Chapter 14 – The Kya People – Northern School Tomb Raider’s Notes

In the early hours of the latter part of that night, seeing that we had all gone to bed, Azar untied the camel and took water and food and left on his own.

The first two days of the trip went well, it was on the third night that things went wrong.

He was sleeping in the latter part of the night when he suddenly heard a camel call. Camels don’t normally call unless they see a wild animal that is a danger to itself. There are no lions in the Alxa Desert, but there are a number of other wild animals that frequent the desert at night, such as wild dogs (not iguanas), sand lizards, and rattlesnakes.

Azza woke up in his sleep and ran out in a panic to see if there was a wild dog or something coming from the neighborhood, and he saw a bonfire from afar. The bonfire burned very strong, along with the sound of the wind seems to be able to hear the noise of people talking.

Azza at first thought it was the headman and the others catching up, then he realized it probably wasn’t. Getting a little closer, he realized it was a group of people cooking meat around a campfire.

The people he ran into were the same as the ones we ran into. Azza said that this group was another tribe of indigenous people living in the desert of Alashan, called the tribe of Khayas, and those people were all Khayas. It is said that the Khayas in the depths of the Alxa were migrated from the Taklamakan hundreds of years ago.

About the Keya people, living at the foot of the Helan Mountains on the Yinchuan natives Aza, know that the Keya people than the Hutu people to be a lot later, about two or three decades ago, that is, the last century in the seventies and eighties, there is a very famous foreign explorers to Alashan adventure, this person because of sandstorms encountered lost their way, no water and food, the foreign explorers were saved by the Keya people in the last moments of his life, to this point, the local people in Yinchuan Know, the original Alashan there is such a tribe, a tribe they do not know.

A few decades ago, the Khojas were very scattered, and the distance between some families could reach more than 20 kilometers, and it was sometimes necessary to ride a camel for a week to go from one house to another. Time into the nineties of the last century, the group of Kea people realized that so life is very inconvenient, so they began to gather the community in the desert to build a village, from which the Kea people slowly gathered from all directions, developed into a real sense of the Kea tribe.

The Khojas have their own language, culture and deity worship, Azar told me that the Khojas worship the sacred tree, the sacred tree he said is the bottle tree I smashed. Legend has it that the ancestors of the Khojas brought saplings from the Taklamakan and planted them, and the bottle tree grew to such a large size only a few hundred years later.

Keya tribes do not have a doctor, in their perception of the sap of the sacred tree can cure all the pain of disease, if someone is sick, Keya people will bring offerings to hold ceremonies, after the solemn worship ceremony, Keya people will use a knife to gently cut in the bottle tree, with a small cup to catch a little sap, and then afterwards, in the use of poplar gum to smooth out the small openings, praying for the bottle tree to grow the wounds as soon as possible.

Just that kind of pale white tree sap, this kind of thing that is considered sacred water in the culture of the Kea people, Zhao Xuanxuan and I both smashed it with a stone and drank our fill, and also brought five big bottles out of the homemade flat jugs made of dried cactus, so people were in a hurry with me.

Later, the bad boy Azza was brought back for verbally clashing with the Kya. Until just meeting with us.

He then spoke, “The two of you destroyed the sacred tree of the Kya people, the nature of this matter is equivalent to what do you know? It’s just like a devout Buddhist believer, one day the statue that he has been worshipping for his whole life was smashed by someone, put yourself in your shoes and think about it, in your place, what would you do?”

I was dissatisfied: “What else can be done? I am smashing the bottle tree they planted, but I am equally willing to apologize for compensation ah, in broad daylight do they still dare to kill people.”

“You’re quite bullish,” Azza sneered at me: “Wait until the night and you’ll know, I just heard a little bit of it, they’re discussing setting you two on fire at the God Tree, I’m afraid it’s not going to be contributed to the God Tree as a sacrifice.”

I immediately asked, “Do you understand the language of the Kya people?” As for what he said about the Kea people wanting to burn Zhao Xuanxuan and I to death at night, this was something I didn’t believe in at all, and took it as a sign that he wanted to see me scared of making a fool of myself.

I just don’t believe it, it’s not like I cut down their sacred tree, I just smashed it a little bit, it’s not like that.

Azza said back, “The pronunciation of Kya language is a bit like Qiang language, I can understand part of the meaning, but I can’t speak it. I know you don’t believe what I just said, wait until tonight and you’ll know if what I said is true or not.”

With that said, Azza leaned against the wall and closed his eyes, not speaking.

It grew dark and stayed there until after eleven o’clock at night, when a cacophony of torches was lit outside the door.

The door was pushed open, and the young girl with the earrings came in with four or five large men, who held in their hands two very thick poplar sticks, with twine tied to one end.