104: Chapter 104 Abnormal Creature Fu Dong Encounters Danger

When night completely shrouded the Gobi Desert, Chen Fan's off-road vehicle stopped at the entrance of a guesthouse named "Desert Solitary Smoke."

Calling it a guesthouse was a stretch; it was actually just a few single-story houses built of adobe and red bricks, forming a crude courtyard. The sign hanging at the entrance was so eroded by wind and sand that the characters were blurred, and a few dim yellow lights flickered in the yard, barely illuminating the potholed dirt road.

The owner was a Northwest old man in his sixties, his skin dark and his face covered in wrinkles like deep carvings. He came out to greet them draped in an old military overcoat, and seeing that Chen Fan was driving a military off-road vehicle, his eyes showed a bit more caution: "Staying the night?"

"One room, staying for two days." Chen Fan handed over his ID.

The old man took it, squinted at it under the light, and then looked Chen Fan over a few times: "Coming from the east?"

"Magic City."

"Magic City is a good place..." the old man muttered, handing back the ID. "Fifty a day, breakfast included. There's well water in the backyard; if you want hot water, boil it yourself. The toilet is at the east end of the yard."

The room was simple to the point of being primitive: a wooden plank bed, a peeling wooden table, and a chair. The walls were plastered with old newspapers, some of which had yellowed and peeled off. But it was clean; though the bedding was old, it had been washed until it was white and carried the scent of being dried in the sun.

Chen Fan threw his backpack onto the bed and walked to the window. The Gobi Desert night was terrifyingly silent, with only the sound of the wind like a weeping lament, and the occasional howl of wild wolves in the distance. Without the light pollution of the city, the starry sky appeared exceptionally brilliant, with the Milky Way spanning the sky like a glowing gauze ribbon.

"Xiao Zhi, expand full-spectrum scanning," Chen Fan said in a low voice. "Radius fifty kilometers, detect Star Core radiation."

The water drop levitated to the window, its surface flowing with deep blue light patterns like ripples: [Scanning initiated. Current mode: Passive detection to avoid alerting others through energy leakage. Estimated fifteen minutes to complete the full-domain scan.]

Chen Fan sat cross-legged on the bed, closed his eyes, and tried to mobilize his newly acquired mental power.

His consciousness spread out like spilled mercury—not through his eyes, but through direct "perception." He could "see" the energy distribution in the room: the weak current in the old wires, the slow evaporation of moisture in the walls, even the tiny static electricity between the grains of sand outside the window... The energy vision range with a two-hundred-meter radius was now like an invisible net, shrouding this patch of the Gobi Desert.

It was a wonderful feeling, as if the world were being disassembled before him into countless maps of energy flow. Further away, he vaguely sensed the energy field of this Gobi Desert—the geothermal heat flowing slowly deep within the earth, the cosmic rays pouring down from the night sky, and... to the Northwest, that deep and ancient call.

That was the unique frequency of Star Core fragments.

Fifteen minutes later, Xiao Zhi's scan was complete.

The water drop projected a semi-transparent holographic map. Centered on the guesthouse, twenty-three dark gold light spots lit up within a fifty-kilometer radius.

[The spectral characteristics are completely consistent with the meteorite absorbed this afternoon. However—] Xiao Zhi's electronic voice paused for a moment, [In the area between Pit No. 4 and Pit No. 7, I detected faint residual biological pollution signals.]

On the map, between the two brightest golden light spots, a pale red energy cloud appeared, slowly spreading.

Signal characteristics: 81% similarity to Ω Sample Pollutants.

Pollution concentration: Low.

Diffusion trend: Slowly drifting toward the southeast.

After Chen Fan reported his safety to Qingyue, he went to sleep to conserve his energy, planning to search for the meteorite at the marked points the next day.

Early the next morning, before the sky was fully bright, he ate the milk tea and flatbread prepared by the owner.

Chen Fan then drove deep into the heart of the Gobi Desert.

"Boss, a medium-intensity Star Core signal has been detected twenty-three kilometers to the Northwest." Xiao Zhi levitated above the dashboard, projecting a three-dimensional topographic map with a red dot flashing continuously.

Chen Fan turned the vehicle around and sped toward the target location.

The roads on the Gobi Desert floor could hardly be called roads; they were just messy ruts crushed by vehicles. The suspension of the mengshi off-road vehicle made a dull thudding sound during the violent jolting as the wheels ran over gravel and sand pits, the vehicle body swaying from side to side. Chen Fan, however, drove steadily; his enhanced neural reactions allowed him to anticipate every bump, his hands gripping the steering wheel as firmly as a rock.

Two hours later, he arrived at a peculiar Yardang cluster.

The mounds here were even more jagged and eerie than those seen yesterday, with wind-eroded gullies several meters deep, looking like wounds left by a giant beast clawing the earth. A few resilient Camel Thorns struggled to grow in the crevices of the rocks, their branches and leaves withered and yellow.

Chen Fan stopped the car, and Xiao Zhi's scanning beam shot out from the water drop, sweeping back and forth across the ground.

"The signal source is directly below, Boss. The energy reading is about 4% higher than yesterday's meteorite. Burial depth... 1.3 meters."

Chen Fan looked around and took an entrenching tool from the trunk. Just as he was about to start digging, his ears suddenly caught a strange noise carried by the wind.

It wasn't the sound of the wind.

It was the sound of an engine, and... gunshots?

It was very faint, at least ten kilometers away, but his enhanced hearing still caught it. The gunshots were short and dense—not a single-shot shotgun, but bursts from automatic weapons, interspersed with the howls of some kind of wild beast. But that howling was wrong; it was raspy, distorted, with a piercing metallic friction.

Chen Fan frowned. In this desolate depth of the Gobi Desert, why would there be a gunfight?

"Xiao Zhi, scan that direction."

The water drop rose fifty meters into the air and pointed northeast: [Multiple human life signals detected, five people, three of whom have fading vital signs. Detected... twelve abnormal biological signals, abnormally high body temperature, mixed energy characteristics, judged to be canines influenced by some form of radiation or biochemical factor. Distance: 9.7 kilometers.]

Canines? Wolves?

Chen Fan's heart tightened. Gobi wolves usually don't move in packs during the day, let alone actively attack an armed convoy. Those abnormal body temperatures and energy characteristics... "Can you identify the humans?"

Xiao Zhi's scanning beam focused: [The radio frequency signal from an ID carried by one of them has been intercepted, decoding... Identity confirmed: Northwest Expedition Team of the National Academy of Materials Science, member Fu Dong.]

Fu Dong?

Chen Fan's pupils constricted.