simply ask directly, even if the answer might not necessarily be truthful.

It felt very good, but Wei Xun’s mood had gone faintly flat. [Read on RanaTranslations🌸] He found he couldn’t quite summon much enthusiasm. When An Xuefeng lowered his head to kiss him again, Wei Xun moved listlessly and turned his face just slightly, so that An Xuefeng’s kiss landed at the corner of his mouth instead.

Then Wei Xun felt An Xuefeng’s breath moving close against his ear. Was An Xuefeng reading his state?

What did he want to ask?

Honestly, knowing An Xuefeng’s character, the likelihood of him actually taking advantage of the moment to pry into something private was not particularly high.

But there was still that faint, slight dissatisfaction.

Wei Xun thought this while catching his breath, his body still trembling at intervals, as though still caught inside the pleasure, which was also a genuine physical response. Aside from the small sliver of calm provided by the butterfly fragment, there was no outward difference. He felt An Xuefeng’s breath brush against his ear for a long time, long enough that Wei Xun was beginning to feel mildly impatient, and also a little curious. What on earth did An Xuefeng actually want to ask?

In the next moment, An Xuefeng finally spoke.

“Do you like me?”

Wei Xun heard him ask it quietly, his voice carrying an unfamiliar trace of uncertainty.

The question landed outside what Wei Xun had been expecting, and yet was somehow entirely within reason.

“More or less.”

He couldn’t have explained why, but a kind of warmth, soft and light as a fluffy ball, filled his chest. He murmured the answer, then heard inwardly, with some amusement, a distinctly dissatisfied tch, followed by the sound of a man grinding his teeth with mortified indignation.

Then came An Xuefeng playing coy and circling back at it from another angle.

“Do you like *** more, or An Xuefeng more?”

Before Wei Xun could answer, An Xuefeng delivered another surging wave of pleasure. [Read on RanaTranslations🌸] When a person was at the height of sensation their mind was essentially incapable of thinking; faced with a pressing question, the body defaulted to instinct and simply echoed the last word it heard. An Xuefeng asked again, and by normal logic Wei Xun should have repeated whichever name An Xuefeng had just said, “An Xuefeng.”

But instead…

“Both… of you.”

Wei Xun said it breathlessly, with the faintest choked quality of someone who had been thoroughly pushed past their limits, his voice barely there.

An Xuefeng laughed despite himself, exasperated.

“Still sharp, are we? Little Tour Guide.”

But alongside the exasperation and the laughter, there was a thread of genuine surprise. That Wei Xun could hold on to a shred of reason even at a moment like this was something An Xuefeng hadn’t anticipated. Pouring his power into Wei Xun like this was addictive for Wei Xun, yes, but it was also currently the fastest way to wear down the pain snowfield and accelerate the deepening of their bond. An Xuefeng had thought through the costs and benefits of the addiction, and had spoken to Wei Xun about it beforehand.

But the fact that Wei Xun had kept his reason through all of it made An Xuefeng, if anything, more pleased.

Yes, genuinely pleased.

It meant that Wei Xun’s dependence on him and closeness toward him didn’t come purely from addiction. Wei Xun’s own choices were in it too.

He had chosen him.

It was just “more or less,” but An Xuefeng was happy, and Wei Xun was happy too. They kissed once more, and Wei Xun finally got his breath back. An Xuefeng held him and handed him a cup of water, and Wei Xun realized he had returned from the mental projection to reality.

In the same large bed.

Wei Xun tilted his chin up slightly. An Xuefeng put the cup down, knowing from that what he wanted to say, and lowered his head to listen.

And then An Xuefeng heard Wei Xun say softly, with a light laugh, “Let me be on top.”

An Xuefeng’s arms around him tightened in an instant, holding so hard it was almost painful, but Wei Xun didn’t struggle. He stretched out more boldly instead, like a flower opening, and even lifted his own soft and strengthless arms to loop them around An Xuefeng’s neck of his own accord.

A tendon stood out in An Xuefeng’s neck. But in the end he didn’t agree, and held himself in check. They were leaving for the Sahara tomorrow; they would have to be up by six at the latest. There genuinely wasn’t time, and it wouldn’t be good for Wei Xun’s body either.

He wanted their first time to happen somewhere without any need to rush, with more ceremony, with more depth, more romance.

In the end, though he didn’t go through with it fully, he found other ways.

When it was all over Wei Xun was genuinely exhausted. An Xuefeng settled him into a tub filled with warm water, carefully parted his legs and checked them over, and found that the inside of Wei Xun’s thighs had been chafed rather badly; the skin was tender and looked raw and red across a good stretch. The sight of it put a pang in An Xuefeng’s chest. He went swiftly back to the room, changed the tangled bedsheets for fresh ones, then brought a special healing ointment and applied it carefully.

After all of that, Wei Xun was tucked into soft covers and asleep. An Xuefeng, by contrast, felt more alert than ever, almost refreshed. The problem in the second layer of the mental projection had been resolved, but it was more than just the second layer.

The young An Xuefeng projection that had existed in the second layer had now absorbed the memories and strength of the present An Xuefeng, which was enough for it to resolve the issues in the third and fourth layers on its own.

One night should be about enough. With the third and fourth layers resolved, he could take Wei Xun in for another visit, and they would be at a moderate level of bonding; the kind between a Tour Guide and a Tour Team captain with a deepened link.

An Xuefeng’s mouth curved up slightly. He sat quietly at the edge of the bed and looked at Wei Xun for a moment, feeling a faint itch in his throat. He wanted a cigarette, but he had decided to quit last time; so, he took one of the mint honey candies Wei Xun kept in a jar beside the bed and crunched into it instead.

Candy between his teeth, An Xuefeng began quietly and efficiently packing the clothes Wei Xun would need to bring.

October in the Sahara was actually a reasonably good time to go; midday temperatures hovered around thirty to forty degrees, well below the summer peak of fifty. But nights could still be cold.

An Xuefeng had primarily prepared spring and autumn clothing for Wei Xun, along with desert goggles, a scarf to wrap around the head and face, a multi-use neck gaiter, UV-protective arm sleeves, and similar gear. Wei Xun had albinism and couldn’t be in direct sunlight for long; but none of this equipment looked out of place, because An Xuefeng was bringing the same things for himself.

Once the clothes were packed, An Xuefeng moved on to his usual routine of maintaining his weapons. He had quite a few: the Return Journey Saber, a gun, poison-treated daggers, a pouch of specially made throwing darts, a chain claw, and others. But this time An Xuefeng went ahead and serviced Wei Xun’s weapons as well. After running a whetstone over the Madman’s Killing Blade and watching the sharpness of it seem to lean forward with aggression, An Xuefeng gave it a satisfied flourish and thought about finding it a proper new sheath.

Then somehow, without quite knowing how it happened, he found himself drifting back to the side of Wei Xun’s bed, where he stood for a moment looking down at him. Something crossed his mind that he couldn’t quite name, and An Xuefeng went faintly red. He steadied himself, reached out, and lifted the edge of Wei Xun’s covers to check the inside of his thighs again.

After all, once they entered the Death Sahara, evading the unpredictable black sandstorms would mean riding white camels into the deep desert. Extended camel riding was genuinely punishing for the uninitiated. A desert animal form would be useful for Wei Xun, An Xuefeng thought.

A normal person who had three animal forms would earn the purple title Child of Nature, but in Wei Xun’s case the pure Abyss power concentrated inside him was too overwhelming, and so far, no new title had appeared. That said, An Xuefeng had checked using the Great Druid title and had confirmed that the natural energy within Wei Xun wasn’t lacking either; one more animal form would be enough to trigger the title.

It was a bit late to work on that now, but An Xuefeng recalled that Qi Le’chen had specifically sent Wei Xun a certain egg. That might be of some use.

He was still thinking this through as he lifted Wei Xun’s covers, and at that moment came a quiet knock.

Tap, tap.

No, not at Wei Xun’s door. It was at his own door, next to it through the connecting passage. An Xuefeng’s expression sharpened. He passed through the hidden door back to his room and opened it to find that what had knocked was not a person, but a paper crane.

Bai Xiaosheng’s paper crane.

Bai Xiaosheng had something to tell him? But at this hour, what could there possibly be that Bai Xiaosheng couldn’t handle himself?

Had something happened at the Inca Sun Gate again?

An Xuefeng raised an eyebrow in surprise, unfolded the crane, and glanced at it. On it were written three large characters.

“Yin-Yang Butterfly.”

******

Yin-Yang Butterfly felt certain he had spent every last tear he had in him. His eyes were even a little swollen and aching, blurred with tears, and he genuinely couldn’t understand why the Weeping Medium could cry this much and still be fine. Was it really just the title doing the work?

He’d been at Return from daytime all the way into the middle of the night. Honestly, Return at this hour made Yin-Yang Butterfly a little uneasy, especially with Bai Xiaosheng sitting right next to him, saying nothing, writing things down in a notebook, and glancing over at him from time to time. It made Yin-Yang Butterfly’s skin prickle; he was even afraid to look at his phone.

But leaving openly would feel like losing face, and no one had come to fetch him, not even a Yu Hehui or someone similar, anyone who would have given Yin-Yang Butterfly a natural pretext to make a graceful exit. Nobody came. Nobody at all.

Yin-Yang Butterfly went immediately on alert. He decided this must be some kind of test Bing-1 was putting him through, absolutely not being forgotten. Yin-Yang Butterfly was a Yi-2 Tour Guide, a Knight of the Mutual Aid Alliance.

This was definitely a test. So, Yin-Yang Butterfly gritted his teeth and held on, and sat there shedding silent tears in Bai Xiaosheng’s direction. At three-thirty in the morning, someone finally came, and that someone was An Xuefeng.

In that instant Yin-Yang Butterfly’s heart almost stopped.

******

“Morning.”

Wei Xun had a reliable internal clock and woke naturally at five in the morning. When he first stirred, his hand closed on habit, gripping at the air. He had held on to what he wanted to experience last night, if they’d gone the full distance it would certainly have been something memorable.

His thoughts settled. He exchanged greetings with Yu Hehui and Tong Hege, who had returned at some point during the night. Tong Hege was stretched out on the sofa dozing; Yu Hehui was alert and awake, and as Wei Xun went to wash up he listened to Yu Hehui’s report.

The Mutual Aid Alliance had taken in five hundred new members the previous day; four hundred and fifty-two Tourists and fifty-seven Tour Guides, given that the Mutual Aid Alliance did have standards for entry. All of the new members showed genuine potential.

The thirty-six spots for junior Councilors and thirty-six for mid-rank Councilors had both filled; the shockwaves from the Puppet Master’s death had lasted the entire night, and the more perceptive among the new joiners had invested overnight and paid their way up to mid-rank Councilor status.

The senior Councilor positions and the Knight spots above them still had restrictions in place and were not yet full; those who had climbed that high were mostly already Wei Xun’s trusted people.

“The Butcher Alliance has sent over sixty percent of the revenue from the Shepherd Alliance’s side.”

Yu Hehui said. With the Puppet Master dead and the cornerstones of the Shepherd Alliance; Pinocchio, Silverfish, and the Hair Ghost, all missing, the Shepherd Alliance had naturally become a pie to be divided. The Butcher Alliance had moved fastest and taken the largest share, without the Mutual Aid Alliance even needing to push for it; the Weeping Medium had simply sent over sixty percent of the proceeds directly.

The Weeping Medium’s attitude toward Bing-1 had shifted considerably from before. He had also sent another invitation, expressing a wish to sit with Bing-1, recall the Puppeteer together, and talk over some old matters. Wei Xun would certainly have agreed in the past, but with more pressing things at hand, Yu Hehui had politely declined on his behalf.

The Weeping Medium was sharp enough that he had almost certainly interpreted this as Bing-1 deliberately making him wait.

Having touched briefly on Mutual Aid Alliance matters, Yu Hehui moved on to the main subject: the Death Sahara.

“I’m staying behind. Tong Hege goes with you.”

The Mutual Aid Alliance had just been established and was in the thick of things; there would be no shortage of people watching it with envious eyes. An Xuefeng, Wei Xun, Dreamchaser, and Zhang Xingcang were all going to the Sahara, so someone had to stay and hold the fort.

Yu Hehui had thought it over thoroughly and concluded that his skills; infiltration, intelligence gathering, quiet elimination, were unlikely to see much use in a Latitude 30 Degrees journey. With Return’s people going along, combat strength was already well covered.

What Wei Xun needed on this trip was someone to keep him in one piece. As long as he lay low, he would survive until An Xuefeng found him.

Though Yu Hehui privately doubted Wei Xun would lay low at all.

Bingbing was winding around Wei Xun’s feet and meowing, but Wei Xun had no intention of bringing the cat this time either.

“I’ve prepared some fox spirit energy from the Heavenly Fox for Tong Hege, he can use it to shift into a ferret form.”

The fact that Wei Xun kept a ferret was known to most people from the Northern Tibet journey. Bringing a ferret along again would raise no eyebrows.

“A ferret in the Sahara,” Wei Xun said with some amusement, and settled in front of the mirror to let Yu Hehui dye his hair. The Sahara’s temperatures were also somewhat problematic for a ferret’s white coat, the logic of the snow leopard’s influence causing white hair didn’t hold up nearly as well there. Besides, white hair was too conspicuous; black would be more appropriate.

“Wan Xiangchun and Lu Shucheng aren’t going, they’re staying at Return.”

Wei Xun said at an easy pace.

“From Return we have An Xuefeng, Wang Pengpai, Bai Xiaosheng, Wang Yushu, Mao Xiao Le, and me. Then Dreamchaser and Zhang Xingcang if they’re willing. And Half-Life Daoist from Metaphysics. That’s nine people.”

This excursion into the Death Sahara was primarily for An Xuefeng to help find the white sand that would lift Wei Xun’s penalty, but for most of the others the goal was to kill the creature deep in the Death Sahara and recover the butterfly fragment. Everyone going had been handpicked by Dreamchaser as among the people he trusted most.

“No one from Flying Swan?”

Wei Xun asked. Metaphysics had sent Half-Life Daoist, but Flying Swan didn’t seem to have put anyone forward. He turned a small egg over in his hands, a dull-yellow egg dotted with brown specks.

The small gift Qi Le’chen had pressed into his hands at the time.

【Name: Novelty Pet Egg】

【Quality: Rare】

【Effect: Hatches into a loyal novelty pet! Species determined by incubation environment.】

【Note: It’s just a small pet! Don’t expect it to kill your enemies or clear scenic spots for you, hmm? That said, it’s a fine companion for early warning, resource tracking, and scouting. All depends on how you raise it.】

“If this hatches in the Sahara, it’ll probably be a desert creature.”

Wei Xun could sense the life inside the egg, it was on the verge of hatching at any moment. Qi Le’chen’s gift was genuinely well chosen; the practical value was high. A desert species meant something like a horned viper, a jerboa, a fennec fox, or perhaps an Israeli golden scorpion or a desert viper.

“Death Sahara has many dangers, and a creature like that would certainly have special instincts for sensing them.”

Yu Hehui was already worrying again as he talked, wanting to come along despite himself. The feeling was exactly like watching a child go on their first solo trip; an endless list of things to fret over. He finished dyeing Wei Xun’s hair and walked a few laps around the room, only to find that Wei Xun’s clothes, the things he’d need, even his weapons, An Xuefeng had prepared all of it already.

He had even prepared new storage tools, replicated by Wang Yushu, since Agency-issued storage tools were unreliable in the Sahara.

In the end, the restless Yu Hehui went with Wei Xun to the Eight-Armed Nezha City, watched with his own eyes as Wei Xun used a carved statue of a strange bird to invite the Nezha Spirit into the small golden urn, and only then settled down a little. The Nezha Spirit, being a good older brother, had promised to take on a completely new form and under no circumstances appear again as a strange bird or in its original state.

“Once I’m in the Sahara, almost anything I do there should be enough to complete the Explorer orange title.”

Wei Xun thought through it; the series of title task completions had already reached ninety-eight percent. He might not even need to reach the Sahara, stepping off the plane in Morocco might be enough for the percentage to fill on its own.

Explorer, Adventurer, Archaeology Expert, Wild Heart; these were the main titles he would rely on in the Sahara.

His Insects were coming along too, tucked away for emergencies. He’d heard there were plenty of insects in the Death Sahara; Baby Corn might find that very agreeable. Little Red wasn’t coming, but Wei Xun was bringing Boss Maggot’s cocoon, for some reason Boss Maggot had been stuck in a state of perpetually almost but not quite hatching, and Wei Xun felt better keeping it close.

And there was also the one-point-five-second Thriller title as a last resort, though using that identity carried the risk of exposure.

An Xuefeng had mentioned that because the gap between their current levels was so large, entering the Death Sahara would very likely send them to different zones. Wei Xun thought that was actually fine.

Once everything was more or less packed, Wei Xun walked out of his room into the common area. It was eight in the morning; everyone was assembled and ready to depart, it should have been time for the send-off ceremony. But Wei Xun found that from An Xuefeng all the way down to Mao Xiao Le, every face was set with unusual gravity.

“Now that everyone’s here, I’ll say this once more.”

Seeing Wei Xun enter, An Xuefeng’s voice was low and measured.

“According to Zhang Xingcang, Dreamchaser has been in a deep and unresponsive sleep since early this morning; unable to wake, breath faint, condition unclear.”

“Something has gone badly wrong in the Sahara. We’re departing immediately.”