The Real Sandlais

Despite the fierce wind and slippery walls, the three of them climbed to the top without mishap.

The moment Cheng Shi leaped over the cliff's edge and landed on the ground above, he finally understood why Sandlais was called a dumping ground for experimental waste. It was because this place...

was a garbage pit, a gigantic ice cavern that looked like an abyss!

The spot where the three stood was the only land in the ice cavern. Rift valleys surrounded it on all sides, and beyond those rifts stood another ring of towering cliffs that reached into the sky. Looking up at the heavens made them feel like frogs in a well, while looking down into the abyss made them seem like duckweed floating in midair. The howling cold wind pierced from top to bottom, gushing out from the unreachable "skylight" above and the unseeable "darkness" below.

Sweeping his gaze across the area, Cheng Shi saw that everything seemed frozen in place. Countless enormous, jagged icicles jutted out at angles, dividing the entire town into numerous sections.

Yes, there really was a town here. It was just that the town now appeared almost deserted. Countless pieces of experimental waste and the ruins of buildings were frozen within the icicles, coating the land in shades of gray and white amid this blue, frozen world.

At a glance, this place was more than abandoned. It looked exactly like a dead zone!

The biting windblades seemed to have extinguished every trace of life. Yet on this seemingly hopeless land, in this town completely unfit for habitation, the three of them found a patch of firelight.

That sole glimmer of firelight was precisely where the trail beneath their feet led.

"Looks like our destination is clear. Let's go. Hopefully, we'll find some clues there."