As the heavy snow gradually stopped, everyone's field of vision grew wider and wider.
The scout captain stood on a rock at the mountaintop, looking east.
He could just barely make out the silhouette of Mountain Pass.
"We're about sixty li from Mountain Pass."
Standing on the rock, the scout captain said:
"Everything's a sea of white... I can't see anything, but there are no signs of Outer Dao activity."
"What do we do next?"
Old Zheng asked from below the large rock.
"Keep moving... The mission Marshal Xu gave us this time is to scout the area within four hundred li of Mountain Pass."
Four hundred li.
If they could establish that the current Outer Dao tide was four hundred li away from Mountain Pass, that would mean the garrison had ample time to respond and build defensive works as far as twenty li outside Mountain Pass.
Conversely, if there were signs of large concentrations of Outer Dao within four hundred li, the garrison could only build its defensive works within ten li of the gates.
Those ten li were undoubtedly crucial to Mountain Pass's defensive line.
"Keep heading northwest?"
Old Zheng asked the scout captain again.
"Yes."
The scout captain nodded. He pulled the cloak over his light leather armor tighter around himself, his face purple-red from the cold:
"Another hundred-odd li northwest, there's a patch of ruins. It used to be a village... But the territory beyond Mountain Pass has been lost for far too long.
"Over the past thousand years, the two border passes ahead have fallen repeatedly. Dao-Suppressing Pass considered launching several campaigns to retake them, but they all ended in failure."
The foremost border pass had been completely lost for nine hundred years.
The second pass had also been lost for six hundred years.