Life is of paramount importance, and Fatty dared not delay. He immediately led everyone to search in the direction of the sound. The ancient city ruins were like a maze. Although it felt like they had walked a long distance, it felt as if they were constantly circling around. Fatty had seen the same architectural ruins many times.

During the search, Liu Kailin's voice became clearer and clearer. Fatty felt that Liu Kailin's location was getting closer and closer to them.

They quickened their pace, moving quickly in the direction of the sound. It felt like Liu Kailin was nearby, but his voice suddenly disappeared. Fatty felt alert, sensing that something was wrong. Something must have happened to Liu Kailin, and it was imperative not to act rashly at this moment.

Fatty hesitated, whether to advance or retreat. He was in a dilemma.

But Professor Chen and others insisted on searching for Liu Kailin. Li Zhonghua had already met with misfortune, and now Liu Kailin was likely in danger. They would save him if they could; otherwise, they would not forgive themselves for standing by and watching him die.

Fatty shook his head, thinking to himself that these bookworms could hardly protect themselves, yet they were still concerned about others. But considering their stance, if they stood by and watched him die, they would inevitably fall into deep self-blame and guilt in their future lives, unable to extricate themselves. Rather than regretting it in the future, it was better to take a risk now.

Fatty led everyone quickly toward the place where the sound disappeared. The rocky, muddy road gradually turned into sand. Fatty really felt that he could not continue forward, so he stopped immediately, pulling Rouyi at the same time, wanting to stop the people behind him.

"Stop! Don't move!"

Fatty quickly turned around and said to the people behind him.

Professor Chen and the others were single-mindedly rushing forward, without any vigilance or precaution. As a result, they couldn't stop in time. The people behind didn't know what had happened in front, and they continued to rush forward, causing a crowd of people to push and shove each other. The impact from behind all landed on Fatty and Rouyi.

Fatty steadied his center of gravity, but Rouyi was pushed forward. She fell directly onto the sand in front of her. The soft, glutinous sand cushioned her fall, and she was not injured. When she was about to stand up, Fatty suddenly shouted, "Don't move!"

Others also noticed the strangeness of Rouyi being in the sand.

"It's quicksand, don't move!"

Fatty said excitedly.

Rouyi lay on the sand, not daring to move. She could feel that the sand beneath her was soft and sticky overall, as if she was floating on water.

Fatty wanted to reach out and pull Rouyi, but as soon as he grabbed her hand, the quicksand suddenly flowed rapidly, forming a funnel-shaped vortex, which began to spin and sink.

Fatty refused to let go of Rouyi's hand, and as a result, he was also dragged into the sand vortex. The two of them were being rolled by the flowing sand towards the center of the vortex.

Duan Pengfei was the first to react. "Save them!"

So, Duan Pengfei, Professor Chen, and the students joined hands to form a human chain, and then reached out to grab Fatty's legs.

The sand vortex seemed to have magic power. The more people there were, the faster it rotated, and the greater the force of the spin. Before they could react, everyone was instantly swept into the sand vortex. When the sand stopped spinning, everyone had been swallowed beneath the yellow sand.

The moment Fatty fell into the quicksand, he realized he was done for. He thought of his elderly mother at home who needed someone to take care of her, and that he hadn't married a wife yet, and that Little Sister Han Yu was waiting for him to rescue her. If he died like this, he would be extremely unwilling.

Thinking of this, Fatty almost burst into tears.

The quicksand below the vortex carried everyone down continuously. The sand isolated the air, and the people trapped in the sand experienced more than thirty seconds of suffocation. Under the squeezing and rubbing of the quicksand, Fatty's whole body was rubbed painfully. He couldn't shout, and sand was pouring into his mouth.

Just when Fatty felt like he was about to pass out, he suddenly felt the pressure from the sand disappear. What followed was a feeling of weightlessness. The sand was soft and fluffy like cotton candy, and he was floating on the light cotton candy.

Fatty's thought in his mind – could this be the illusion before death?

...

"Bang" –

Fatty fell heavily to the ground. Rouyi leaned over and asked with concern, "Fatty, are you okay?"

Fatty saw stars and kept spitting sand out of his mouth. "Grandpa Fatty, am I… is this an illusion after death?"

As soon as Fatty finished speaking, several people fell down beside him with "splat" and "splat" sounds, namely Professor Chen, Duan Pengfei, Wang Tienan, and Liu Xiaojuan.

Professor Chen's body was already weak. Being tossed around in the sand like that and then falling like this, it was extremely miserable. Professor Chen clutched his waist and groaned "Ayyo," "Ayyo" on the ground. Fatty noticed that his glasses were gone.

Fatty and the others were in a stone chamber. The air in the stone chamber circulated, and there was light of unknown origin. The interior was clearly visible. There was a sideways, downward-sloping opening in the stone wall of the stone chamber, about two meters above the ground. They had fallen out of this opening. Looking into the opening, they could see the sand churning and rolling, flowing continuously, but the sand did not pour into the stone chamber, which was very strange. Everyone was unclear as to why.

Several two-meter-long coffins were piled messily in the stone chamber. Each coffin had varying degrees of damage to the exterior. They looked like they had been placed here for some time. The lids of two of the coffins were cracked. Fatty was brave and peeked inside, but he couldn't see anything in the dark coffins.

Fatty spat out the sand in his mouth, dug out the sand in his nostrils, cleared his throat, and asked Rouyi, "Did you see Liu Kailin when you came down?"

Rouyi was the first to fall. She did see a figure.

Rouyi pointed to the only stone door on one side of the stone chamber and said, "When I fell from that opening, I vaguely saw a figure flash into that door. The figure looked like Liu Kailin, but I can't be sure."

Duan Pengfei and Wang Tienan went to help Professor Chen, helping him up from the ground. Professor Chen slowly got up from the ground. He clutched his lower back, not daring to make large movements.

Professor Chen took out a spare pair of glasses from the inside pocket of his clothes. The earpieces of the glasses were wrapped with several circles of white tape. It was clear that this pair of glasses had been through many years and had accompanied Professor Chen through a long archaeological journey.

"Hiss… there's actually an ancient tomb under the desert. This old man has lived for so many years, and this is the first time I've come to a tomb in this way." Professor Chen put on his old glasses and looked around.

As soon as they heard that it was an ancient tomb, the eyes of several students instantly lit up, and they stretched their necks to look around.

"But, how do we get out?" Duan Pengfei asked.

What Duan Pengfei said was indeed a problem. Right now, there was no way to get out through the opening they had come in through. If there were no other exits in this tomb, then there would only be one outcome for them: death.