The White Desert

The night gradually deepened.

Outside the window, rain began falling again, pattering against the dense banyan canopy in a soft, steady rustle.

The sound of rain was soothing.

In the library's staff dormitory, Luo Yang sat cross-legged on the bed, studying his phone.

Feather Blade's Eye had taken root in the phone. It was bizarre, and there were far too many unknowns.

"Feather Blade?" Luo Yang tried calling out.

The eye remained tightly shut, unresponsive.

"It must be weak after the surgery. It said nourishing it with spiritual energy would wake it up. Might as well try." Luo Yang extended his Primordial Medical Finger and pressed it against the corner of the eye, then fed a thread of spiritual power into it.

The eyelid trembled faintly, but the eye did not wake.

Luo Yang kept feeding it spiritual power, but aside from that initial twitch, the eye showed no further response. Meanwhile, the repeated expenditure left him feeling tired. His spiritual power was not particularly strong, after all.

Ring, ring. Ring, ring...

The phone suddenly rang.

Luo Yang hurriedly turned it over. It was a video call from Ye Zi.

Luo Yang answered.

Ye Zi appeared on the screen, wearing a fitted pale-green T-shirt and sand-colored outdoor trousers. The outfit revealed every curve of her voluptuous figure, and her mature beauty seemed about to spill out of the screen.

Behind her stretched a brown desert dotted with strangely shaped rocky hills. The sky was dusky yellow, clear and utterly unblemished. Both the scenery and the woman were beautiful, a pleasure to behold.

"I'm not disturbing you, am I?" Ye Zi wore a charming, alluring smile.

Luo Yang smiled. "No, not at all. I haven't gone to bed yet."

"My mom called and said she'd taken Meiqi home. I called so you wouldn't worry."

"Mm-hmm."

"My dad said you were at the Sanxingdui Museum, helping them deal with a problem involving an artifact. Is that true?"

"It is. I've already taken care of it."

A hint of curiosity entered Ye Zi's eyes. "Aren't you a doctor? Don't tell me the artifact was sick?"

Luo Yang laughed. "I'd better tell you the truth so you don't keep guessing. I'm... actually a shamanic healer. I used shamanic healing to treat Meiqi. Besides medicine, I know a little basic Shamanic Sorcery. Uncle Ye knows Curator Ma here quite well, so he recommended me to help. It happened to be something I could handle, so I came."

"I knew you weren't an ordinary doctor. I'm really curious about what kind of Shamanic Sorcery you know. Can you tell me?" Ye Zi showed no surprise. Instead, her curiosity only grew.

"I thought you'd be startled."

"Why would I be startled?" Something suddenly occurred to Ye Zi, and she looked a little nervous. "You wouldn't use an Immobility Spell on me, would you?"

Luo Yang paused briefly, then laughed. "There's no sorcery like that in this world. Shamanic Sorcery isn't what you think it is. But if I knew an Immobility Spell, I'd cast one on you."

"If you immobilized me, what would you do?" Ye Zi's expression grew a little strange.

The question stumped Luo Yang.

He imagined the scene. She was under his control, and he did something to her...

Tied the laces of her two shoes together?

"Would you do something terrible to me?" Ye Zi offered a hint.

Luo Yang was speechless.

Your thoughts are getting a little dangerous, big sis.

"Ha-ha! I'm kidding. You look so funny when you're nervous." Ye Zi laughed happily.

The joke was not funny at all, but Luo Yang laughed anyway.

"I'll show you the factory that's about to start production." Ye Zi changed the subject.

"Sure."

Holding her phone, Ye Zi climbed a sandy slope, talking to Luo Yang as she went. "Has Meiqi been behaving these past few days?"

"She's been very good. It's just..." Luo Yang did not know whether he should say it.

"Just what?"

Luo Yang spoke his mind. "Sometimes I feel she's so mature. She thinks of things that don't even occur to me. Has she always been like that?"

Ye Zi smiled with her lips pressed together. "She's been a mischievous little clever-clogs since she was small. It's no surprise you feel that way. Even I get that feeling. Sometimes I wonder if she's a little fairy who fell from heaven. How else could she be so adorable?"

Perhaps she was distracted by the conversation, perhaps it was the climb, or perhaps her hand was sweaty. Just as Luo Yang was about to say something, the phone suddenly slipped from Ye Zi's hand and fell. When it finally stopped, the screen showed a swath of snowy white, with a cleft.

What was that?

Luo Yang was filled with curiosity. He thought of the desert, but the sand was not white. And what was that cleft?

"Oh..." Ye Zi sounded a little flustered.

Luo Yang gave a dry cough. "What happened over there? I didn't see anything."

Ye Zi appeared on the screen again, her pretty face flushed scarlet.

Luo Yang asked with concern, "What's wrong?"

"I, I... Something just came up. I'll hang up now. There's nothing much to see at the factory anyway." Before Luo Yang could say another word, Ye Zi ended the video call.

Luo Yang stared motionlessly at the phone screen, but his mind was filled with snowy white and a cleft.

After sitting in a daze for a while, Luo Yang drove that snowy-white sight out of his mind. His gaze returned to the eye, and he tried feeding another thread of spiritual power into it.

The eye still did not respond.

"Did the transplant fail? Or is a modern device like a phone simply incompatible with a Witch Artifact's spirit? Forget it. I've done my best. Whether it succeeds is up to its fate." Luo Yang stopped dwelling on it, lay down, and went to sleep.

In his hazy sleep, he had a dream.

He arrived in a magical desert where the sand was as white as jade and soft beneath his feet. He saw two great mountains and ran toward them. He climbed and climbed until he finally reached a summit.

Suddenly, an earthquake struck. The mountain shook, and he tumbled from the summit.

He rolled and rolled, falling into a ravine. Before he could climb to his feet, a mudslide buried him...