Under cover of night, the Rabbit-eared female cultivator quietly fell a few steps behind and drew close to Xu Chunniang.
"I never expected you to cross the Wubu River safely before nightfall. I thought you wouldn't make it and was feeling quite regretful, but you gave me a surprise instead."
"I was just lucky. I still had quite a few demonic crystals on me, so I barely managed to catch up."
"Since that's the case, the plan remains unchanged. Do you see the distant sand dunes? That is Shashe. We need to slip away quietly before reaching Shashe."
Xu Chunniang raised her head and glanced at the distant dunes. "Slipping away under the noses of several Earth Demons probably won't be so easy, will it?"
"Of course not. But the opportunity will come soon. Do you hear the wind?"
No sooner had the Rabbit-eared female cultivator spoken than Xu Chunniang heard a faint sound—the wind blowing from somewhere very far away.
"My hearing is very sharp. Judging from the direction of the wind and my experience from entering the secret realm twice before, a sand tempest is coming."
"A sand tempest?"
"It is a special phenomenon within Shashe. Winds come from afar, raising clouds of sand and dust thousands of zhang wide and hundreds of zhang high. A sand tempest possesses terrifying destructive power. Anything caught in its center is ground into fragments and dregs, eventually becoming one with the dust."
After the Rabbit-eared female cultivator transmitted her final sentence, Chen Xi, walking at the very front, suddenly stopped. With a grave expression, he looked toward the front left. "Not good. It's a sand tempest!"
The other two Earth Demons had also heard the increasingly close roar of wind and sand. Elder Sui frowned. "It sounds as though the sand