"I think the young master did it to protect us," Rou Yi defended.

The fatty's expression was complicated. He squeezed out three words, "Maybe so."

…

In the two days after the transport team's accident, the camp was also unusually busy. It seemed their ongoing mission needed to be completed urgently, so they went out in full force every day, leaving only a cook to watch over the camp, the fatty, and Rou Yi.

When dawn had just broken, there was no one left in the camp. All the camels in the camp had been ridden away, and only returned when it was dark.

Their clothes were covered with yellow sand, and their faces were covered in dust. No one knew what they had been doing, but they looked exhausted, as if they had been working around the clock all day.

They didn't say anything when they returned, and rested after eating.

The next morning, the people in the camp went out early again. At noon, two supply soldiers drove more than a dozen camels laden with supplies, delivering the supplies to the camp one day ahead of schedule. The fatty's heart was filled with joy when he saw that his supplies had arrived. He thought to himself that he could finally say goodbye to the desert, and he would never come to the desert again in this lifetime.

However, the supply soldiers refused the fatty's request to follow their camel team out of the desert. One of the soldiers told the fatty that they needed Lei Zhiming's, the instructor's, approval before they could take the fatty and Rou Yi out of the camp.

The fatty scratched his head. What the soldier said made sense. He understood the regulations, but Lei Zhiming was out and wouldn't be back until dark. It would definitely be too late to leave today.

The two soldiers said that they could wait for Lei Zhiming to return, complete the handover in the evening, and then set off early the day after tomorrow.

After agreeing on a solution, the fatty, Rou Yi, and the two soldiers waited in the camp for Lei Zhiming and the others to return.

But they didn't wait for Lei Zhiming; they waited for someone else.

This person was a militiaman from Lei Zhiming's camp named Li Feng. He rode a camel, galloping from the distant desert.

The two supply soldiers recognized Li Feng, so they asked Li Feng what had happened. Li Feng was so anxious that tears were about to fall from his eyes: "Something happened, something happened..."

The fatty grabbed Li Feng and said, "Slow down, little brother, what happened?"

Li Feng stammered, "Instructor Lei and the others..."

Li Feng seemed to have some concerns and couldn't mention it in front of the fatty and Rou Yi.

The fatty realized that things might be developing in a bad direction, so he said, "This is a matter of life and death. Just tell me! Don't be so girly!"

Li Feng gritted his teeth: "Instructor Lei and the others were buried by sand. I can't find them, so I want to go back to the camp to contact the headquarters for support."

"How long have they been buried?" the fatty asked.

Li Feng glanced at his watch and said, "It should be more than half an hour."

The fatty made a decision immediately and said to the two supply soldiers, "Please contact the headquarters. Rou Yi, Li Feng, and I will take tools back to the scene to rescue them. Saving people is the most important thing."

Li Feng said a little embarrassedly, "This mission... we're keeping it secret... you can't go..."

The fatty patted his chest hard: "This fatty is a military kid with good roots. How could I violate the army's confidentiality regulations and leak secrets? We can talk about other things later. Quickly take us to save people. I have wilderness rescue experience."

When the two supply soldiers heard Li Feng say that something had happened to Lei Zhiming and the others, they immediately used communication equipment to contact the headquarters to explain the situation and ignored the fatty and Li Feng.

The fatty took the tools, unloaded the heavy objects from the supply camels, and followed Li Feng and Rou Yi towards the scene of the incident.

The three of them rode three camels respectively, winding through the desert. If it weren't for Li Feng leading the way, they would definitely get lost.

After half an hour, the three arrived at the scene—a huge sand pit, about the size of two football fields, shaped like a hemisphere. In the very center of the sand pit, there was a huge skeleton of an unknown creature. Only half of the skeleton was exposed, and the other half was deeply buried in the sand.

When the fatty saw this huge skeleton, he remembered the giant python he had seen in the underwater stone city of the Bermuda Triangle, and he couldn't help but feel shocked. He thought to himself, what kind of monster is this? It's so scary.

"Where are Lei Zhiming and the others?" the fatty asked.

"Under the 'fish bones'," Li Feng pointed to the huge skeleton in the sand pit and said, "At that time, Instructor Lei was leading everyone in excavation work and found a large stone coffin in the abdomen of the fish bones. When they wanted to lift the stone coffin out, the previously dug yellow sand collapsed and buried Instructor Lei and the others."

After Li Feng said this, the fatty realized that the skeleton in the sand pit was actually a fish skeleton.

The fatty took the engineer shovel and small sand pump from the camel's back. Li Feng led the fatty and Rou Yi to the place where Lei Zhiming and the others were buried.

Lei Zhiming and the others were buried at the head of the fish. The fatty, who was so large, was only the size of a fish's eye in front of the fish bones.

The fatty, Rou Yi, and Li Feng dug for more than ten minutes without any results. The fatty thought to himself that Lei Zhiming and the others might have already died of lack of oxygen, but whether they were alive or dead, they still had to dig.

After digging for another ten minutes or so, the fatty's shovel hit something hard, like a stone. He slowly brushed away the sand on the suspected "stone", and a black carved stone slab was revealed.

The fatty asked Li Feng, "Is this the stone coffin you found?"

Li Feng nodded.

"Then we should be able to find Lei Zhiming and the others soon."

The fatty and Rou Yi then sped up their digging.

The outline of the stone coffin gradually emerged.

The fatty's engineer shovel poked something soft in the sand—he must have dug up a person.

The fatty threw away the engineer shovel and dug the sand with his bare hands. After a burst of digging, he finally dug out the upper half of a person's body.

The person buried in the sand was Lei Zhiming, who was already dead.

After the fatty brushed the sand off Lei Zhiming's body, he found a clear bullet hole in Lei Zhiming's head—he had been shot to death.

The fatty suddenly realized something. Li Feng, who had been next to him just now, was gone. Li Feng had somehow gotten behind them and was now pointing a gun at them.

Rou Yi looked at Li Feng in astonishment and asked, "Did you do this?"

Li Feng didn't answer her.

The fatty reminded Rou Yi from the side, "The person who can kill Lei Zhiming and these well-trained soldiers in such a short time must need at least two people."

"Why did you do this?" the fatty asked.

Li Feng smiled sinisterly, opened the gun's safety, and said unhurriedly, "Some people pay, some people sell their lives. It's a fair trade."

"Go, open the stone coffin and let me see what's inside," Li Feng ordered the fatty to open the stone coffin.

Although the fatty had taken the elixir, he couldn't guarantee that he could block bullets. After weighing the pros and cons, he didn't dare to take the risk and had to do as he was told.

The stone slab on the stone coffin was stuck on the coffin. It only needed to be lifted up slightly to be pushed open. It would definitely be impossible for ordinary people to lift it, but for the fatty who had taken the elixir, it was as easy as flipping his hand.

With a clang, the stone slab was pushed off the stone coffin. The moment the stone slab was pushed down, the fatty glanced into the stone coffin and was so shocked that he froze in place.

Rou Yi also curiously glanced at the inside of the stone coffin. When she saw the person lying in the stone coffin, she exclaimed, "This is..."