Sand Scorpion and the Wine Cabinet

What did death taste like?

That was truly a difficult topic to explain clearly.

When he awakened from the warm sand pit, almost his entire body was firmly buried beneath the shifting sand. Only around his mouth and nose were bent iron pipes left in place to ensure he could breathe.

Still maintaining the posture he had been in before "falling asleep," the Arab did not hurry to move. He merely lay on his back, instinctively allowing himself to sink deeper into the sand, which at least offered some warmth.

Naturally, he did not have a sleep pod like so many foreign players, nor did he have the attentive services of some modern institution to look after his body. Rather, to be safe, Basim would deliberately conceal his body in this inconspicuous sandy environment every time, lest someone notice him while he slept.

—Like a Sand Scorpion lurking underground.

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Strangely enough, at this moment, this man who was only in his fifties, yet could indeed be called an "old man" by local standards of life expectancy, even struggled to curl himself up in the sand.

There were no convulsions, no screams, nor any violent gasping.

All sounds seemed to have vanished. The world was a desolate, deathly silence. Only the sensation of consciousness being covered inch by inch by death, like frozen frostbound earth, still lingered in his senses as a few illusory traces.

—Something within this shell of a body was still immersed in the "coldness" from moments ago.

Perhaps it had been only a few breaths, or perhaps a century had passed. Only then did the Sand Scorpion's eyeballs finally turn, agonizingly slowly, like the instant a dead man became alive again.

Struggling out of the sand pit with great difficulty,