Volume 7 Chapter 21 The Devil City

A-Ning was very surprised and asked, “Why?”

Zaxi said to us, “My grandmother said that the Devil’s City in front of you is not a tourist attraction. This Yadan landform is about 87 square kilometers, very vast, and it is still in its most primitive state. There are no road signs, and if you are not familiar with the environment, it is very easy to get lost when traveling at night. It is also said that there are many quicksand pits inside, and in 1997 a team of geological surveyors disappeared inside. At the time, many people were mobilized to search for them, but they were not found. Later, in 1999, when there was a strong wind, several photographers found two mummies in a sandpit while taking pictures here. The others have not been found yet.

Aning shook his head and said, “Don’t worry about it. We have GPS. If the terrain is as complicated as you say, we have to go in even more. If we wait until dawn to look for them, they might have already had an accident.”

He ignored Tashi’s advice, called a few people, turned on the flashlight, and planned to continue deeper.

I thought about it and realized that she had a point. Tashi had always played the role of a scaremonger, and now she naturally didn’t believe everything he said. Moreover, the foreigners’ way of doing things was to put people first. If they let the three people go, it would be the same as killing them themselves. These people couldn’t make such a decision.

Naturally, I had to go with them, because the three people had disappeared when they were with me. More or less, I had to do my best, otherwise if there was really an accident, I wouldn’t be at peace in my heart. And I can’t sleep anyway.

Tashi was about to say something else, but then Dingzhuoma spoke up. She shook her head and told Tashi to stop talking, then quickly said something to him in Tibetan.

Tashi immediately looked very confused, but Dingzhuoma’s expression was very resolute. Tashi was about to protest again, but Dingzhuoma shouted at him, and Tashi didn’t dare to continue talking. He nodded to Dingzhuoma, stepped back, and said to us with a depressed look on his face, “You’re lucky. My grandmother told me to take you in.” He then turned on his flashlight and walked over to his luggage, beginning to clean up his equipment.

I didn’t understand Tibetan, so I asked Aning what the old woman had said. Aning also shook her head, saying that it was too quiet to hear, and that it was probably something like “taking money to get rid of disasters for people.”

I was amused, and glanced at Dingzhu Zhuoma. The old woman had already gone back to the tent, and it seemed that she wasn’t worried about these things at all.

Tashi cleaned up his equipment, told us to throw away unnecessary things, bring enough water and dry food, and a signal gun, then woke up a driver, told him our plan, and told him to stay outside and be ready to help. If he saw us firing signal flares inside, he should not come in, but fire signal flares outside to show us the way. If he still doesn’t come out, wait until dawn and let someone else come in to find us. He will leave a mark along the way.

The driver agreed drowsily. The four of us straightened up and Zaxi, with a long face, led the way to the entrance of the Devil City behind us.

The place where we sheltered from the wind was on the edge of the Devil City. Behind the tall rock mountain where we camped was a steep slope that extended downward. At the end, there was a castle-like rock mountain that we saw in the sandstorm. This should be a relatively high rock mountain in the Devil City.

Zaxi piled up a pile of stones on the steep slope to mark the direction for later generations. He said that as long as there was a turn along the way, he would pile up a pile of stones, and once we saw our own pile of stones in the process of moving forward, we could not move forward anymore, and moving forward would start to go in circles. This was his bottom line.

We felt that it made sense, so we said it was fine.

Soon we entered the city gate and found ourselves in the middle of the Devil’s City. The surrounding scenery began to look strange. Looking up, we saw that the moonlight was shining on the black rock mountains that protruded from the Gobi sand. Because of the light, it was not clear, but when we shone the flashlight, we could see the weathered ravines that had been cut by the wind on the rock mountains. In this blackness, the few places where the moonlight could shine were particularly pale. This feeling was a bit like walking on the surface of the moon.

I looked along the way, imagining the content of the geomechanics of that year, which I had forgotten completely. I only knew that the Yadan wind-eroded rock group in this place was still underage. It was probably because the terrain was relatively low, and the rock mountains and mounds had not been exposed to the surface for a long time, and had not been weathered very much, so most of the rock mountains and mounds were still very tall.

In this case, we can only walk between the rocky mounds, and we cannot climb the mounds as freely as in other devil cities. However, the valleys under this kind of landform are not flat either. The high places protrude above the gravel, and the low places are covered by the Gobi. In geology, these rocky hills are actually considered the tops of underground mountain ranges. Although they are only a dozen meters high, there are huge rocky mountain bases several kilometers deep beneath our feet. These mountains hidden under the gravel are all branches of the Kunlun Mountains. In theory, we are now also walking on the Kunlun Mountains.

But I didn’t have time to think about these academic issues. As soon as we entered the area two or three kilometers away, Aning started calling on the walkie-talkie, and we shouted loudly, hoping that the three people could hear our voices and respond to us.

In the silent Devil City, our voices were immediately bounced back in countless ways, overlapping each other and spreading far and wide. It sounded very strange from a distance, like the sound of ghosts from the underworld.

We shouted and walked for two or three hours, deep into the depths of the Devil’s City, sweeping the surrounding rocks with our flashlights, our eyes tired, our mouths tired of shouting. But we didn’t see a single trace of the Caucasians, and our shouts didn’t get any kind of response. The only things that answered us were our own echoes and the faint sound of the wind whistling.

We stopped to rest, and Aning asked Tashi what he thought would be the best way to find them, based on his experience.

Zaxi shook his head: “Only you guys would think of this. We’ve probably walked seven kilometers, and we’ve gone a long way in a straight line, but we’ve actually been turning in circles for a long time. We’re almost walking back now, and people here are like ants, unconsciously taking S-shaped routes. So I can only guarantee that I’ll get you out, but I can’t give advice on finding people… It’s fine if they don’t move, but if they’re also looking for a way out, what are the chances of you meeting two teams in an 80-square-kilometer maze?”

Aning was not satisfied with this answer and frowned, “Hasn’t anyone ever gotten lost before?”

Zaxi shook his head without looking up, “We never come in here at night.”

He sighed and we didn’t know what he meant.

Aning looked at our expressions and encouraged us not to be discouraged. But it obviously didn’t work. We smoked a few cigarettes and regained some energy before continuing on.

However, things still didn’t develop as we had hoped. We shouted and walked for a long time, taking four breaks along the way. Zaxi piled up no less than 30 stone piles, but still we didn’t see a single person, and there was no response. The silent Devil City seemed to have swallowed up any sound we made.

What really scared me was that we didn’t see any of Zaxi’s stone piles, which meant that we were still moving forward. The Devil City seemed unfathomable, and we didn’t know how much further we had to go.

Continuing on, we entered a canyon formed by rocks. Under a large rock, we could not go any further and had to stop for the sixth time to rest.

At this point, our throats were hoarse and we could no longer shout. We drank water in large gulps, and everyone entered a state of aphasia, with their minds a little blank.

After a period of silence, the team doctor suddenly said, “Could it be that there are really demons in this devil city? Have they been taken away by demons?”

This was a very abrupt statement, and we all froze for a moment. Tashi glared at him and told him to stop talking nonsense. Tibetans are very traditional, and this kind of talk is not pleasant to hear.

“There are definitely no demons, and people are definitely here.” After a long pause, Tashi slowly said, “I just don’t know what the situation is now.”

The group fell silent again, each thinking their own thoughts. In fact, I knew that the hope in our hearts was very small. When we first came in, I thought that the probability of finding them was very high, and at least we could find some traces.

After a while of rest, Aning looked at his watch and stood up, calling on us to get ready to continue. We all stood up reflexively, took a deep breath, and prepared to cheer up and continue shouting.

At this time, several of us heard a sudden cry from Aning’s walkie-talkie. The static was loud and very harsh, and we couldn’t make out what he was saying.

It was so quiet around us that this sudden sound scared us half to death, and we immediately looked at Aning’s walkie-talkie.

Aning was also stunned, and it took her a few seconds to react.

The sound rang again, the static was extremely harsh, but it was clear that it was a person calling.

“They’re nearby!” we exclaimed. Aning almost jumped up.

In a terrain like Devil’s City, walkie-talkies are almost useless. They can only pick up signals at very short distances. A-Ning had been trying to tune in to such a signal all the way, but to no avail. Now the signal suddenly came on, and it was clear that the other party’s walkie-talkie was not far away.

We all breathed a sigh of relief. A-Ning immediately began to adjust the frequency, and the sound became clearer, but we still couldn’t make out what he was saying. Then she yelled into the walkie-talkie: “I’m the team leader. We’re searching for you. What’s your location?”

The answer was a series of indescribable sounds, with severe interference, but the tone had changed, and it was clear that the other party could hear our voices.

The previous frustration was swept away, and the team doctor shouted “YES.” I also took out my own walkie-talkie, patted it, and adjusted it to see if it was a problem with the machine.

Aning called again, and this time the sound was a little clearer. We several people tried to listen, hoping to hear clearly what the other party was saying.

Listening, I realized that something was wrong. The person on the other end of the walkie-talkie wasn’t talking. The tone of the voice was very strange, hard to describe. Listening carefully, it sounded like a person was sneering with malice.