No Mercy

Yellow Sand Sea.

Silent, windless.

The sun hung high in the sky, wantonly pouring down boundless heat and light.

Sand Dune after Sand Dune rose and fell in an endless succession, like peculiar graves.

Then, on the shaded side of one Sand Dune, sand suddenly began to trickle down with soft rustling sounds.

The disturbance grew louder and louder. Then, from the churning yellow sand, a hand abruptly shot out!

That hand was covered in blood and crisscrossed with wounds. It clawed wildly at empty air, seeming to freeze for a moment.

Then, in the next instant, it seemed to react, grabbing, pushing, and scratching with frenzied excitement. First the palm, then the arm emerged from the sand. The sand pit rapidly widened, until at last it revealed a Boy's head.

As soon as that dust-gray head emerged halfway from the Sand Dune, its mouth opened as wide as it could. After weakly expelling all the stale air from his chest, the Boy greedily sucked in the scorching air.

With each violent breath, small grains of sand sprayed from the Boy's mouth and nose.

"Cough, cough, cough!"

Then, because he was breathing too violently, the Boy broke into a fit of harsh coughing.

After coughing for a while, the Boy finally caught his breath and opened his eyes.

Though he was on the dark, shaded side of the Sand Dune, the blazing sunlight still made his pupils contract. Instinctively, he narrowed his eyes into slits again.

After seeing his surroundings clearly, the Boy's heart still sank despite having expected it. "A desert. I really did arrive in a desert. I just don't know whether this is the same desert Cang Xu and the others passed through before."

The Boy was Zhen Jin.

He had nearly died of suffocation. When he took that first breath of air, the most dangerous moment had finally passed.

Zhen Jin panted for a while and recovered a little strength. With difficulty, he pulled himself out of the yellow sand.

Once he had truly escaped the predicament of being buried alive, Zhen Jin had no strength to stand. He simply knelt on the ground, panting without pause, interrupted by loud coughs.

He spat.

The sand in his mouth stained his saliva pale yellow.

He dug at his ears, blew his nose, then shook his hair with his hands, scattering fine grains of sand everywhere.

These movements lasted only a short while before Zhen Jin felt his physical strength reaching its limit. Alarmed, he immediately stopped and shifted from kneeling fully to kneeling on one knee.

He knew how dangerous this island was. Using up all his strength would be utter stupidity, and kneeling on one knee would let him rise more quickly.

The surroundings were soundless, without the slightest breath of wind.

The daylight was brilliant and scorching, baking the tawny desert.

At a glance, the desert was utterly unremarkable—nothing but yellow as far as the eye could see, without even a trace of green.

The only contrasting color was him.

This golden-haired Boy was no longer as handsome as usual, nor was he clean. His face was dirty, and he looked utterly bedraggled.

Zhen Jin stared at everything before him, highly alert, yet nothing stirred.

He swept his gaze around before finally fixing it on the Sand Dune behind him.

As he looked at that Sand Dune, it felt like he was looking at a silent gravestone.

Zhen Jin felt lingering fear, but also relief. Though deeply buried beneath the sand, he had not been directly beneath the Sand Dune. He had not been buried too deeply, and that had given him a slim chance to escape alive.

He had seized that chance tightly and had not been buried beneath this Sand Dune gravestone.

So the Boy unconsciously laughed. "Hehehe... cough, cough... hehehe."

He had escaped danger some time ago, but only after confirming that he was safe did joy begin to surge up in his heart.

That delight grew ever richer. Within the span of a few breaths, it became so intense that it filled the Boy's chest.

Zhen Jin's laughter grew louder and louder, and tears even welled up as he laughed.

Once again, he felt the beauty of life!

He felt how precious every breath was. Just moments ago, buried in the sand, he had been unable to breathe at all.

He felt his body going numb, aching—some places were injured, and at least one rib was broken. Whenever Zhen Jin breathed, every rise and fall of his chest brought pain.

Yet even this pain filled him with immense delight!

This was the joy of surviving a catastrophe, the joy of being alive—endless, like the towering waves raised by a tsunami, ready to drown him.

In truth, Zhen Jin had experienced the feeling of surviving death several times already.

The first time, strictly speaking, had been the instant he first awakened. The combat instincts hidden within Zhen Jin had helped him indirectly kill the Silver-level Magic Beast, the Blue-haired Dire Wolf. Everything had happened too fast. Of course, reflecting on it afterward had brought Zhen Jin all kinds of emotions, but relief and lingering fear outweighed his joy.

The second time had been in Mountain Cave. Zhen Jin had already been poisoned by fire venom, yet he had risked his life to kill the Silver-level Magic Beast, the Monkey-Tailed Brown Bear. Zhen Jin had nearly died, and Zi Di had exhausted herself saving him. Struggling between life and death, Zhen Jin had fallen unconscious and awakened again several times before finally pulling through. At that time, he had discovered that even an ordinary wildflower held the boundless loveliness and beauty of life, enough for him to admire for a long, long time.

The third time had been when facing the Blade Spider. Death had drawn near, while Zhen Jin had also been distracted by memories that suddenly surfaced. Zhen Jin had thought he was going to die, only for his body to mutate without warning. After surviving that ordeal, he had felt more suspicion and curiosity than anything else.

The fourth time had been when the chaotic magic power brought by the mutton invaded his body, nearly killing him. After being saved, the Boy had felt more gratitude and admiration for his fiancée, Zi Di.

The fifth time was the disaster before him. After narrowly escaping death, Zhen Jin's joy was greater than it had ever been.

"Why is that?" Zhen Jin carefully savored his emotions.

Before long, he found the reason.

"It was because of this ordeal—because of the might of heaven and earth. If I had been poisoned or faced a Magic Beast, I would still have been able to fight back. But against such a savage sandstorm that blotted out the sky and covered the earth, what could I do besides take the beating? Surviving truly was my good fortune!"

If he had a choice, Zhen Jin would rather face a Magic Beast than a raging sandstorm that filled the heavens and earth.

It was precisely that feeling of powerlessness and helplessness that made the joy of surviving all the richer.

"My life hung by a thread, and surviving was sheer luck. Then what about Zi Di and Cang Xu?" A question surfaced in his mind, and the smile on Zhen Jin's face gradually vanished.

His emotions comforted him: They must still be alive.

Yet at the same time, reason coldly told Zhen Jin: Their chances were grim. If they had survived, it would be nothing less than a miracle.

Zhen Jin could not help but worry, while a hollow hope rose within him.

His delight seemed to fade all at once. It had been so intense just moments ago, yet now it had nearly vanished without a trace.

What followed was unwillingness.

Under Zhen Jin's leadership, the Exploration Team had finally managed to hunt the rat swarm. Just when things had begun to improve, they suffered a fatal blow.

There was fear.

If he faced that raging sandstorm again, would he still be lucky enough to escape a second time?

There was helplessness and confusion.

Where should he go from here? Which way should he head?

There was heaviness.

He had once secretly sworn that he would protect his Fiancee well. Now, was Zi Di alive or dead? If she was dead, where was her body?

And as the sole heir of the Hundred Needles Family, he needed to win the competition for the position of White Sand City Lord. Yet now he was trapped on this island, repeatedly driven to the brink of death. Could he still escape this island alive? Would he still have a chance to shoulder the burden of restoring his family?

All kinds of emotions tangled together, making Zhen Jin feel short of breath again.

At that moment, he felt utterly helpless, utterly weak.

He wanted to hold it in. He remembered his identity as a Temple Knight, but his tears still fell soundlessly.

Zhen Jin did not wipe away his tears. Instead, he watched them fall onto the dry sand grains, watched them soak into the sand and form tiny pits, struggling to spread outward, yet the dampness remained confined to a very, very small area.

Compared to the vast desert—no, compared to the entire Sand Dune—how tiny and pitiful those tear pits were.

"They are so much like me."

Zhen Jin sighed bitterly.

Once more, he prayed from the bottom of his heart. "God, my great Saint Brilliance Great Emperor, You are the god who walks the world, You are the eternally victorious one. At this very moment, Your knight, Your believer, Your child begs for Your response, begs for Your mercy, begs You to grant me the right direction, to point out the road on which I may move bravely forward..."

This time, Zhen Jin's prayer rambled on and on, its contents more abundant than ever before.

A highly venomous Desert Viper spotted Zhen Jin. It swiftly saw this pitiful boy as prey.

The Desert Viper silently drew near. Its scales were very close to the color of sand, and its S-shaped movement was not only fast but utterly soundless.

When it came close enough, the Desert Viper suddenly sprang up behind Zhen Jin!

But in the next instant, Zhen Jin did not turn around. He merely reached out casually and caught the viper in midair.

The viper's jaws gaped wide, its tongue flickered, and it struggled frantically, but Zhen Jin's hand had its throat locked in an iron grip.

The viper's body, over half a meter long, tightly coiled around Zhen Jin's arm.

Yet Zhen Jin did not move at all. Neither his half-kneeling body nor his arm shifted, as though cast from iron.

Zhen Jin stopped praying and quietly listened to the viper's final hisses on its journey through life.

He remained silent and never raised his head. Thus, even when the viper was crushed to death alive, it never saw the face of its mortal enemy.

The sun climbed ever higher.

The surface of the desert grew scorching hot, and even the air in the distance warped from the blaze.

A blond-haired boy slowly emerged from the far side of the Sand Dune, like a drop of water merging into the boundless desert.

The boy was handsome, but at the moment his face was smeared with dust and dirt, and his clothes were torn to rags.

A dead Desert Viper lay draped over his shoulder like a chain.

This viper differed from ordinary ones. Its tail spiraled like a coil, bringing to mind the metal springs made by Goblins.

On this damned island, even an ordinary snake was strange and grotesque.

Zhen Jin no longer shed tears. His face became expressionless.

He had learned a truth—

God might have mercy, knights might have mercy, people might have mercy...

But nature had none.