On a stretch of golden sand,
The sea lapped weakly at the shore, leaving scattered flecks of white foam. Where the foam was thickest, it had already frozen into wave-shaped ice.
The white ice was not particularly thick, but night was approaching. The temperature would drop further, and the ice would keep thickening until noon tomorrow.
On the beach, a man and a woman lay covered in blood, the woman's hand gripping the man's shoulder tightly.
Splash!
A slightly stronger wave washed straight over them.
"Cough, cough! Hah-"
Shen Jin woke with a start, sat up, and coughed several times, spitting out seawater.
Then he anxiously scanned his surroundings.
Sea on one side, beach on the other. At the end of the beach, a winding mountain path led straight up to a small peak that blocked his entire view.
"Where am I?"
Shen Jin immediately checked the system's Mini-map and discovered that he was somewhere new. Everything around him was unexplored territory.
In other words, he had never been here before.
The Mini-map could only cover a circular area ten kilometers across, and those ten kilometers were pitch-black.
"Looks like we went pretty far... Why did I pass out?"
The last thing Shen Jin remembered was Shang Qian grabbing his shoulder from behind as purple energy engulfed them both.
Then... everything went black.
"Did I pass out during the spatial teleportation?"
That was the only explanation Shen Jin could think of. He looked at Shang Qian, still unconscious beside him, and fell silent.
In the end, only the two of them had escaped.
He checked Shang Qian's condition and found that her breathing and pulse were normal.
Only then did Shen Jin relax.
"Maybe she passed out along with me. Her Space-based Ability is pretty unstable, after all."
Thinking back