Walking along the path to the town, the sun shone scorchingly along the way. Iyas, who was wrapped up like a dumpling, loosened the scarf covering her mouth and fanned the air with her palm.
"It's hot, Huck. Are you hot?"
Huck was also wrapped in layers of heavy clothes. He shook his head.
"It's okay. I've experienced conditions that are even hotter than this before, so I'm kind of used to it."
Iyas is extremely good-looking, which inevitably caused some trouble in this Gobi town with poor public security.
Hake is an elf, and he cannot be exposed under the eyes of those "hunters" who target slaves. Those hunters might give up going to Wansheng Kingdom and turn their attention to Yang Yu and his team.
In such border areas, it is not uncommon for gangs to rob each other.
In fact, Yang Yu was not afraid of being found. With his current level and attributes, he was able to thrive in this small town.
However, Yang Yu’s level has reached the upper limit. Even if tons of experience packs are delivered to his door, he has no way to gain experience to continue growing, and naturally has no desire to fight.
Now Yang Yu just wants to rush to the country of Wansheng to obtain the racial essence of various races and increase the level cap.
Entering a town that looked like something out of a western movie, Yang Yu searched for a tavern while saying:
"Don't run around later. We'll set off immediately after we find the guide. Bai Jin, don't forget to notify Lotkar to meet up with us."
Bai Jin nodded. He Meng, who was lying in her hood, had shrunk significantly in size due to the heat of the sun. He now was only the size of a fist, and looked weak and sick.
At the beginning, Yang Yu had no intention of looking for a desert guide. If he had not considered that the desert might have a strong magnetic field here, causing the compass needle to start dancing on its own, he would not have come to this town.
Lacking experience of walking in a real desert, Yang Yu did not dare to act rashly in the face of the vast yellow sand.
In most games, the desert scene always flashes by and jumps directly to the maze or ruins scene.
Even if there are deserts in some open-world games, due to the size of the map and the requests of the company's boss, it is impossible to let the desert occupy too much space. It is better to say that it is a larger lake filled with sand.
Only when you are truly in the midst of this true desolation can you feel awe for the desert.
When the compass doesn't work, it is better to find a guide to explore the endless desert earlier than wandering aimlessly in the desert.
Looking around the town, most of the buildings here are still very new, having been built in recent years.
One of the reasons is that, in addition to the residents becoming increasingly wealthy, various groups have been involved in large-scale actions over disagreements, causing damage to many old buildings.
Especially a few years ago, it was common to see several houses destroyed in a row just to compete for a guide.
After searching for nearly half an hour under the scorching sun, Yang Yu finally found the tavern.
As soon as he stepped into the deserted tavern, Yang Yu immediately asked the tavern owner about the desert guide.
In the past two or three years, as the slave market became saturated, the number of large-scale transactions in the town had gradually decreased, but at the same time, the town had also gradually become deserted.
But this does not mean that it has become easier to find desert guides. On the contrary, because of what has happened in recent years, the number of desert guides has been reduced by more than half.
What is even more troublesome is that after witnessing the brutality of outsiders, many young people do not want to be implicated and have flocked to safe big cities to survive. No one wants to be a desert guide, which is a hard and tiring job, which has caused the number of desert guides to shrink further.
Yang Yu and his friends were unlucky. When they arrived, the desert guides they could find through the tavern had already taken the "hunters" who wanted to cross the desert to the country of Wansheng, and they didn't know when they would return.
Then, Yang Yu asked if there was any other way to cross the vast desert.
The shop owner joked that it would be possible to cross the vast desert with the help of a [sand-navigating ship].
The so-called sand-sailing ship, as the name suggests, is a ship that can sail freely in the desert. The only people who can use such a ship are the Lamia clan of the subhumans.
For the half-human, half-snake Lamia, moving in the sand is like swimming in the sea, so they are also called "Mermaids in the Desert" by travelers.
Unfortunately, Lamia does not like being addressed as such by humans, and they are extremely hostile to humans.
The price of a Lamia is two or three times more expensive than an elf, and the Lamia here refers to a male. If a female Lamia is captured, the price may increase several times.
The reason why Lamia's price is so high is also related to their social structure and living habits.
Fighting Lamia in the desert would be as stupid as fighting a dragon in the sky.
But for their own benefit, there are always some fools who try to attack Lamia's village, but never return.
It is precisely because of the existence of those idiots that the relationship between Lamia and humans has become increasingly tense, and wanting to use the [Sand Sailing Ship] is nothing but a pipe dream.
There were humans who tried to imitate Lamia's [Sand Sailing Ship] and build their own sand sailing ship, but humans' momentary whim could not catch up with Lamia's specialized technology for making a living, and no human was willing to invest a lot of time and energy to develop the [Sand Sailing Ship] from the bottom up, and in the end it came to nothing.
After all, with the current technological capabilities of mankind, it is impossible to understand the erratic and strange magical characteristics of the desert, so the route of using sand-navigating ships is simply not feasible.
Yang Yu didn't want to take this route either. The reason was that the Lamia clan was located at the westernmost end of Kafizzaro, extremely close to the coastline.
Instead of walking to the westernmost end of the desert to seek help from Lamia, who is hostile to humans, it is better to take a few more steps and go directly to Wansheng Kingdom from the sea.
Just when Yang Yu was frowning, the tavern owner said that the desert guides that the tavern can introduce are all healthy and can ensure that the team can get out of the desert. Not all desert guides are always so healthy.
Yang Yu instantly understood what the tavern owner meant, and asked if he could serve as a guide for the desert guides if their health improved.
The tavern owner nodded, then looked embarrassed and said that only one desert guide had been absent from work recently.
When asked about the reason, the tavern owner said that the desert guide was accidentally bitten by a poisonous snake when he was coming back. Ordinary antidotes could not remove the poison. His health was getting worse day by day, and he might be buried in a few days.
As he spoke, the tavern owner was also observing Yang Yu's expression. Seeing that Yang Yu did not show any annoyance, he continued speaking.
If Yang Yu and the others could help him get rid of the poison in his body, he would be willing to be their desert guide for free.
What the tavern owner didn't tell Yang Yu was that the desert guide had a young son. Because of his father's illness, the son paid him a large commission and asked the tavern owner to ask as many passers-by as possible to see if there was anyone who could help them.
(End of this chapter)