On a low hill more than ten zhang high, the Tulusiting Mountain Guard station on the Niuman River in the Xing'an Mountains had passed through its eighty-ninth year. Eight or nine decades of wind and rain had left this thousand-man mountain fort guard station mottled and dilapidated, covered in pitted "age spots."
The watchtower inside the guard station had half-collapsed, and the warehouse had collapsed too. Only most of the barracks remained, now turned into the camp of the Duo'er Tribe. But the rammed-earth wall built nearly ninety years ago had not toppled like the earthen walls of the Nurgan Regional Military Commission. It had merely shed its outer layer of facing bricks, revealing an aged gray-yellow base, and still stood firm!
"By witness of the Eastern Sea Main God! Beneath this earthen wall, they dug a foundation as tall as a man and put in tremendous effort to ram it solid. Then, with heavy mallets, span by span, they rammed the whole wall up with all their strength, pounding it firm until it couldn't be any firmer... Look at the clay used for this wall. It's all fine earth that was carefully sifted, then watered with lime, mixed with chopped rice straw, and blended with glutinous rice juice to bind it. Who knows how much manpower it took from start to finish!..."
The sky was damp and overcast, and the sea of forest was vast and deep. The group climbed onto the earthen wall of the guard station and looked down over the boundless wild woods of the Outer Northeast, listening to the wind blow and the horses neigh. At a glance, across dozens or even a hundred li of forest sea, there was no sign of human habitation at all. Who knew how many small Wild Jurchen tribes