"This place is far too familiar to me. That desert was where we made the drones back then. I drank at least a pound of sand here!" Song He also grabbed a handful of yellow sand and examined it before casually tossing it into the wind. "The wind's picking up. The sandstorms here are pretty fierce, and it gets very cold at night. Let's set up the tent!"
"Your land of glory," Xiang Xiaotong teased.
"Hey, stop playing with that lame joke!" Song He complained, utterly speechless.
Xiang Xiaotong's expression suddenly changed slightly. She raised a hand and pointed at the neighboring dune. "A snake!"
"Your eyesight's pretty good." Song He narrowed his eyes and stared for a long while before finally spotting noodle-like patterns on the gently sloping dune—the traces left by a snake moving in winding curves. "These tracks... at first glance, they look like those of an Alxa Viper. But Alxa Vipers are barely found around here, and the production crew couldn't possibly have deliberately released snakes nearby. So it should be the legendary Baring Striped Snake."
"Baring Striped Snake? Never heard of it." Xiang Xiaotong looked around. "There seem to be more over there, too. Could this place actually be a snake den? Having us leave the Return Capsule in a snake den isn't very considerate of the production crew, is it? Are they venomous?"
"It's a newly discovered species. It's normal that you haven't heard of it. After all, while you're sleeping, I'm busy reading research papers." Song He said, "They're mildly venomous, and their toxin has slight hallucinogenic properties. Supposedly, after being bitten by one, if you stare at a reflective surface in the middle of the night—such as your reflection in a mirror or on the surface of water—the version of you in