Eventually, the girl became tired and feebly collapsed on the ground. Du Ze calmly handed her some water. Relax, child.
The fox-eared girl stared at Du Ze as he handed over the water. She suddenly began to cry. Her ears drooped, her tail curled up, and her sobs were heart-rending. The silly, cute person with a social barrier had absolutely no idea how to handle this situation. He put the water down and wanted to run away from the fox-eared maiden.
The two moons slowly climbed up the sky. They were about 4/5ths of the way until they overlapped. Du Ze sat at the entrance of the crack in the rock, shivering. Nighttime in the desert was very cold, so he took out all of the clothes in his interspatial ring and put them all on.
Du Ze looked behind him. The fox girl had lapsed into a coma again and had shrunk into herself in the shadow, motionless. Du Ze walked towards her and found that the storm was over.1 She was lying on the stone, hugging her own tail, and seemed very cold. Du Ze hesitated for a moment before finally huddling together with the fox girl and covering both their bodies with the clothes to keep themselves warm.
Because of the environment, Du Ze kept waking up then falling asleep again throughout the night. He didn’t know how long it had been when the fat chirp poked him to wake him up. Du Ze looked outside; it was dark and it didn’t look like it was morning yet. The little Phoenix kept chirping, trying to tell him something. The Phoenix’s noise woke the fox girl up and saw Du Ze’s puzzled look. When she saw the darkness outside, the fox-eared girl’s face showed panic.
“The black storm is coming …“
Du Ze could finally hear the fox girl’s voice. It was pleasant to hear but the words she said were frightening. The fox girl had just finished speaking when they saw a wall of black sand approaching.
“Whoosh-”
Strong winds whistled through the rocks like a Devil’s cry and the sand hit the rocks like bullets. Du Ze and the fox-eared girl hid in the crevice. Thankfully, they were in a very good position. There was a huge rock right at the entrance of the crevice that blocked most of the sand. Only a little bit of sand was occasionally blown inside the crevice by the wind. The two people remained silent as they waited for the storm to pass.
The sand storm went on for a long time and darkened the sky so that they could barely see anything. Du Ze could only use the headphones’ charge to estimate how much time had passed. The headphones ran out of charge five times. Outside, the storm showed no sign of dying down. Their water was running out and all of their food had long been eaten. Du Ze had been in various adventures recently, which meant he hadn’t had time to add food and water to the interspatial storage ring. Now the weather was too foul for him to try to find food or water. One step from the crevice and a person would be blown to pieces by the howling winds.
Du Ze has 0-point restore, so he did not drink any of the water. When Du Ze tried to hand over the last of the water to the fox-eared girl, she stared at Du Ze’s expressionless face and said hoarsely: “… You drink.”
Du Ze shook his head then put the canteen in the hands of the fox-eared maiden. The girl held the canteen and wept. She hates humans; those greedy and despicable creatures were killing her people. She had vowed to kill every human she saw but she didn’t want the black-haired human to die.
This person was not the same as the other humans. He gave all the food and water to her. Even if she had treated him badly before, he wasn’t angry at her.
“My name is Nina … What about you?”
Du Ze saw the maiden’s soft fox ears hanging down, like a tame fox. Some silly, cute person maintained his glamorous, aloof image for some time before he stiffly spoke his name: “Du Ze.”
Nina listened with a smile, then she closed her eyes since she was very tired. She was very weak. Although she had been able to drink water, she had lost a lot of her physical strength because she had not eaten for a long time. Watching Nina, Du Ze was at a loss. After a few days of hardship, he did not want the vixen to weaken like this.
In the morning of the seventh day, the sandstorm finally stopped. Du Ze, with Nina on his back, climbed down from the rock. Suddenly, he saw that a lot of people were also climbing out of another crevice in the rocks. They looked like a team since, in addition to messy clothes, most of them were wearing yellow turbans.
Du Ze hesitated. He wasn’t sure if he should try to ask these people for food and water. The decision was soon taken out of his hands as one of them spotted Du Ze carrying Nina. The person shouted to the others to look at the two people. A big man wearing a black turban, who looked like the leader, walked over to Du Ze and Nina.
“Quick, run away…” said Nina weakly in Du Ze’s ear. “Those are sand pirates…”
Seeing Du Ze running away, the sand pirates pursued. Du Ze tried his best to run but the sand pirates were quite fast and they were quickly captured. The man with a black turban lifted Nina from Du Ze’s back. When he saw how beautiful the girl was, wonder and greed flashed in his eyes.
“This is great luck, brothers.” The man in the black turban ran his dirty hands over Nina in a lewd manner. “This is the best – ****! I’ve never seen such a pretty little animal in my life.”
The surrounding sand pirates began to cheer their good fortune. Nina struggled weakly while Du Ze tried to raise his hand but one of the sand pirates mercilessly trampled his head back down into the sand. The person who trampled Du Ze asked the man in the black turban: “Boss, what should we do with this one?”
The man in the black turban glanced at Du Ze and said carelessly: “Kill. You can have whatever he has on him.”
The bandit became excited. The person under his foot was wearing some very nice clothes which he was loathe to stain with blood. The sand pirate stooped down to take off Du Ze’s clothes when he was struck by an angry little Phoenix.
“Chirp!”
The other sand thieves roared with laughter. The bandit angrily grabbed his scimitar. He had just raised his weapon to hit the little Phoenix when a shadow fell over him. The other bandits’ expressions changed from laughter to shock as they stared at something above them.
There was a wind coming from the sky, a wind driven by wings. The sand pirate raised his head and his eyes reflected the image of a dragon flying over them. Its shadow completely covered the area. On the back of the black dragon, a handsome young man with golden hair looked down at him. The bandit looked into the sky blue eyes and felt a chill rising up from the soles of his feet.