If it had been merely a narrow crack in the sky, Changdong wouldn’t have felt so unnerved. Clearly, it wasn’t. Between the crack and the opening, it was too much like an eye: composed of varying shades of sandy yellow and gray yellow, with a faint, eerie luminosity—much like the inner glow of a human eye. Ye Liuxi murmured, “It seems like a single eye. Could there be many such eyes?” She imagined the night sky filled with giant eyes—if they all opened simultaneously, it would be utterly terrifying. Changdong replied, “It just resembles an eye; it might not actually be one. Perhaps it’s merely a leak that happens to look like an eye.” Standing a bit far away, she couldn’t see it clearly, so she asked him, “Can you come closer?” Changdong nodded. The two pressed their backs against the Yadan terraces, moving slowly and quietly toward the better viewing side: this side faced directly toward the sandy terrace, and the sand flowing within the eye-like opening cascaded steadily from the terrace’s peak, flowing down through the trench that had been dug, like an unceasing waterfall before a curtain. After watching for a while, Ye Liuxi suddenly felt a tightness in his throat: "Changdong, look at that sand..." Changdong saw it—the shadow coffin, with a corner exposed, seemed to have an attractive force toward the sand. The sand, which should have fallen freely, suddenly sank into the opening as it passed through, gradually sealing the gap. The falling sand became sparser, and the light and shadow in front seemed to shift subtly. Changdong raised his head with alertness— the eye, which had been looking downward, had its eyelids lifted at some point, and now the eyeball was fixed, staring straight at them. In the next instant, the eyeball vanished. Changdong instinctively knew it hadn't simply closed its eyes. He pushed Ye Liuxi aside and shouted, "Watch out!" A straight column of sand surged forward, narrowly missing both of them and striking the Yadan terrace. He looked up again— the eye had flashed on and off once—and a second wave of sand surged directly toward Changdong. Changdong rolled to the side to avoid it. He had a good sense of what was happening: you thought that when the eyes closed, you lost sight of it, but actually, a massive surge of sand was being blasted out—though sand itself wasn't particularly frightening, coming from such an eerie pair of eyes, he didn't want to risk getting even a little bit of it on him. Yefuosi seemed to have picked up on the pattern too: "Changdong, get behind the Yadan!" Her position was closer to the Yadan formations, but Changdong, having just rolled over, ended up farther away: "You go first—I'll be right behind." He kept his gaze fixed on that eye, and as it once again faded into stillness, he dashed toward the Yadan— The eye's blinking had clearly accelerated. Suddenly, a slanted column of sand sealed off his path. Changdong spun around swiftly, took a few steps onto the Yadan platform, and leaped down from the side. As soon as he landed, a sudden weight settled on the back of his right lower leg. Sand had piled up on his leg. Changdong didn't pause to attend to it—he simply lifted his foot and kept running. Suddenly, his balance In an instant, Changdong suddenly understood: the flowing sand was indeed different from ordinary sand. Once it adhered to a tangible object, it quickly set and hardened, like wet soil compacted by a rammer. He looked up and saw that the column of sand that had just struck the Yadan platform was now solidifying, forming a mound as if it had grown out of the earth. Ye Liuxi didn't understand why Changdong had suddenly stopped moving: "Why aren't you moving?" "It's stuck." Before he could finish speaking, another surge of sand rushed in. Changdong's leg was trapped, and he could only roll aside to avoid it, catching a glimpse of Ye Liuxi, who charged in with her sword at an angle. With quick thinking, Changdong used his left leg to powerfully kick at the mound of soil that had piled up on his right leg. The soil had only recently hardened and wasn't yet sufficiently solid, so he managed to break through it. Instantly freed, he pushed off the ground and rolled over. Ye Liuxi was charging forward when suddenly he stood up—she didn’t expect it. She stumbled, and before Chang Dong could catch her, she carried him over and sent him sprawling. Fortunately, both of them reacted swiftly, rolling together almost simultaneously and both darting into the shelter of the Yadan formations. The sudden, sharp blows had been so unexpected, fast, and forceful that both of them were out of breath, barely able to speak, pressing their backs tightly against the Yadan. The sand spewing from the one eye seemed to travel only in straight lines—since the "line of sight" couldn’t bend, the safest spots must have been the blind corners. Neither of them moved, their hearts pounding, hesitating to venture out again. It wasn’t clear how long it had been before the wind finally subsided. Chang Dong asked softly, “You just held the knife and went out—what for?” Ye Liuxi thought it was obvious: “To save you.” “I know you saved me,” he replied, “but I wanted to know—was the knife meant to cut the sand platform, or was it meant to cut my leg?” Given her instinct to simply drive her off-road vehicle into and collapse the shadow coffin platform without a second thought, Chang Dong felt it necessary to ask some questions. Ye Liuxi said, “…that depends on how urgent the situation is.” Chang Dong remained silent for a while. After a moment, she called out, “Liuxi?” “Hmm?” “We’ll settle this going forward: whenever we encounter similar emergencies in the future, please make every effort to preserve my bodily integrity—unless I specifically request otherwise, don’t make decisions about my legs or arms. They’re not under your care.” — Dawn was beginning to break. The cool, fish-belly white light offered a sense of security. Chang Dong signaled for Ye Liuxi to stay put and walked a few steps toward the outer edge of the Yadan formations, then looked up. The sky was simply the sky—low, stretching out, and serene. The eye from last night felt like a distant, lingering nightmare. They rounded to the other side. What lay before them was ordinary, yet strangely unusual. Ye Liuxi exclaimed, “The platform with the shadow coffin is gone!” "They're gone—no need to look. Not just this one. The ones discovered yesterday, arranged in rows, should have vanished too. But this disappearance isn't abrupt. It's as natural as a few trees missing from a forest or a few flowers lost from a meadow. Chang Dong suddenly remembered something: 'Let's check the truck tire tracks!' They're gone too. What now? Previously, he had imagined the block shift at White Dragon Ridge No. 2, speculating that the blocks outside the camp might have been subtly replaced without anyone noticing. But now it seems clearly not the case. Ye Liuxi also found it hard to believe: 'How can the ground tracks of the trucks be gone? I simply can't believe it—could the ground have been pulled away like a layer?' This thought suddenly struck Chang Dong. He asked Ye Liuxi: 'Have you ever seen transparent film that can be written on and used for projection?' Ye Liuxi nodded. "Two transparent sheets of the same size. On one I draw the lake, its shore, and the willow trees; on the other, I draw the boats. When I overlay them, isn't the boat on the lake?" Ye Liuxi thought for a moment, then shook her head: "Not necessarily. Unless you've already planned the relative positions of the lake, the shore, and the trees before drawing, the overlay often goes wrong—boats might end up on the willow trees or even beneath the lake floor." Chang Dong wanted precisely this answer: "So the wheel ruts will press into the underlying Yadan terraces." Ye Liuxi paused, then quickly realized: "You mean—overlay?" "Overlay. I assume the blood you summon brings forth the Jade Gate Pass. The ghost flames, the shadow coffin—these exist only within the Jade Gate Pass, not in real life. They are real only within the context of the Jade Gate Pass." "When the wind rises, the real world and the Jade Gate Pass overlap at the Baidongdu location." "In the real world, there's the Bai Long Dui Yadan, us, the Ghost Flames, the shadow puppets, the earth platforms, and the wheel ruts—imagine these two layers overlapping. Isn't that a rather eerie scene? Yet once the Jade Gate is withdrawn and removed, everything returns to normal. Chang Dong pulls out the video transmission screen from her bag and shows her the photo synthesized yesterday: 'Pay close attention now. Change your perspective. Forget about the Bai Long Dui, remove it entirely, and imagine what the Jade Gate looks like.'—There, there will be a broad roadway, over a hundred meters wide. Along both sides of the road, there are earth platforms, each housing a shadow puppet, symmetrically arranged, stretching for dozens of miles." On the shadow coffin, there are paintings in the style of Han dynasty relief stones, depicting a group of convict criminals wearing chains as they pass through the pass. If you listen closely, beneath the wind and sand, you can hear a layered, wave-like song: —“Yumen Pass, Ghost Pass, each step beyond the gate drains your blood; you live in golden halls, enjoying your ease, while I weep as I march through the gate…” Inside the shadow coffin, stacked are shadow figures dressed in ancient garments—perhaps Tang dynasty attire, or possibly extending beyond the Tang dynasty—arranged in groups of nine, silent and still. Amid the vast, desolate countryside, ghostly green flames appear, carrying shadow camel caravans, and countless, elusive wind-sand tendrils that move in unpredictable ways. Above the earth platform, in the high sky, there are strange eyes. And both the eyes and the tendrils seem to protect the shadow coffin: —When Gray Eight attempts to open the coffin, his throat is severed by a spade; —The sand flowing out of the eye is actually being used to repair and re-solidify the damaged shadow coffin. Ye Liuxi had driven a truck along this route more than once. The ruts were winding, so her driving was irregular—sometimes on the road, sometimes off it—yet she never once collided with the shadowed coffin platforms. The cargo on her truck—clothing, shoes, records, books, various foodstuffs, even celebrity posters—was all intended for people. Yet Luo Bu Po was known as the Sea of Death, a land devoid of inhabitants. In reality, there were no settled communities here, unless… When the fisherman went out, he had once marked his path along the way, but eventually those marks vanished altogether. Ye Liuxi said, "Do you think the Jade Gate Pass is a similar place?" Chang Dong nodded. If it were up to him himself, he could never have ended up at the Jade Gate Pass—without Ye Liuxi's blood, there would have been no wind at all, and thus the Jade Gate Pass would never have come into being. But once it did emerge, people living nearby—whether he himself, Fei Tang, or Huo Ya—would all have had the chance to glimpse it. The fisherman might have stumbled upon the Peach Blossom Spring by sheer chance, riding on the wind of others, but such chance never repeats itself. Therefore, no matter how diligently he marked his path, once he emerged, he could never return. The Jade Gate Pass may go even further than the Peach Blossom Spring: while the people of the Peach Blossom Spring retire and never leave again—"never to return"—the Jade Gate Pass sends people out to learn about conditions beyond the pass, to bring in supplies, and so on. Yet the question remains: what about the people themselves? Has he and Ye Liuxi truly entered the Jade Gate Pass in these two instances? Why is the land so desolate, with not a single trace of human presence to be seen?