A set of bizarre desert photographs prompts Henry Foster to venture deep into the wasteland in search of an unusual ancient tomb. The companions sent to investigate mysteriously disappear, and by chance, a terrifying and strange pattern is carved onto the back of the young Eric Bennett. After finding Eric Bennett, Henry Foster insists on inviting him to join the expedition to the mysterious heart of the desert shown in the photos—Gutongjing, a place the locals call the Forest of Death.

Accompanying the exploration team, Henry Foster, Samuel Cooper, and Eric Bennett are unexpectedly led by the legendary moving lake to a vast, white desert. Here, the ruins of a secret engineering project are hidden, and astonishingly, this modern project was constructed according to ancient blueprints from 3,000 years ago.

Why surround the lake with trucks? What kind of project is buried beneath the desert? What sudden event caused countless people to die under the trucks? What exactly is lurking beneath the white sand? Can the suddenly appearing Jack Brooks save Henry Foster from a desperate situation? What message did Brian Carter give to Eric Bennett? Can the clues left by Luke Foster rescue them? Faced with all this, will Eric Bennett give up or take responsibility—can he fulfill his mission?

Sand Sea I: Phantom Shadows in the Desert Prologue (Part One)

I met Edward Sullivan at a cross-strait tea party in Xiamen. I’ve completely forgotten the content of the tea party; I only remember it was a forum about jadeite, and it was extremely boring. I’m not a devout jadeite enthusiast—collecting such things was just a spur-of-the-moment whim—so I slipped out during the tea break. I wasn’t the only one sneaking out; among them was him.

The two of us chatted idly in the lounge outside and discovered we were both writers. I had already switched careers to become a publisher, while he was still struggling on.

That conversation was very congenial, probably because we had so much in common: similar not-so-sunny childhoods, similar helpless experiences... The saying goes, “Two people with the same happiness can’t resonate as much as two people with the same suffering.” We quickly opened up to each other.

Of course, I can’t deny that another reason was Edward Sullivan’s great charisma. His calm and composed demeanor was hard not to like. Unfortunately, I was no longer a young girl; while his charm made me feel at ease, it couldn’t make me like him any more than that.

After that meeting, we became good friends. Later, he went to Taiwan and, almost every two months, would send me boxes of diaozhongshao from Taiwan, never tiring of it. He also asked me to send him mung bean cakes from Hangzhou at the same frequency. Each time, we tried to choose different brands and then exchanged our thoughts.

This relationship lasted for a year, which really touched me. In today’s society, it’s rare for anyone to persist in doing something so dedicatedly for such a long time. I thought our correspondence could continue indefinitely, but at the end of that year, his package suddenly stopped arriving.

This surprised me a bit. I even suspected that the contact number or name was written incorrectly, causing the EMS courier to be unable to deliver the package. That month, I don’t know how many times I went to the post office, but I always returned disappointed. I wanted to ask him what had happened, but found that I couldn’t reach him by either internet or phone.

At first, I thought he was escaping the hustle and pressure of city life—a common tactic among modern white-collar workers—but after two months with no news, I started to worry. Some time later, I heard from a friend in Taiwan that he had resigned from all his jobs there as early as April that year. Someone saw him leave home and never return. He had prepaid several months’ rent, and when his friends entered his apartment, his computer had been running for seven or eight months, yet there was no data or software on it. The police checked and found the computer was almost identical to when it was new. Not just the computer—almost none of the items inside had been used.

In other words, while others thought he was living there, he actually hadn’t been living there at all.

So, why did he spend so much money renting a place he never stayed in? Where did he actually live during his time in Taiwan?

No one knows.

Now, there isn’t the slightest clue as to where he’s gone—he just vanished.

I don’t know what happened to him. I’m worried, but there’s nothing I can do. Given the nature of our relationship, there’s not much more I can do except keep an eye on the news and silently pray for him. Later, I asked around in our circle and learned that Edward Sullivan was just his pen name—no one knew his real name.

A seemingly simple person, after disappearing, left not a single clue behind. This truly shocked me.

However, I soon forgot about it. After all, no matter how strange, this person wasn’t really connected to my life.

I thought that was the end of it, but unexpectedly, half a year later, I suddenly received a large package from him. It had been sent just a few days earlier and contained six big boxes of diaozhongshao and a thick stack of notes.

I was overjoyed and immediately called him, only to find the number had been deactivated.