Chapter 1

In the year 15926 of the Shangqiong Calendar, on May 19th.

The sky was just beginning to brighten in the distant outskirts of Qishui City, the easternmost part of the Gels Principality, in the town of Suosha. The residents got up early and, in the dim light, started preparing food.

Some of the prepared food they would keep for themselves, while the rest they would sell to adventurers who came to hunt and capture sand beasts, using the money to buy daily necessities from merchants.

Suosha, as its name suggests, means "dancing and fluttering," but what dances and flutters here is not people, but the endless yellow sand.

No one in the town knew where the desert ended. Occasionally, adventurers would mention that the end was the sea, full of water.

Many people in the town had longed since childhood to reach the end of the desert, to dig long ditches and bring the water from the sea to the town.

The idea of moving to live by the sea was absolutely out of the question; the town needed water, not the dangers that might come with living by the sea.

A calm morning, but restless hearts, formed a segment of the ordinary days in Suosha.

Morti Kaxiu, a local, began his busy day as usual. At seventy-two, he did not look old. Having been a chef in the town's tavern for sixty years, he was the best, at least in his own opinion.

Due to a group of adventurers who returned to the town last night with a good harvest and drank too much wine made from sand-brown fruit, they gave Morti Kaxiu an extra twenty pounds of ball-shooting snake meat. Today, he had ball-shooting snake meat as the main ingredient for his grilled meat.

After skillfully preparing the grilled meat, Morti Kaxiu carried the board outside the tavern. This part of the meat was prepared to be sold to adventurers heading into the desert in the morning.

Morti Kaxiu always wondered whether the adventurers were living to take risks or taking risks to live. He only knew that he could live without taking risks.

After arranging everything, Morti Kaxiu clapped his hands, took a deep breath, and looked up at the sky, muttering, "The two suns are brighter today than yesterday. The miserly old Xier will run to the desert to sell water again. I hope he doesn't sell the last drop and die of thirst in the desert, then he won't see the morning sun..."

Morti Kaxiu's muttering suddenly stopped, his mouth slightly open, his eyes showing a complex expression of panic, fear, and confusion.

"The sun is falling." It was unclear which child spoke first, but more people looked up at the sky.

A large fireball flew from the distant horizon, as if a third sun had appeared, even more dazzling than the sun.

Countless eyes followed the fireball, which streaked across the sky at an unknown height, like a meteor at night, but did not dissipate in the air like a meteor.

Until the horizon blocked the view, the people in the town still looked puzzled and confused.

After an unknown amount of time, those who came to their senses began to discuss their speculations with nearby people. The fireball from the sky became the only topic of conversation in Suosha that morning.

Half a month later, more adventurers appeared in Suosha, making the town even more prosperous.

Few people mentioned the fireball anymore. The town's residents knew that the fireball had landed in the desert, perhaps a thousand miles away from the town. Those who went to search for it did not find the fireball but discovered a ruin said to be at least twenty thousand years old.

It was said that the ruin contained many unknown fierce beasts that only ate crying, sleepless children; that it had countless treasures, and whoever obtained them would become the richest person in the principality; that it had potions that could keep women young and make men stronger.

There were many such stories, but more adventurers were not there for these reasons. They wanted to obtain a few antiques from the ruin to exchange for more gold coins.

******

In the year 15940 of the Shangqiong Calendar, on May 19th.

Fourteen years after the appearance of the desert ruin.

Morti Kaxiu still ran his tavern, and the number of adventurers coming to Suosha remained the same.

Those who returned from the ruin alive said that it had been explored to the sixth level, and it was indeed very dangerous. No one had seen the powerful beasts, but various traps had claimed the lives of adventurers, and some had died mysteriously from poisoning.

Almost everyone knew that the deaths of adventurers were not entirely due to the dangers of the ruin; many had died at the hands of other adventurers.

"Hey! Old Morti, good evening." The wooden door of the tavern was pushed open, and a group of adventurers walked in. The person at the front greeted Morti Kaxiu warmly, "If you give me a free cup of sand-brown wine, I'll tell you something new."

"Damn Bick, I'll say it again, call me Kaxiu. If you keep forgetting things, you'll get lost on your way back. If the thing you want to trade is... that a fourteen-year-old boy and a four-year-old girl are competing with the miserly old Xier for business in the desert, I'll sell you the wine at double the price."

Morti Kaxiu's arm rested on the counter, which had lost its original color, and he narrowed his eyes at the newcomers.

"Alright, alright, old Morti, the new thing I want to tell you is something else, yes, something else." Bick waved his hand carelessly, pulled out a chair with his foot, and sat down, saying, "The boy's name is Gongsun Murong, and the girl's name is..."

"Sophia Narasha, Bick, it seems you'll have to pay double today." Morti Kaxiu's lips curved, and he shook the cup he had just filled with wine.

Bick was taken aback, hugged his head, and shouted dramatically, "Oh no~! Did I come back too late? Who got the free wine? Well, old Morti, what I want to say is that Gongsun Murong and Sophia Narasha are about to have trouble."

The people in the tavern fell silent after Bick's words. They understood that selling water in the desert was not something everyone was willing to pay for with prey or money.

Just like the miserly old Xier, who occasionally returned with wounds and other adventurers' equipment, which was definitely not from the sand, and the equipment was not a gift.

Even with his third-level, sixth-grade battle aura, he still faced challenges, let alone two children surviving in the desert... there was no mercy.

"May the War God protect them. Adventurers need water, not the lives of children, right? Oh, I remember, the new information provided by Kailong brought me fresh hyena meat, yes, delicious hyena meat, which is about to be grilled. Anyone want a piece?"

Morti Kaxiu quickly changed the subject.

Soon, the tavern was filled with noisy shouts and curses again.

******

The night in the desert was cold and dangerous, with some creatures only beginning to hunt when the twin moons rose.

Sixty miles from the ruin, nine hundred and seventy miles from Suosha, a boy who looked about fourteen or fifteen years old was walking with a three or four-year-old girl, holding a torch.

"Murong brother, Narasha hates the night." The girl complained.

She wore a knee-length dress that exposed her shoulders, white, with a pair of half-transparent pink crystal shoes on her feet. Her head had two tufts of hair that looked like horns, and the rest of her hair fell to her waist, fluttering in the wind. On her forehead was a crystal-like ornament, with a dazzling and mysterious color.

The boy smiled and looked at the girl, "Yes, I do too."

He wore clothes similar to those of adventurers in the desert, but a bit loose. He held a torch in his left hand and a sword in his right, a meter long, ten centimeters wide, and about two centimeters thick, with dried blood on the blade, which appeared dark under the torchlight.

"No one comes to buy water at night, and no one brings us anything. How will we live when we reach a place with people? Narasha doesn't want to be hungry, Narasha is already hungry, Murong brother!" The girl rubbed her stomach and looked up at the boy's face.

The boy suddenly had a golden plate in his hand, with a circle of meat slices on it. He handed it to the girl and comforted her, "Don't worry, Narasha. When we reach a place with more people, we'll find work and have more delicious food waiting for us."

The girl took the plate, and before the wind brought sand, a transparent dome appeared over the plate. She picked up a piece of meat and chewed it, asking in a muffled voice, "Murong brother, is my name really Narasha? Did you find me in the ruin?"

"Yes, yes. You were sleeping in the ruin, and you were as big as you are now, three years ago. You haven't grown since then. You were in a crystal coffin... or cabinet, with your name written on it. My steward recognized the writing, and the entire ruin is your home," the boy said firmly.

"Oh, I always forget. I'll try to ask fewer questions in the future. Is your steward really gone?"

"He's sleeping. When I return home, they will have a way to wake him up. My arrival was an accident. The steward said I should grow up on a specific planet, accompanied by my fleet, and then return to my family to compete with others for the next generation's successor."

"I know, I know. You said last year that you and your fleet got separated during a space jump, and you and your escape pod landed on this planet. You grew up, trained by the steward, but the escape pod consumed too much special energy, and the steward needed special energy to function, so he went to sleep."

"Yes, yes, I said that."

"You also said the ruin has eight levels, and I was on the last level. You helped me collect most of the things, and when the adventurers explored to the fourth level, you left them some things that looked worthless but were embedded in the walls. You said you would help me find my family."

"Right, find your family."

"Murong brother, you're so nice. When Narasha grows up, I'll marry you, but why am I always so small? Wow, Murong brother, another sand-eater is coming, I want to eat it. It tastes the best."

The girl was chatting about the same topic she had repeated countless times when she suddenly pointed ahead and shouted happily.

Three hundred meters ahead, a head suddenly emerged from the sand. The sharp mouth in front of the head opened wide and swallowed a hyena that was lying in wait. Perhaps the upward momentum was too strong, and its entire body shot out of the sand, heading for the sky.

The girl seemed to see clearly even without the torchlight.

The moment she spoke, the boy had already rushed forward with his sword. His figure did not have a clear trajectory like others but flickered.

Sometimes clear, sometimes blurry, and the moonlight seemed to refract specially on him, making him appear to move in a sudden, jerky manner, covering great distances in a blink.

In three hundred meters, the boy covered two hundred meters in four seconds. At this point, the sand-eater's momentum had reached its peak, paused in the air for a moment, and began to fall, its twelve-meter-long body still writhing, and its head turned downward, its sharp mouth closed, moving faster than when it shot up.

Another second passed, and just as the sand-eater's mouth was about to touch the sand, the boy roared and threw his single-handed sword. In the moonlight, it flashed a blurry line and pierced two inches above the sand-eater's sharp mouth.

Dust and sand flew up as the sand-eater's body fell to the sand, its head and below writhing irregularly, unable to burrow into the sand.

"Yay!" The girl jumped up, waving her small fists, "We have something good to eat, Murong brother is so awesome."

The desert night was not a good time to prepare food, so the two of them dragged the sand-eater and continued on their way, rather than storing it as the boy had done with the plate and meat. A sand-eater, rated as a third-level, seventh-grade creature by humans, could intimidate lower-level beasts, even as a corpse.

Sure enough, as the sky began to brighten, Gongsun Murong and Sophia Narasha had a very easy night, encountering no other sand beasts. The sand-eater seemed to be the top predator in this area.

Moreover, they traveled two hundred and seventy miles in one night, a distance that would scare ninety-nine percent of adventurers.

They were now less than seven hundred miles from Suosha and no longer in a hurry to sell water.

Selling water was not their goal. For two months, they had appeared and disappeared like ghosts around the ruin, selling water to learn the local language and customs.

They always appeared when there were few people, such as three miles ahead of an adventurer team or at a corner on a certain level of the ruin.

Every adventurer who traded with them and did not harm them worried about their safety, while those who did harm them had disappeared in the ruin or its surroundings.

The more benevolent adventurers, when talking to others, would often express pity, thinking the two children could not survive. But whenever they heard that someone had encountered the children, they would feel relieved.

These adventurers knew the variability of human nature, but when they chose to be kind to the children, they did not realize that they were not just choosing between good and evil, but... life and death.