My Name Isn't Exactly a Demon

This was a small patch of sand.

It lay quietly between several sand dunes of varying sizes, dead silent beneath the faintly brightening sky.

Until every grain of sand on the ground began to tremble slightly.

Bang.

With a muffled boom, an irregular flat surface suddenly bulged up from the center of the sand.

Thud.

Amid a succession of muffled thuds, countless grains of sand slid off the gradually rising surface and fell into the dark tunnel revealed beneath it.

The sliding sand rustled.

The several-meter-wide surface continued to rise, revealing its dark gray nature.

A dozen seconds later, a figure covered in dust and holding a torch was the first to poke out of that dark, mysterious tunnel.

The figure dusted himself off and surveyed the surroundings.

Only then did he turn back, reach out, and grab the second person, pulling him out of the tunnel.

Then came the third, the fourth... More and more people crawled out of the tunnel.

Several dozen in all.

Finally, a slender figure emerged from the tunnel. Someone pulled him out, and he set foot on the sand.

"Cough, cough, cough..."

Tales removed his face covering and painfully coughed out dust and sand, brushing the grains off his body.

The chill of the wind before dawn and the smell of sand assaulted his senses at the same time.

Making him shiver.

Familiar yet strange.

Tales instinctively reached toward his lower back, only to grasp empty air. That was when he remembered:

Ricky had confiscated his dagger again.

Behind the boy, Talding, Bri, and Cannon were led out one after another, their hands tightly bound behind them.

Sakrael, Barney, and Belleti were in an even worse state. Their eyes had been blindfolded, and Clay and Josh were personally guarding them.

Kuaishang seemed to have