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Outside, a strong wind was clearly blowing, but he couldn't feel any wind pressure. He opened his arms to meet the wind, but all he felt was... emptiness.

"The point where the sun's rays are directly overhead is moving northward," Song Xingye said.

The northern hemisphere of Mars is transitioning from winter to spring, and they are still in the tropical heart of Mars, not far from the equator.

On Mars, the so-called "tropics" only means that the temperature can barely climb above freezing at noon, while at midnight the temperature will still plummet to tens of degrees below zero.

At noon, the sun hung almost vertically overhead, which completely disoriented Sergei. Since there was almost no shadow under his feet, his ability to identify directions was completely lost, and he could hardly even distinguish left from right.

Today, they stepped onto a sandy area with flat terrain. If he were sitting in the Rock Jumper rover, Sergei would definitely think it was an absolute plain.

But when he actually walked on it, he discovered that this appearance was extremely deceptive; the ground was actually full of subtle undulations, sometimes rising gently and sometimes falling sharply.

"These are the edges of the impact crater," Song Xingye explained. "After the impact crater was formed, it underwent a long period of erosion and was buried by sand. Now, only the edges of these crater areas remain with slight topographical undulations."

In the afternoon, Sergei first noticed the unusual activity around him. At first, he only caught a glimpse of something moving out of the corner of his eye, but when he turned his head, he found nothing.

"I must be seeing things," he thought to himself. "There's nothing there."

Then he caught another glimpse of movement, but this time he resisted the urge to turn his head.

"Even if I really am crazy," he muttered to himself, "I don't want to know."

The third movement was so close that he could no longer ignore it. At first, he only noticed the signs of movement and couldn't help but look over.

Although there was nothing in sight, he immediately noticed that even in that "nothingness," shadows were still moving rapidly across the ground.

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He looked up, following the shadow, and saw a distorted, phantom-like shape suspended in mid-air. It was a rotating column of pale yellow sand, its color gradually deepening from bottom to top, winding its way towards the heavens. It was clearly—

"Tornado!" he shouted. "Watch out!"

The enormous column of air suddenly changed direction and swept across the land with a whoosh. Sergei looked up but could not see its top at all. Without a reference point, he could not tell whether the giant object was far away or very close.

Suddenly, it turned again and pounced straight at them. Sergei was so frightened that he fell to the ground and clung to it tightly.

"It's coming!" he roared. "Down!"

However, the others stood still, unmoved.

Sergei had nowhere to hide, so he pressed his body tightly against the ground. Just centimeters away from his helmet, two grains of sand suddenly moved. They trembled slightly, jumped merrily to the left a few times, spun around, and then returned to stillness.

Sergei awkwardly looked up and found everyone looking down at him. The "tornado" was gradually moving away, drifting unsteadily towards the horizon like a drunkard.

"That's a dust whirl," Song Xingye said casually. "We've been watching it swaying around for almost an hour."

"Just now, something swooped right over our heads," Han Jing interjected. "I could even feel it brushing against our spacesuits."

"Isn't this thing dangerous?"

Sergei suddenly felt like a fool. A dust whirlwind! He had actually been scared out of his wits by a dust whirlwind.

"That's not entirely true. Its wind speed could probably reach several hundred kilometers per hour," Song Xingye shrugged. "It's just that the Martian atmosphere here is too thin, so it's not very dangerous."

"They're actually quite beautiful," Han Jing said, "at least they added some fun to this monotonous journey."

Sergei initially had difficulty noticing them because the dust vortexes were the same color as the Martian sky, only slightly darker. Now that he had mastered the trick, he could easily spot them.

In the afternoon, two or three dust whirls would sometimes appear on the horizon at the same time. Sergei couldn't help but wonder whether this was a normal natural phenomenon or some kind of ominous sign.

He remembered that dust whirls were mentioned in the mission briefing, but they were appearing far too frequently. However, recalling the embarrassing scene of him lying down to avoid them just now, he wisely gave up the idea of ​​asking further.

……

At 10 a.m. the following morning, they were greeted by the first dust tornado of the day.

Sergei witnessed two dust vortexes dancing in the air like courtship birds. They hovered around each other, tentatively approaching, then suddenly snapped apart, eventually becoming completely intertwined and merging together, transforming into a massive pillar of dust that towered into the sky, before slowly dissipating in the wind.

Subsequently, more and more dust whirls joined the frenzy, and by noon, there were as many as twelve dust columns dancing in the field of vision at the same time.

When one of the dust whirls swept over his head, Sergei instinctively closed his eyes, but he did not experience the expected impact. He could feel the wind blowing, but the force was negligible, as light as a feather by Earth's standards.

He had been worried that the swirling sand would scratch the helmet's visor, but Song Xingye's words dispelled his concerns.

"What's being swept into the air is dust, not sand," Song Xingye pointed out. "These are all extremely fine particles, more like talcum powder than gravel, and are absolutely safe and harmless. If you're really worried about sand hurting people, you should be more careful about the particles we kick up when we walk; the suspended particles in the air don't bother us at all."

Han Jing looked up and said, "It's getting noticeably darker."

Song Xingye also looked up. The sky had turned into a dim, dark yellow. The originally dazzling sun was now dim as if covered by a veil. He could look directly at the sun without even blinking.

"really."

"Do you think a sandstorm is coming?" Sergei asked.

"It's not the right season." Song Xingye pondered for a moment. "It's not the season for global dust storms at all. It might just be a localized storm."

He continued his reasoning, "This explains it. We are currently near the point of direct sunlight, experiencing the highest intensity of solar radiation. The high surface temperature triggers strong updrafts, which lift dust into the air. Interestingly, I bet that the dust that has been suspended in the Martian atmosphere for years was initially lifted up in this way."

"Is this thing dangerous?"

"There doesn't seem to be any danger for now." Song Xingye pointed ahead. "Let's continue on our way."

On the first day, they trekked fifty kilometers, and on the second day, they walked another fifty-five kilometers. Sergei calculated in his mind that the total distance had reached one hundred and five kilometers.

No wonder his legs were so sore and felt like they were filled with lead. However, this also meant that they were more than 100 kilometers closer to the abandoned Ashidaria Plain base. Song Xingye had been hoping to find some life-saving supplies there.

Sergei's heart pounded with apprehension. What could they possibly find in that abandoned base? Would the supplies they found be enough to sustain them all the way to the Arctic?

As dusk fell and the sun began to set, their eyes gradually adjusted to the twilight around them. They noticed a strange phenomenon: the bottom of the dust whirls was surrounded by a halo of eerie blue light, like dancing flames.

"Unbelievable," Sergei murmured, "they actually caught fire."

Everyone watched with bated breath as the pale "flame" suddenly became dazzling, flickering and changing. Sometimes the light hovered close to the ground, and sometimes it snaked along the entire dust pillar like lightning, transforming into a brilliant pillar of light that shot straight into the sky.

The towering beam of light vanished in an instant, and then the blue light retreated back to the bottom of the dust swirl and continued to leap and flicker, as if it were a living thing, endlessly regenerating.

"It's plasma discharge," Song Xingye said.

"What?"

"Static electricity," he further explained, "is like the phenomenon of electric potential difference generated when the wind carries dust at high speed and rubs against it, just like rubbing your feet on a carpet in dry weather."

The principle is similar to lightning, but the air pressure here is too low to break through the air and form a real electric arc. So, they now resemble giant natural fluorescent tubes.

"Is this dangerous?"

"It's hard to say," Song Xingye said, pointing straight ahead. "However, I think we'll be able to experience it for ourselves soon."

As the dust storm swept in like lightning, Sergei involuntarily took a few steps back. The storm seemed to be drawn to Song Xingye, completely engulfing him. The dust column swirled wildly above Song Xingye's head, and the dust filled the sky, surrounding him completely.

The first burst of eerie blue lightning erupted from Song Xingye's fingertips, then leaped towards his helmet and backpack like a serpent, instantly enveloping his entire body in this strange blue "flame".

"Old Song!" Han Jing's anxious voice came through the radio, "Are you alright?"

First, a piercing static white noise came from the communication channel. Then, as if extremely unwilling, the dust vortex slowly dissipated, and the layer of pale electric light clinging to Song Xingye also dimmed and disappeared without a trace in an instant.

Song Xingye looked down at himself, then looked up again. His voice came through the radio again: "Test, one, two. Can you hear me?"

"Communication is normal." Han Jing breathed a sigh of relief.

Song Xingye flexed his fingers and suddenly burst into laughter.

"Okay, I think that answers your question."

Sergei then noticed that Song Xingye's spacesuit, which had been covered in brick-red Martian dust, was now spotless, as clean as if it had just been taken out of the washing machine.

"However," Song Xingye added, "I think we really should find a place to hide."

……

The next morning, a massive sandstorm had fully formed, trapping them within it. The previous dust vortexes had vanished, replaced by a pervasive, all-pervasive dust cloud.

The scene before me was extremely strange. The surrounding light was even dimmer than yesterday, but the soft halo of light that diffused after being filtered by dust was quite comfortable for the eyes. The sun painted a blurry and hazy bright spot on the dim yellow sky.

A thought suddenly popped into Sergei's mind: the color of the sky was exactly the same as the culinary disaster called "Creamy Chicken Sauce" in the high school cafeteria, and even the nickname the students gave it, "Little Huang Xiang," was so fitting.

Sergei suddenly became curious about what the children on Earth who were still in school were doing at that moment. He glanced at the clock on his wrist, but then realized with a wry smile that it was meaningless. The dial showed Martian time, which matched a Martian day that was 24 hours and 39 minutes long, and was completely out of sync with Earth's schedule.

He could have asked Song Xingye for the corresponding Earth time at this moment. That guy's brain is like a clock with a built-in precise algorithm, and he can always calculate the time difference in his mind in an instant. But what good would it have done if he had asked?

The special training I received on Earth before departure included a detailed explanation of Martian dust storms. However, the training at that time focused mainly on "global dust storms" that can last for months and engulf the entire planet.

Only now did he vaguely recall that the instructor had casually mentioned smaller, localized dust storms. How long did those localized dust storms usually last? A week?

"How much worse will the weather get?" he couldn't help but ask Song Xingye.

Song Xingye raised his wrist and measured the direction of the sun. His wristband had a miniature sensor embedded in it, which was originally used by the panoramic virtual reality camera to capture light data. He glanced at the reading and quickly did some mental calculations.

"I reckon this is the limit," he replied. "The optical thickness currently measured is probably close to the highest value in history."

"That's it?" Sergei's face was filled with disbelief. "This is the legendary terrifying Martian dust storm?"

"Sandstorm? No." Song Xingye shook his head. "This is not a sandstorm. I even doubt whether there are any real 'sandstorms' on Mars. What's suspended here is just extremely fine dust. That's right, what you're seeing is the worst weather on Mars."

Sergei couldn't see how deadly the weather was. Looking up, he saw occasional wisps of pale blue static electricity flashing across the sky, rippling like the aurora borealis, silently sliding from one end of the horizon to the other, dazzling and dreamlike.

Walking in this vast expanse of yellow sand feels like strolling through a hazy fog, or like being in the infamous heavy smog of Los Angeles. The air nearby seems relatively clear, yet it blurs our figures without us even realizing it.

The rocks a little further away had lost their sharp outlines, the horizon had long since melted away, and the distant mountains were faintly visible in the murky yellow of the sky, completely blending into one.

"This is what you call a sandstorm?" he muttered. "What the hell? The sandstorms I've experienced on Earth were far worse than this."

Song Xingye shrugged. "It seems that people have indeed exaggerated its power a bit."

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