Shen Le packed away the porcelain bottle (X) Ancient Kiln Specialized Search Dog (√) and headed straight for Hebei. The towering Taihang Mountains pointed the way, and he plunged headfirst into the mountains. When he emerged again, he was completely dazed: "Where am I?"
Before him rose layer upon layer of mountains, lush green ridges rolling endlessly toward the horizon. Each peak was lofty and majestic; compared with the gentle hills south of the Yangtze, these were mountains in the true sense of the word.
They were blanketed in thick greenery. Compared to the Kunlun Mountains, Heavenly Mountain, and Altai Mountains of the northwest, they possessed a richer endowment and had received far greater nourishment.
Even their shapes were not particularly steep. Many peaks rose straight up from their bases, forming enormous, nearly square plateaus, before piling into pointed summits above them.
The sheer bulk of each mountain made it seem especially massive and solid. One could not help thinking that lifting and moving one would take far more strength than shifting a steep mountain like Mount Hua...
More astonishingly, the range contained countless sheer cliffs: enormous rectangular faces dropping straight down, with nearly barren crags exposed between the plateau at the top and the slopes below.
At that moment, Shen Le stood staring up at one such cliff, gazing blankly at a threadlike strip at its foot that was, uh, perhaps a road: "So how many kilometers am I from where I need to go? And how am I supposed to get there?"
He had reached the Taihang Mountains, all right, but the Taihang Mountains were not one mountain—they were an entire mountain range!
They stretched north to Eight-Reach Ridge and south to the Yellow River, dividing all of Hebei from Shanxi. They were roughly five hundred kilometers long