"Ship-User chief! Around that river bend up ahead is the abandoned market. The altar you're looking for is inside that market!"
"That market is a choice spot everyone wants, flat and open, with water too, and Barnyard Millet can be gathered nearby. I heard from the Fish Skin people just now that the tribe over there has changed... Be careful! Any tribe that can hold this place won't be easy to provoke..."
The Nivkh headman, Dog-User, crouched at the bow, prattling on and on while chewing dried Matsutake. This was another forest specialty—tasted good, was everywhere, and could fool the stomach a little. You just needed some experience, so you didn't pick the highly poisonous ones. Mm, with the physical constitutions of the forest tribes, ordinary poisonous mushrooms did not affect them much. Usually they vomited them out, slept it off, and were fine.
"Blessings of the Main God! There really is an abandoned market town! We sailed upstream from the river mouth all this way, a full three or four hundred li, before reaching this place. I wonder what that great southern tribe's Temple actually looks like?..."
"Huh! There are quite a few Fish Skin tribespeople inside, faintly visible! Let me take a good look!..."
The Longship quietly stopped, hiding silently behind the river bend. Zuwaro took out the Divine Eye Lens and peered carefully toward the market town from several hundred meters away. The first thing that entered his sight was a ring of earthen wall with many broken gaps, roughly encircling the riverside market town. Behind the earthen wall were many ruined mud houses, square and blocky in style, many of them half-collapsed. At the very center of the mud houses stood a strange "Temple," likewise badly caved in, impossible to make out clearly from afar.
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