An ocean of yellow sand.
Silent and still.
The large sun hung in the sky and glowed with boundless light and heat.
Sand dunes lay one after the other in unbroken undulations like unusual tombstones.
Sand suddenly started rustling and tumbled down from the side of a sand dune.
The activity increased more and more until suddenly, a hand extended upwards from the churning yellow sand!
The hand was bloodstained and bruised, it seemed to be taken aback when it grabbed at the empty air.
After a moment, the hand reacted as it pushed and scratched with incomparable excitement and franticness. First, a palm, and then an arm gushed out of the sand, the hole quickly enlarged and finally exposed a youngster’s head.
After this inconspicuous head was half exposed, its mouth opened as big as it could. After weakly exhaling out all of its stuffy air from its chest, it greedily inhaled the scorching air.
Accompanying the fierce breath, grains of sand sprayed from the youngster’s mouth and nose.
“Cough, cough, cough!”
The youngster violently coughed because he breathed too hard.
After coughing for a bit, the youngster slowly opened his eyes.
Despite being in the overcast side of the sand dune, the burning sunlight stabbed his eyes and he subconsciously squinted them to a slit.
As he saw his surroundings clearly, despite expecting it somewhat, the youngster’s heart still sunk: “The desert, I really am in the desert. Is this the same desert that Cang Xu and the others had been to previously?”
The youngster was Zhen Jin.
He had almost suffocated to death. After he breathed in the first breath of air, the most dangerous moment had passed.
Zhen Jin gasped for a moment and recovered a bit of strength, then with difficulty, he pulled himself out of the desert sand.
After no longer being buried alive, Zhen Jin didn’t have the strength to get up as he knelt in the sand and constantly gasped for breath and coughed loudly.
He coughed out saliva.
The sand in his mouth dyed the saliva yellow.
He picked his ear, puffed his nose, and shook out his hair, shedding bits of sand off him.
These actions only lasted a short moment as Zhen Jin felt that his stamina was reaching its limit, he was so scared that he immediately switched from a full kneel to half kneeling.
Because he knew this island was dangerous and that using up all of his stamina was stupid, half kneeling could also help him get up faster.
The surroundings were quiet with not a single trace of wind.
The sun was scorching hot during the day, roasting the yellow-brown desert.
The desert looked bland and uninteresting at a glance, there was only yellow and not a trace of green.
The only colorful thing was him.
The blond youngster was no longer handsome or clean, he was covered in dirt and very much a sorry figure.
Zhen Jin looked at everything before him villigantly, however there was no movement.
He swept his eyes over his surroundings and then fixed his gaze on the sand dune behind him.
He looked at the sand dune and felt like he was looking at a silent tombstone.
Zhen Jin was both afraid and glad, although he had been buried in the sand, he had not been buried directly under a sand dune. He was not buried too deep which gave him the chance to escape.
He tightly grabbed this chance and hadn’t been buried under this tombstone-like sand dune.
Therefore, the youngster laughed unconsciously: “Heh heh heh heh…cough cough, heh heh heh.”
It had been a while since he had escaped danger, after confirming his safety, his heart began to gush happiness.
This feeling of joy increased in intensity and in a few breaths, it was so intense that it flooded the youngster’s thoughts.
To such an extent that Zhen Jin’s laughter grew louder and he burst into tears laughing.
Once again, he felt that life was beautiful!
He felt that each breath had to be treasured, for when he was under the sand, he could not breathe.
He felt his body becoming numb, the pain coming from an injury. It seemed that at least one rib bone snapped which made Zhen Jin feel pain every time his chest undulated as he breathed.
But this kind of pain also made him extremely happy!
This was all joy from having a new lease on life, the joy of life was endless, it was like the huge waves of a tsunami drowning him.
In fact, Zhen Jin had already experienced a new lease on life many times.
Strictly speaking, the first time was when he woke up. Zhen Jin realized that within him was the awareness to fight and he helped to indirectly kill a silver magic beast, the evil blue wolf. Everything happened too quickly. Of course, reflecting upon in retrospect, made Zhen Jin feel all sorts of things, but he was more fearful than happy.
The second time was in the mountain cave, Zhen Jin’s body already had fire poison as he braved death to attack the silver level monkey bear. Zhen Jin almost died but Zi Di risked everything to save him. In the struggle between life and death, Zhen Jin slipped between consciousness and unconsciousness, before finally surviving. That time, he found that even an ordinary wildflower showed that life had unlimited loveliness and beauty which he could appreciate for a long time.
The third time was in the blade legged spider forest. As Zhen Jin approached death, he was suddenly attracted by an emerging memory. Zhen Jin also thought he was going to die and didn’t expect that his body would suddenly transform. This new lease on life gave him even more doubts and curiosities.
The fourth time was when the goat meat caused chaotic magic corrosion in his body and nearly killed him. After being saved, the youngster’s heart appreciated and admired his fiance Zi Di even more.
The fifth time was the current catastrophe. After narrowly escaping from the sands of death, Zhen Jin was the most happy he had ever been.
“Because of what?” Zhen Jin savored this emotion.
Very quickly, he found the reason.
“It is because this ordeal is the power of heaven and earth. Whether it is poison or magic beasts, I still have the ability to fight against it. But when confronted with this berserk sandstorm, what can I do but take a beating? I was fortunate to survive!”
If he could pick, Zhen Jin would rather face magic beasts than the sandstorm that covered the sky.
This kind of powerlessness and helplessness made his happiness after surviving even more intense.
“My life was hanging on the edge, surviving really was a fluke. Then what about Zi Di and Cang Xu?” This issue appeared in Zhen Jin’s mind and made his smile disappear.
His emotions comforted himself by saying: these people are certainly still alive.
But at the same time, ice-cold rationality informed Zhen Jin: everything boded ill for these people, their survival would be nothing less than a miracle.
Zhen Jin was unavoidably worried and became hopeless again.
His joyous mood suddenly waned in an instant and disappeared without a trace.
What followed thereupon was unwillingness.
The exploration team under the leadership of Zhen Jin, had hunted the squirrel group with great difficulty, for a moment things seemed to be improving just before a mortal blow was struck.
There was fear.
If faced with a sandstorm like the last, could he have the luck to escape a second time?
Helplessness and bewilderment.
How should he continue forward? Where would he go?
It was heavy.
He had sworn to protect his fiance. Was Zi Di dead? If she was, where was her body?
In addition, as the sole heir to the Bai Zhen Clan, he needed to compete and become White Sands City’s lord, however, he was trapped on this island and on the edge of death, how could he escape this island alive? How could he have the chance to shoulder the heavy task of revitalizing the Bai Zhen Clan?
All kinds of emotions tangled together and made it hard for Zhen Jin to breathe once more.
At this moment, he felt helpless and feeble.
He tried to hold it back, he remembered his status as a templar knight, but his tears still silently fell to the ground.
Zhen Jin did not wipe away his tears, rather he let them fall onto the dry sand, he watched as the tears soaked the sand, each one created a minute hole that tried to expand, but in the end, the moisture had its limit and was ultimately confined to a very very tiny area.
To such an enormous desert, no, compared to the entire sand dune, these tear holes were insignificant and pitiful.
“Just like me.”
Zhen Jin sighed bitterly.
Once more he sincerely prayed: “O' God, my Great Emperor Sheng Ming, thou art a living god, thou art eternally victorious. At this very moment, thine knight, thine believer, and thine child pray for thine response and for thine pity. I pray to thee to show me the correct path to follow and guide me to the road to courageously go forward on…”
In this prayer, Zhen Jin rambled with unprecedented verbose and abundance.
A highly venomous desert viper found Zhen Jin and quickly regarded the pitiful youth as prey.
The desert viper quietly approached, its scales resembling the colour of sand. It appeared like an S-shaped curved line as it quietly and quickly slithered across the sand.
When it got closer, the desert viper suddenly launched itself at Zhen Jin’s back.
But at that moment, Zhen Jin didn’t turn around, rather he casually stretched out his hand and captured the viper in midair.
The desert viper opened its mouth wide and twisted its body, struggling frantically, however, its throat could not escape Zhen Jin’s unwavering hand.
The desert viper’s body, which was over half a meter long, winded itself around Zhen Jin’s arm.
But Zhen Jin remained motionless, regardless of whether it was his half kneeling body or his arm, they were still like cast iron.
Zhen Jin no longer prayed, rather he listened to the desert viper’s final gasps of its life.
He was silent and hadn’t raised his head, therefore as the desert viper was stiffly choked to death, it didn’t even see its mortal enemy’s face.
The sun climbed higher and higher.
The surface of the desert boiled as distant air warped and burned.
The blond youngster slowly walked out of the sand dune’s backside, and like a water droplet, flowed into the vast desert.
The youngster had a handsome face, but at this moment, he was covered in dirt and clothed in tatters.
The dead desert viper was thrown on his shoulder like a chain.
This desert viper was different from ordinary ones, its spiraled tail would make people think of goblin made metal springs.
On this strange accursed island, even ordinary snakes were outlandish.
Zhen Jin did not cry any more, he became expressionless.
He knew one principle——
Perhaps gods had pity, perhaps knights had pity, perhaps people had pity…
But, nature had none.
Notes
Off he goes into a landscape where everything is coarse, rough, and gets everywhere with nothing but rags on his back, the sword in his hand, and a new neck warmer. I hope he likes drinking blood as water…..no of course he will.