Set in 100 B.C., The Sandstorm is about a pair of Buddhist monks living in Sariput, a small town in a desert along the famous Silk Route. As occasionally happens in that region, a terrific sandstorm buries the town and all its inhabitants, except for the monks and two children, a boy and a girl. The monks save the children, take them to a monastery, and raise them to adulthood. The more repressed of the two monks convinces the boy to become a monk. The girl seduces him anyway, and as a result the two are banished into another sandstorm. Later, the monk who banished them repents, and braves the elements to go searching for them.