Buried Alive

The gale howled at his ears, like a beast pack roaring in unison.

Sand and grit filled the sky, swept up by the raging wind and slapping against Zhen Jin's face like knives.

The immense force of the wind tugged in every direction—left and right, up and down. An ordinary person would find it hard to stay on their feet.

The ground beneath Zhen Jin's feet was no longer solid grassland, but sand.

Sand covered the ground everywhere.

Sand danced through the air as well.

The lush, verdant forest had vanished completely.

This was a desert!

A desert in the dead of night.

In the desert, the gale roared and sand filled the heavens as the Exploration Team members in the camp cried out in panic.

Zhen Jin blanked out for a moment, then reacted. His heart jolted violently, and two words surfaced in his mind—

"Teleportation!"

"Teleportation has activated again. This time, all of us have been transported into the desert."

The first time Zhen Jin experienced teleportation, he had been pursued by a swarm of Fire Poison Bees. When it activated, it moved him from the Rainforest into a forest, indirectly saving his life.

This was the second time he had experienced teleportation. Just like the first time, it happened without a sound, with not the slightest warning beforehand.

But this time, Zhen Jin's luck was far too terrible.

Not only had he been transported into a desert, he had also happened to encounter a sandstorm!

"We have to gather everyone together!" The instant Zhen Jin opened his mouth to call out, it was immediately filled with sand.

Zhen Jin could only cover his mouth and shout with difficulty, but his voice was drowned out by the wind.

The wind grew stronger.

Sand struck Zhen Jin's body, sending waves of faint, tingling pain through him.

The foul weather became terrifying.

"A dust storm?" Realizing this, Zhen Jin's heart sank straight to the bottom.

"Zi Di, wait for me!" He could only stop shouting and run forward according to his memories.

With a whoosh, a tent swept toward Zhen Jin on the wind, like a colossal gray ghostly monster in the darkness plunging down from above.

Zhen Jin casually swung his hand. With a sharp hiss, the incomparably keen blade sliced the tent in two. The halves flew past him to either side, then were instantly swept away without a trace by the gale.

The tents in the camp had all been secured to the ground with wooden stakes. But after being transported here, those stakes, once deeply embedded in the soil, had been scattered across the surface of the desert.

Without anything holding them down, the tents collapsed, then were carried away by the gale.

"This is bad." Zhen Jin inwardly cursed. After moving for a while, he discovered that he could not make out the correct direction at all.

First, having been transported here into the nighttime wind and sand, there were no landmarks by which to distinguish east, south, west, or north.

Second, the tents were flying everywhere, leaving the camp's original layout utterly unrecognizable.

Finally, they could not rely on shouting through the wind and sand to contact the other team members.

For a moment, Zhen Jin was at a complete loss.

And in those few short breaths, the wind's strength actually doubled again!

"Save me..." Zhen Jin suddenly heard a faint cry for help from above his head.

He jerked his head up and saw a black shadow flash past high overhead.

Zhen Jin immediately realized that an Exploration Team member had been swept away by the hurricane.

The strengthened wind had become utterly terrifying, capable of easily blowing an adult into the air.

Zhen Jin instinctively stretched out an arm, but in the blink of an eye, the team member crying for help vanished into the sand-filled sky.

There was simply no time.

"Zi Di is the lightest. Her situation is far too dangerous!" At this thought, Zhen Jin could not help growing frantic with worry.

"Zi Di, where exactly are you now?"

As if answering Zhen Jin's intense thoughts, a streak of white light suddenly flared amid the wind and sand to his front left.

The white light was like fire, blazing fiercely within his dim field of vision.

On this island, low-level magic and battle qi were forbidden. Based on what Zhen Jin knew of the Exploration Team, such white flames could only have been produced by a potion.

And where those white flames burned was clearly Zi Di's true location.

"Clever!" Zhen Jin silently praised her, immediately fixing his eyes on the white flames as he ran toward them.

He ran with great difficulty. The terrifying gale could blow adults away, but Zhen Jin was, after all, a battle qi practitioner. Though he could not use battle qi now, his cultivation had given him physical qualities beyond the ordinary.

Under these circumstances, Zhen Jin could still barely contend with the wind.

But just as he was steadily drawing closer, the white flames suddenly dispersed.

"Has the medicine lost its effect? Zi Di, wait for me!"

Zhen Jin's heart gave a slight jolt, and he grew even more anxious.

After taking a few more steps, something huge suddenly came hurtling toward him through the dim field of vision with a whoosh.

The Boy hurriedly ducked his head and bent low, narrowly avoiding it.

It turned out to be a rather massive tree trunk. The camp had indeed stored some trunks, leftovers from making Short Bows and other things.

The trunk weighed far more than an adult, yet the gale had easily swept it away.

Zhen Jin could no longer run.

With every step, he had to stomp down with all his strength, driving his feet into the sand until it swallowed his ankles. Only then could he contend against the wind.

What troubled him even more than the hurricane was the sand and gravel shrieking through it.

The grains struck Zhen Jin's body and face, bringing sharp pain. He could not open his eyes fully for fear of being blinded, and could only peer through a narrow slit.

Everything around him grew darker.

There was not a trace of light; he could barely see his hand before his face.

Zhen Jin could only press on by memory, with no confidence at all that he was heading in the right direction.

The might of nature was so vast and majestic. At this moment, the Boy keenly felt just how small he was.

As time passed, Zhen Jin's heart turned cold.

"I've walked at least a hundred steps, yet I still haven't found Zi Di."

"Was she swept away by the gale long ago, or did I unknowingly go the wrong way?"

"God, Saint Brilliance Great Emperor... what should I do?"

Hesitation and bewilderment were like a plume of black smoke, choking the Boy's nose and stinging his eyes.

Yet in the Boy's chest, a blazing inferno seemed to burn.

It was the fire of anger, unwillingness, and hatred!

"I had clearly already taken control of the Exploration Team."

"After such difficulty, we finally succeeded in the hunt and temporarily had ample food."

"In the blink of an eye, it became like this!"

"Am I meant to die on this island?"

"Am I meant to watch helplessly as those close to me die one after another?"

"Is the fall of the Bai Zhen Family right before my eyes?"

"No!"

"How could I—how could I let something like this happen?!"

The Boy was filled with righteous indignation and exerted every ounce of strength he had.

Yet that invisible fate was like a god-king seated high in the heavens. It happened to notice Zhen Jin, as though it had spotted a defiant ant, and fate extended a finger as immense as a mountain to press down upon him.

Zhen Jin wanted to raise his head, but his head sank lower and lower.

Zhen Jin wanted to straighten his body, but he had no choice but to bend at the waist and hunch over before he could move forward slowly.

Zhen Jin wanted to glare with furious eyes, to shout or roar, but amid this roaring darkness, he could only shut his eyes and mouth and grope his way onward.

The wind continued to intensify sharply!

Very soon, it became so powerful that Zhen Jin had to resist it with all his might.

The Boy realized sorrowfully that, at this very moment, he could save no one. Even his own life hung by a thread!

He wanted to activate his battle qi, but he still failed.

He wanted to mutate again, but no matter how frantically he tried, he could not sense the crystal core in his heart. He never succeeded.

Left with no other choice, he could only pray to the gods.

"O great Saint Brilliance Great Emperor, You are a god walking upon the earth. Now Your believer faces a desperate plight, and a knight's radiance is about to be buried beneath wind and sand. Please hear me, please show mercy, and help me escape this predicament, so that I may continue to walk the path You have ordained and continue to reveal Your might."

But the god gave no response.

The Boy was angry.

The Boy resisted.

The Boy grieved.

The Boy struggled.

The Boy exhausted his strength and finally lost consciousness.

An endless expanse of darkness.

A mysterious beast's roar stirred a trace of awareness in the Boy once more.

"Where am I?"

"Where is this?"

"Who... who am I?"

A sheet of darkness.

No one answered him.

Only endless darkness.

"Wait, I think I just heard a beast's roar?"

Then, the Boy gradually remembered his identity as a Temple Knight and nobleman, his name was Zhen Jin, his Fiancee Zi Di, the perilous island, the Exploration Team, the midnight teleportation, the savage, terrifying sandstorm...

Along with this process, the Boy's consciousness fully awakened. At last, he was completely alert.

Then he felt a crushing pressure squeezing his entire body from every direction, making it hard for him to breathe.

"So, I'm probably buried in sand?"

Terror naturally surged into his heart.

No one would be willing to be buried alive like this!

Zhen Jin became incomparably tense.

But he did not immediately open his eyes, nor did he rush to get up. Instead, he calmly assessed his surroundings.

The cultivation of battle qi did not merely grant him strength far beyond that of ordinary people. It also enhanced his senses.

He could see farther and more clearly than others, hear more and catch finer details.

Though he could not see now, and the loudest sound he heard was only his own heartbeat, he could still sense which direction bore greater pressure.

Then he gathered all his strength and struggled with his limbs.

Struggled with all his might!

Struggled desperately!

Because the Boy knew this was his last chance to survive.