The prefectural city was large.
It was fairly prosperous, too.
But after wandering around for two or three days, Jiang Qiao lost interest. The City God Temple was the true core of the prefectural city, but it did not directly manage the city. There were specialized government offices handling everyday affairs.
In terms of civilization,
it was more or less at the point where the premodern and modern eras met.
Having grown accustomed to great cities,
and having seen ancient towns as well,
Jiang Qiao found this era's style incapable of arousing much interest in him.
With nothing else to do,
he declined the guides the City God Temple had sent to accompany him, left the prefectural city, and planned to look around the nearby areas.
North of Star Prefecture,
there was a desert.
That desert was rather special. It was covered in quicksand, and the quicksand swirled like whirlpools, generating a dragging force that would pull in anyone who approached.
If one was not strong enough and was swallowed by a whirlpool, not even their bones could be found.
Many years ago,
some experts had tried to uncover its secrets.
They excavated the whirlpools
and discovered many buried, abandoned cities beneath the desert, as well as Vicious Ghosts moving through the sand. But they had never managed to discover how the whirlpools formed.
Moreover, if they dug too deeply into the sand, they would sometimes hit empty spaces.
They would be digging when, all of a sudden, the sand would be gone.
A gigantic hollow lay beneath it.
No one knew how exactly the sand was suspended above it... The hollow was extremely deep. Below it was an ocean, with fish swimming through it, but there did not seem to be any danger on the surface.
The reason it