Recommendation Tickets, please.
Deep in Zhongnan Mountain, in the forest wreathed year-round in mysterious mist, the miasma coiled through the trees like flood dragons.
The place where the three of them stopped was precisely the site of that brutal bloody battle last time—an utterly unremarkable little hill.
Their arrival broke the dead silence, startling the crows perched on the branches into flapping wildly and fleeing in panic.
Wang Wei looked up and swept his gaze around, then said with certainty, "This should be the place."
Zhuang Mochen stood with his hands behind his back, his blue robe snapping loudly under the savage mountain wind, as though it too were feeling the vicissitudes of this land alongside him.
"Looks like it. The traces of the great battle here are still clearly visible."
Everything in sight was scarred and devastated.
Scorched earth and cracked rocks crisscrossed like wounds torn into the ground; broken trunks and shattered branches lay scattered like stars, bearing witness to the brutality of that battle.
Zhuo Qianren stepped down and crushed half a dead branch, producing a crisp snap.
He shook a map out of his satchel and said in a deep voice, "Zhang Ci and the others mentioned in their last report that this place was to be made one of the outward expansion camps."
Wang Wei lightly stroked his jaw, the tip of his boot slowly grinding over the dark-brown bloodstains in the mud, his expression grave. "To the left and rear of this place is a large stream with swift currents; to the right is a steep slope with an extremely high angle, requiring constant jumping and climbing to advance. Only the front has a gentle slope a hundred meters wide."
"In the Mist Forest, terrain like this can truly be called easy to