Under the blazing sun, a party traveled through the Desert.
They were all wrapped in white cloth and rode on camels. Only their height and build were visible; no one could tell their age or gender. There was one exception: a man lay on a large, thick wooden board, which was pulled by coarse ropes and dragged by a camel at the rear of the party.
That man was Pan Long, of course.
It was not that he wanted special treatment. The truth was... he could barely travel through the Desert anymore.
Unless he used Cockroach Sprint, a single step into the Desert left only his head above ground. The rest of him sank straight in.
The Zion operatives were utterly baffled by his predicament, but there was nothing they could do about it. After some discussion, the short young woman Du Ling came up with a solution.
Otherwise, there was no way he could have traveled with the others.
...They could not have the whole party wait for him for hours at a time, could they?
Even if the others agreed, Pan Long would not. That would be even more humiliating!
As things stood, he could lie there and practice the Nine-Turn Mysterious Art, slowly refining the Earthly Baleful Force. It was not a complete waste of time.
As for getting lost... that was impossible. After Body Tempering with the Earthly Baleful Force, he had become extraordinarily sensitive to the flow of ley lines. He could use their paths beneath the earth to judge his direction. Unless the terrain was too confined and packed with obstacles in a small area that forced him to wind back and forth, he could not get lost.
The Desert that seemed empty to everyone else had a distinct flow of ley lines to