At this time, the sky outside was just getting bright, not too hot yet, with a hint of chill from last night.
After the bearded man led the people out of the sunken ship, he first counted the number of camels twice. He saw that there were no less camels, and there were no other symptoms except for being a little restless. Then he led the people to climb on the hull of the ship.
This sunken ship has been stranded in the desert for a long time. The hull is covered with thick mud and sand. In addition, the slope of the overturned hull is too large. It is not easy for people to climb up. Bearded people hold daggers in both hands and plan to climb up.
Climb up with the help of these daggers.
However, even with the help of these daggers, facing such a steep slope, if one is not careful, there is still a risk of falling from a height and causing serious injuries.
After Big Beard and the others were ready to board the ship, they looked at Jin An: "Taoist Master Jin An, you are weak and not as agile as the rest of us. Why don't you just wait in the riverbed for our notification and don't follow us up?"
"
"I'm afraid I won't be able to take care of you when everyone gets on the ship. If anything happens to you, I, the bearded man, will be a broken man and I won't be able to take you to your destination alive."
"God trusts us desert people, so he allows us to walk on His body. Once we don't keep our trust in the desert, we will be abandoned and punished by God. What awaits me next is either lack of water or a storm."
Already."
Although the bearded man doesn't speak nicely, he has an upright character and his starting point is for the safety of Jin'an.
Jin An: "Don't worry, Big Beard, I won't show off."
Big Beard knew that he could not stop Jin An, so he reluctantly agreed to let Jin An board the ship with them.
Although this ship is difficult to climb, it is for ordinary people. The people brought out by the big beard are all the most skilled masters in the caravan, and they all boarded the ship smoothly in the end.
Because the sunken ship was overturned and stranded on the bottom of the river bed, what was facing the blue sky was not the sampan, but the side of the ship on the other side.
The side of the ship facing the sky was buried under the wind and sand all year round and covered with thicker yellow sand. The wooden planks became brittle after being exposed to the sun. In several places, dark holes were formed by the weight of the heavy sand.
Everyone searched around but found no foreign objects on the side of the ship. Someone asked: "Could it have fallen into those ship holes or into the hull?"
Everyone thought this made sense and began to look at the dark ship holes one by one. However, the search was not smooth because the sun had not yet fully come out and the view inside the ship was not good. People lay on the edge of the holes and looked in.
Looking around, there is nothing but black and black.
Let alone looking for the things that fell in last night, even how deep inside the hull is is a little blurry.
After a little discussion, Big Beard decided that he would take the lead and go down the rope to have a look in person, and let the others continue to stay on top and hold on to the rope. Don't let him die in the hands of the sand bandits or the desert, and die first in the hands of his own pigs.
In the hands of teammates.
Others were a little worried at first, but they were immediately amused by the bearded man's humorous words, and the initially depressing atmosphere became much more relaxed.
In fact, Jin An originally wanted to go down with Big Beard, but Big Beard disagreed. Since entering the Western Regions, this man in the desert has been protecting Jin An's safety.
Next, the bearded man held a torch and began to search for the boat holes one by one.
At the third boat hole, Big Beard finally made a discovery. He exclaimed, as if he was frightened by something unexpected.
“Boss, are you okay?”
“What do you see down there, Bearded?”
A few people were lying at the entrance of the boat and shouting nervously downwards. Among the people brought up by Big Beard, there were both people from his own caravan and other caravan masters.
But before these people could finish shouting, wow, someone was already rushing into the boat hole before their eyes flashed.
“Taoist Master Jin An, why did you come down here too?” The bearded man holding a torch looked at Jin An in surprise.
At this time, other people who were guarding outside also came down one after another, leaving only two or three people outside guarding the rope.
The environment inside the hull was that more than half of the space was filled with sand. There was also a hole in the hull, and the remaining sand poured down from the hole.
It looks like someone once searched the entire sunken ship inside and out, trying to find the cargo in the sunken ship. The ship's side is usually the location of the warehouse, but it doesn't look like they found what they wanted.
Because there does not seem to be any trace of cargo being stored inside the ship. There are no signs of moving or moving, nor are there signs of heavy objects being piled in the same place all year round.
As soon as everyone got off the ship, they were startled by a dead body on the ground. The interior of the ship was dark, so it was very unlucky to see a dead person suddenly.
"This dead man's body is not covered with yellow sand, and his body is cleaner than the hull of the ship. It should be the sound we heard falling onto the ship last night." The bearded man also stabbed him with his machete not long after he came down.
Stab the mummy on the ground, and then turn the dead body over with its back facing up.
The face of this mummy is distorted, with a frightened expression on its face, and its mouth is wide open. It looks like a person who has been greatly frightened and opened his mouth to scream in fear.
"This, this is Hamuti! How could he die here!" Someone shouted in surprise.
When the man called out the name Hamuti, the sound inside the ship suddenly became noisy, and the Western Regions merchants all had expressions of disbelief and surprise.
Only Jin'an does not recognize the dead on the ground.
“Do you all know this person?”
Soon, Jinan learned the identity of the deceased through Big Beard. This Hamuti was from another larger caravan. The caravan where Hamuti was in had more camels than Big Beard, and the caravan was larger than Big Beard.
, kept many thugs and camels, and dared a caravan to cross the desert to do business.
Bearded man continued: "Hamuti's caravan set out twenty days earlier than us. It stands to reason that they would have gone deep into the desert long ago. It is impossible for us to catch up with them. Why would they appear near the sunken ship?"
Jin An pondered: "Either they have been wandering near the sunken ship, looking for something, and are not in a hurry to move forward. Or they were chased by something for more than ten days, until they passed the sunken ship last night."
At this time, someone wanted to lean over and touch Hamuti's body, but was stopped by another person: "This Hamuti died in a strange way, you just touch his body like this, you will die!"
“In case he was bitten to death by a venomous snake in the desert or stung by a venomous scorpion in the desert, there is probably a venomous snake or scorpion hiding in his clothes!”
The person who was pulled down felt a chill on the back of his neck and subconsciously stayed away from the body.
Jin An, on the other hand, was unmoved and boldly approached the dead man and said: "The death of Hamuti looked like he was frightened to death. His face was ferocious, his expression was twisted with fear, his mouth was wide open, his eyes were
The prominent fear is consistent with the symptoms of people being frightened to death after seeing something scary."
It's okay Jin An didn't say this. When he said this, everyone looked around suspiciously, wondering in their hearts, what kind of scary thing could scare a desert man to death?
The panicked voices last night, the fleeing camels, and Hamuti's body this morning began to cast a shadow over this supposedly ordinary caravan. Is there something terrible waiting for them in front of them?
?
Next, Jin An took out a yellow talisman and pasted it on Hamuti’s body.
That is a plague-repelling talisman.
If there were any venomous snakes or insects hidden in Hamuti's body, he would definitely be frightened away by the plague-repelling talisman.
But the Plague Expelling Talisman did not respond.
It means that Hamuti died very cleanly.
His series of operations stunned the people from the Western Regions present. It was not until Jin An put away the yellow talisman and began to search for the dead that they realized. By the time they wanted to say anything to stop it, it was already too late. Jin An
Andu came across the body.
"The person has already developed partial rigor mortis. The person has been dead for at least an hour. The low temperature at night in the desert will delay the onset of rigor mortis. Hamuti's real time of death should be more than three hours. Look at the floating sand on the ground.
There were no signs of struggle with hands and feet, indicating that the person was frightened to death before falling into the hole in the boat..."
Jin An finally concluded: "Hamuti must have been frightened to death on the back of a camel. He lost his balance in an instant and fell off the camel's back, hitting the river bed and sinking the ship."
Ever since he saw the dead person, Jin An's expression was different from ordinary people's calmness and calmness, especially Jin An's familiarity with the dead person, which all surprised these Westerners.
“Taoist Priest Jin’an, are you a widower of Kangding State?”
"There is no one who is a Taoist priest. I heard that Taoist priests are the guardians of the corpses in some places in Kangding."
At this time, Jin An had already inspected the body and stood up again. He smiled and explained that he was neither a liar nor the body keeper of Yizhuang.
He didn't want to explain more on this issue, so he changed the topic: "If Hamuti was really frightened and fell off the back of a camel, would there be more people who were killed on their escape route last night?
Scared to death?"
“Should we send a few people to ride camels and look for him along the way?” Jin An finally looked at the bearded man.
At this time, the people who had been guarding the entrance of the cave outside nervously shouted to the people below: "Exit, what's going on down there? Why haven't you come up yet? Are you okay?"
…
When everyone returned to the ground, the rest of the caravan also learned what had happened. Big Beard asked everyone to feed the camels hay and water. He took this time to take people up to the desert outside the river bed to look for it.
Those people in Hamuti fled for their lives last night. Did they leave any clues along the way?
Whatever Hamuti's people encountered in front of them would most likely be encountered by them, so Big Beard wanted to investigate what exactly Hamuti's people encountered in front of them, so that the entire caravan was exhausted.
He can scare a living person to death just by running for his life.
Then, the bearded man got on the camel, and took a few good camel riders with him, went up the slope of the river bed, and disappeared in the direction in which Hamuti's people came.
The sun rose very quickly in the desert, and it was already dark soon. The fierce sun of the new day continued to bake the people and camels in the desert.
At this time, on the riverbed side of the shipwreck, the caravan had already fed the camels and prepared breakfast. After waiting for a quarter of an hour, the bearded men did not arrive.
The team is feeling uneasy.
After waiting for another quarter of an hour or so, dust appeared on the cloudless desert. It was the bearded man who brought the people back. Every one of them was there, and everyone came back safely.
As soon as Big Beard came back, he hurriedly summoned the leaders of several caravans to speed up the journey and strive to reach Yueqiang Kingdom within three days.
Hearing that he had to speed up his journey, Kremu, who had prematurely aged hair, said in surprise: "From six or seven days to three days, we can reach Yueqiang Kingdom. This is twice as fast as the original speed. It is necessary for us to do this."
Are you in a hurry? Did you discover anything?"
Someone also expressed their dissatisfaction and said: "In such a hurry, not only the bumps are unbearable for people, but also the camels can't stand it."
The bearded man said solemnly: "We searched all the way, but we didn't find any clues. We couldn't find any other dead people. We couldn't find the camel tracks of those people in Hamuti. If it hadn't been wiped out by the wind and sand last night, all traces would have been lost."
It's just that someone deliberately erased all traces before us at dawn, not wanting us to find the truth."
“Because on my way back, I felt someone was following us!”
Big Beard’s last words made everyone present startled.
The bearded man continued with a serious expression: "We went back several times to look, but found nothing. I'm not sure if it was an illusion. Now I can only pray to the gods not to let the sand pirates target us."
“So I want to hurry up and reach Yueqiang Country as soon as possible to find someone to find out if anything special happened in the desert. There was such a big commotion in the desert last night. Someone must know some information.”
The news brought by the bearded man was really not good news. The caravan urged the camels and began to hurry on the road.
As for Hamuti’s body, just finding a sand pit and burying it can be regarded as the most benevolent thing.
After getting back on the road, the caravan was no longer as relaxed as it was before yesterday. It was said that it was rushing, but it was more like running away and escaping for its life.
Dust billows in the dry riverbed, and camels carry people, goods, and water as they rush through the desert.
In the next two days, the caravan traveled smoothly and encountered no accidents.
Even though Big Beard sent out several waves of people every day to conduct reconnaissance to a mile away, no one was found to be following them.
Even Jin An, who has keen senses and is always paying attention to the goings-on around him, does not feel the malicious intent of being spied on.
If someone is really maliciously spying on him or following them, the Five Thunder Evil-Slaying Talisman that has been sealed four times will definitely notice it.
Two consecutive days of unexpected success, and seeing that they would be able to reach the Yue Qiang Kingdom tomorrow, the caravan began to gradually relax their vigilance, thinking that the bearded man was too nervous.
On this day, the place they chose to spend the night was still on the river bed. This ancient river bed was very long, and they still hadn't gotten out after traveling for so many days.
However, when the river bed reaches here, it is already very shallow and not as deep as before. There is an ancient ruins on the bank. It is a good shelter from the wind. The caravan will rest in the ancient ruins tonight.