Two Kilometers at Most

The six of them, plus one wolf, had been walking through the Shamang River for close to a kilometer without realizing it. The farther the bank behind them receded, the more unsettled they all felt.

They kept walking. When they next glanced back, the bank had disappeared entirely. White sand and silt stretched in every direction, and even the sky was thick with drifting white powder.

"You know, I heard the white sand in the Shamang River is actually pretty dense," Zhang Xiaohou said, reading the tension on everyone's faces and trying to lighten the mood. He recalled something a few old comrades-in-arms had once told him about this place. "It's too heavy for the wind to carry. So the stuff that does drift through the air — these fine white particles — they're actually the ash from the bones of everyone who's died here. Bone ash is much lighter, you see."

The color drained from Chenying's and Xinxia's faces. The realization that the particles drifting all around them — the ones that sometimes landed on their skin — were human bone ash left them feeling sick to their core.

Mo Fan and Zhao Manyan both shot Zhang Xiaohou a withering look. Everyone's nerves were already stretched to breaking, and this idiot had chosen the absolute worst moment to open his mouth.

Seeing that his attempt to ease the tension had only made things considerably worse, Zhang Xiaohou gave a dry, awkward laugh and decided to shut up.

What happened next couldn't have been worse-timed: a swirl of white sand suddenly swept toward Xinxia. The instant she thought of what that sand was actually made of, she flinched instinctively — and shattered the Mind Element Star Chart she had been so carefully constructing.

Fewer than three seconds later, massive waves of sand began surging from both ahead and behind, accompanied by a deep, rolling rumble. Something was forcing its way up from beneath the surface.

The sand heaved in a terrifying swell stretching for hundreds of meters in both directions — like a vast pot brought to a furious boil. One look was enough to stop the heart.

From within those crashing waves of sand, colossal humanoid figures hauled themselves upright. Each one stood over five meters tall.

They dwarfed everything the group had encountered before. The sand-forged blades in their hands were each over three meters long — taller than any person — clutched in enormous fists. The sheer menace radiating from those giants sent a wave of cold dread through every one of them.

Cold sweat slid down the back of Mo Fan's neck, and his throat moved involuntarily as he swallowed.

His composure was stronger than most — far stronger — yet the sight of nearly a hundred five-meter sand giants rising out of nowhere still made every hair on his body stand on end, as though he'd been dropped to the very bottom of hell with demons closing in on all sides.

Xinxia shut her eyes.

She kept tracing the Mind Element Star Chart. She understood with perfect clarity: one mistake now, and none of them were walking out of here.

She could not afford even a breath of distraction.

Zhao Manyan and Zhang Xiaohou had turned to statues, barely breathing. Chenying, facing this kind of horror for the first time, nearly moved on pure instinct — her hands already reaching up to trace the first lines of a Star Chart to shield herself.

Mo Fan saw it. Without hesitation, he lunged and tackled her to the ground.

"Are you trying to get us all killed?" he hissed against her ear. "Pull your magical energy back in. Now."

Chenying clawed back just enough of her rational mind to stop, but her heart refused to steady as she stared at the towering ranks of sand giants standing shoulder to shoulder around them like an impenetrable iron wall.

"Soothe!"

Xinxia had done it. She completed the Mind Element spell without faltering, and the word that left her lips carried something extraordinary within it — something beyond mere sound. It swept through the killing intent radiating from the surrounding sand giants and kept moving, reaching into the terrified hearts of her companions and drawing out the fear.

No one dared breathe.

None of them had expected this. Deeper in the Shamang River, what waited for them were White Sand Giants of a size far beyond anything they had seen before. These creatures carried none of the Battle-General-class aura — yet their raw power clearly far surpassed the White Sand Demon Soldiers from earlier. Packed into the surrounding area with no gaps between them, they formed something like a towering fortress of white sand, a massive citadel of living dunes enclosing the group on every side.

But the three-meter blades did not fall.

Whatever rage had driven those giants was fading rapidly. As the last traces of hostility left them, their bodies softened — enormous figures dissolving into loose sand that cascaded down in quiet streams, rejoining the boundless river all around them.

They toppled like a row of colossal dominoes, one after another, sending billowing clouds of white dust rising into the air. The spectacle was so vast and strange that the six people standing in the middle of it could only stare, struck silent.

It wasn't long before every last White Sand Giant had vanished. But no one's heart had stopped hammering.

They looked at one another, faces ashen, each set of eyes carrying the hollow, shaken look of people who had stared past the edge of death and survived. It took a long while before anyone felt steady enough to exhale.

"Monkey," Mo Fan said, voice low and hard. "Not another word. Not one."

Zhang Xiaohou had undergone a genuine epiphany. He swore to himself right then and there that he would never again try to break tension with some bizarre anecdote.

Xinxia's face was pale, her cheeks glistening with fine beads of sweat. Her voice came out soft and a little unsteady: "The ones living here are White Sand Giants of a higher bloodline. They're more intelligent, which means I have to sustain the Mind Element soothing for much longer before their hostility fades. From here on, please protect me — I can't afford any interruptions."

Everyone nodded immediately. Zhang Xiaohou pressed his hand over his mouth in a deliberate mime of zipping his lips shut.

As they pressed on, Mo Fan noticed that Xinxia was casting her Mind Element magic with increasing frequency. Whatever restless spirits populated this stretch of the Shamang River were clearly far more volatile — and he was beginning to worry whether her Magical Energy reserves would hold.

Her face had taken on a fatigue-worn pallor that had nothing to do with fright. The drain on her Magical Energy was clearly beginning to affect her mentally. *How much longer can she keep this up?*

"Can you see how far we still have to go?" Xinxia asked Lingling quietly.

Lingling opened the electronic map and gave a slight shake of her head. "We've drifted off our route a little — we're not on a straight crossing anymore. I'd estimate about three to four more kilometers."

"My Magical Energy won't last that long," Xinxia said.

"How far can you sustain it?" Lingling pressed.

"Two kilometers. At most."

The words settled over the group like a stone dropping into still water. Mo Fan, Zhang Xiaohou, Zhao Manyan, and Chenying exchanged looks of undisguised horror.

Two kilometers?

That was all they had?

The Shamang River was a river crawling with creatures beyond counting. Without Xinxia's Mind Element soothing, there was simply no way to hold back the endless tide of White Sand Giants waiting beneath the sand.

And turning back was no longer an option. They were already at least ten kilometers from the bank they had started from.

There was nothing for it but to grit their teeth and keep moving forward.