His Senior Brother couldn't bear to see his junior brother cry, and his tone softened, but his words still left no room for argument. "We can't all leave together. First, our work here isn't finished. Second, we can't carry out all these instruments and documents. Travel light and make your way out of the Gobi. I'll wait for you to come back, and then we'll finish the assignment together."
The young people couldn't disobey his orders. They left, glancing back every few steps.
[My Senior Brother lied. He never lived to see us return.]
As Ye Chu finished reading that line, a loud bang came from outside.
They all stood and looked outside. Through the window, they could see a figure in the previously empty desert. He lay motionless on the sand, his head pointing in the direction his teammates had left.
Ye Chu opened the door and walked toward the body. Outside, the sun blazed overhead, the air scorching and the sand burning his feet. He hissed as he approached the man, with the others following behind him.
When they saw the scene before them clearly, their eyes widened. Baked by the intense heat, the man's body had shriveled to less than four feet long. Yellow sand filled his mouth and nostrils, and his hands were buried deep in the sand.
A bundle wrapped in work clothes lay beside him. Ye Chu gently unwrapped it and found the instruments and documents neatly packed inside.
Even in the last moments of his life, he hadn't forgotten to protect them.
Ye Chu could hardly describe what he felt. Together, they struggled to drag the body back into the hut, hoping at least to give the dead man peace.
He opened the diary again. The handwriting grew increasingly erratic toward the end,