Two days later, the two quietly left Capital City, each on horseback.
As Profound Mastery Realm cultivators, they could already walk through the air for long stretches, but Zhao Feng and Su Qingwan still traveled on horseback to keep a low profile.
Ten days later, they arrived near Cold Crow Ridge.
Cold Crow Ridge lay among the mountains along the boundary between Great Yan and the Northern Borderlands, a barren highland riddled with holes by wind erosion. The exposed rocks along the ridge were dark gray, their surfaces covered in fine cracks like old shells stripped away by repeated freezing and thawing, looking somber and desolate beneath the gray-white sky. The mountain path wound upward, flanked by shrubs that had long since withered yellow, leaving only slender branches swaying in the same direction in the wind. The higher they went, the sparser the vegetation became. Above the mountainside's midpoint, almost nothing remained but ground-hugging moss and gray lichen stubbornly spreading through cracks in the stone.
Zhao Feng could guess why Nangong Wanwan had chosen this place for their meeting.
She had played him for a fool last time in the Southern Border. With her cautious nature, she had chosen this place where not even birds bothered to shit to guard against his retaliation.
Zhao Feng and Su Qingwan tethered their fine steeds at the foot of the mountain, then pushed off together and soared up the mountain through the air.
An abandoned beacon tower stood at the highest point of Cold Crow Ridge. Its foundation was built from large blocks of bluestone. The lower half of its walls remained intact, but most of the upper half had collapsed, exposing soot-blackened stone walls and several broken wooden beams inside.
The beacon tower had no roof left, only a ring of low