The pork butcher is smoother than a pig butcher!

Chapter 286 Hell on Earth - Lop Nur (Part 2)
As night fell, the temperature plummeted.

Human senses are amplified.

Those horse archers who witnessed it firsthand and nearly got trapped in the quicksand had their hearts pounding.

Just when things had finally calmed down, a sandstorm suddenly struck in the middle of the night.

People living in the Western Regions are no strangers to sandstorms.

After realizing what was happening immediately, they all sought cover and waited for the storm to pass.

Unexpectedly, this sandstorm lasted from the middle of the night until the next morning.

Dan Ali's last memory was being buried in the sand, which was making it difficult for him to breathe. Then his vision went black and he fell into a deep sleep.

When he woke up again, he felt the scorching sun baking his body.

It's warm.

It's hot!
Still alive!

"Apak (General), Apak (General), are you alright?" The guard saw that his eyes had focused and he had regained consciousness, and finally breathed a sigh of relief.

In a hoarse voice, Dan Ali asked, "Were there any casualties last night?"

There were certainly casualties!
More than a thousand bodies buried in the sand and suffocated were unearthed, and more than two thousand people were missing. More than five thousand horses were injured, disabled, dead, or missing.

Several sand dunes appeared overnight around the flat camp.

The markers left by the scouts ahead have also disappeared.

Fortunately, the Han people invented the dry compass.

With it, you're less likely to get lost in the desert.

The holy warriors were not easily deterred by the difficulties before them, and they continued to overcome obstacles as they approached the center of the lake.
The magical sandstorm only lingered in the desert surrounding Lop Nur.

The lake was very calm.

Here.

When a strong wind comes, everything has to take a detour.

The closer you get to the center of the lake, the more prominent the unique salt crust landforms become.

The salt and alkali here have solidified into a hard crust after thousands of years of sedimentation and accumulation.

These hard shells bulge from the ground under high temperatures, forming unique cracks and textures.

The salt crust resembles accumulated snow.

The sight is breathtaking.

Having suffered greatly amidst this beautiful scenery, the ancient commander and his men dared not venture further.

They could only watch from afar as their General Gan carried a large piece of poplar wood, venturing deeper and deeper into the salt crust.

She walked very slowly.

The wooden gun in her hand would occasionally point to a certain spot, and the Rat Queen would direct the gerbils to work in the direction she pointed.

I was busy like this for two whole days.

Before leaving, General Gan planted the wooden planks she had carried vertically into the salt crust.

After that, he wrote and drew on the wooden board for quite a while.

The ancient commander and others scratched their heads in curiosity.

Upon seeing her return, he kept asking:

"General, what did you write on the wooden board just now?"

"Nothing much, just informing the Hu people that they have arrived at the landmark in the center of Lop Nur."

"Huh? Why?!"

Was a landmark erected to help the Hu people clarify their destination?
Is the general exhausted?

A dozen or so men stared intently at her. General Gan rubbed his hands, blackened by coal dust, and said very sincerely:

"We're all soldiers, each serving our own master. Those who dare to cross Lop Nur are truly fearless heroes! Let's leave an address so their descendants know where their ancestors are buried!"

Everyone: "."

General Angmen is quite kind.

Their biggest concern now is whether this can really work out.

Gan Minglan did not offer much explanation to these people.

These past two days, she hasn't seemed as relaxed as everyone else has.

The area of ​​this salt crust in the heart of Lop Nur is simply enormous.

At first, Gan Minglan didn't know where to start.

Later, King Atu still managed to find the markings left by the Hu people's scouts.

The ancient commander and his men only knew that, on the surface, King Atu and his gerbil minions had buried hundreds of thunderbolts beneath the salt crust. Little did they know, they had also sent tens of thousands of grape seeds down with them.

It was these grape seeds that transformed the rocky, rocky salt crust into a completely different world a hundred meters deep.
Fifty miles away.

A few days ago, the swift Hu horse that had emerged from the desert finally broke into a gallop.

There are no moving sand dunes in the center of the lake.

From the wayfinding marks left by the first scouts to those left by the most recent scouts, they are all still there.

The messages relayed by the scouts were all the same: the salt layer was very hard, so there was no need to worry and that passage would be quick.

The cavalrymen had had enough of this soft sandy terrain where they could be swallowed up if they weren't careful. They would rather run on hard ground for half a day.

"Law, law, law"

"Giddy up, giddy up, giddy up!"

The young, elite army galloped freely, finally regaining its former spirit.

An hour later.

The lead horse archers spotted what looked like a wooden plank standing up in a depression.

Could it have been left behind by the scouts again?

Hurry up and ride off to see what's going on.

Upon seeing it, he immediately started shouting:
"Chinese characters! It's actually Chinese characters!"

"Could the Han army have already been here? Where are they now?"

"."

I know it's written in Chinese characters.

But no one knows what these words mean.

With a total force of nearly 50,000, only General Apak had that kind of capability.

On the front of the wooden board, several large black characters were written vertically: Lop Nur Lake Center.

To the left of the large character is a smaller vertical character: "This place is 400 li away from Dunhuang."

At first, Dan Ali was somewhat surprised, as this was consistent with the information left to them by the scouts.

But what was the meaning of the Han people leaving a wooden stele here?

Before he could figure it out, his personal guard ran behind the wooden tablet and shouted, "Apak (General), there are more words on the back!"

"I want to see what tricks these Han people are playing!" Dan Ali calmed himself down and spurred his horse to turn behind the wooden tablet.

"Tomb of the Kashgar Khanate Expeditionary Force!"

"Anyone who openly offends a strong man will be killed no matter how far away!"

Dan Ali read it word by word, his back teeth grinding together.

This was a blatant provocation from the Han army against their elite archer cavalry!
According to Han Chinese custom, it is not customary to write epitaphs for living people!

Suppressing his anger and fear, Dan Ali drew his sword and began hacking at the wooden monument.

While chopping, he gave orders:

"Quickly, get out of here!"

His expression was ferocious, and his words were like they contained shards of ice.

The lead archer cavalrymen's pupils dilated slightly.

Despite the various hardships they encountered on the road over the past few days, their general Apak remained calm and composed.

Unexpectedly, his magic failed him when he stood before a wooden tablet left by a Han Chinese.

What is the meaning of the last sentence of the inscription?
Unable to understand Chinese, they could only follow orders.

They wanted to quickly break out of this salt flat and reach Dunhuang to fight the Han army squarely.

Ten thousand horses are galloping.

The salt layer was trembling.

Hundreds of meters below, the sand, loosened by tens of thousands of grapevines, gradually could not withstand such thunderous force.

Several crystal core time bombs jumped to the last second at that moment.

In a blink of an eye.

The sky didn't collapse, but the earth began to sink.

It's even more terrifying than an earth dragon turning over.

A series of collapses triggered thousands of giant quicksand whirlpools.

It's a giant quicksand vortex that devours the sky, the earth, people, and horses.
(End of this chapter)