The forest ahead was not as dense as they had imagined.
After Fuzhu passed beneath the first row of treetops, the forest actually grew brighter... The trees here were unlike any species they had encountered before.
Their trunks were straight, their branches and leaves clustered at the top, and their midsections almost bare. They looked as though someone had pruned them.
Xiao Yue ran along the group's flank, her silver-gray fur flickering between light and shadow among the trunks. Despite weighing seventy-five kilograms, she bounded nimbly along, occasionally stopping to sniff the ground before running on.
It took less than ten minutes to cross the forest.
When they emerged, the first thing Chen Siyao noticed was the wind.
The wind had changed.
It was not the dry wind of the grasslands, scented with fresh grass. This breeze was damp. Moisture carried an indefinable smell into her nose... Salt. Faint, but unmistakable.
"Qingqing, do you smell that?"
Riding Fuzhu, Yang Wanqing took a couple of sniffs.
"Salt. That smell..." She abruptly sat up straight. "The sea!"
"Not necessarily."
"It has to be! Smell it... That's the smell of the sea! I grew up smelling it in Pengcheng!"
Fuzhu kept running. The wind grew damper. The blue grass grew shorter and sparser, until all that remained was a layer of creeping plants hugging the sandy ground.
Then...
They saw it.
Chen Siyao grabbed Fuzhu's mane. The deer stopped.
Twenty meters ahead, the land ended.
Water took its place.
An endless expanse of water, glittering with scattered light, stretched from their feet to the horizon. There was no end to it.
Nor was there an end on either side. The coastline spread gently in both directions, tracing an immense curve... So immense that they could not see it curve at all.
The water