To Li Wei, everything about this place was deeply unsettling.
By all rights, the Empire should have had no connection to the world of Sanctuary. Yet no matter how he looked at them, this place's structures and equipment were unmistakably imperial, dating back to the early days of the Empire's Steam Industrial Revolution at that. Li Wei did some calculations and placed them roughly in the reign of the Queen's predecessor's predecessor, when the Empire had been in decline and plagued by endless fragmentation.
Back then, the Empire had lacked a strong central government. In other words, this probably wasn't the work of the Empire's Royal Family. Had Clot Territory done this on its own? And how had they managed it?
Still, this served as a reminder to Li Wei. Sanctuaries were generally sealed, but being sealed meant they could be opened. That also meant other people might possess a key to Sanctuary, just as he did.
That raised two questions.
First, why had the Lord of Clot possessed a key?
Second, what exactly had he intended to do here, and why had he abandoned the project halfway through?
To Li Wei, this didn't look like an outpost the Empire had built in Sanctuary. He carefully inspected the town and found that many of its signs and markers were written in two scripts. One appeared to be the Ancient Script used within this Sanctuary, while the other was the Imperial Language.
Rather than an imperial outpost, it looked more like the Empire had built an imperial-style town for the local people to live in.
But it had ultimately been abandoned. As for why-Li Wei didn't know. Still, the lingering signs of conflict on the buildings suggested that, at the very least, the parting hadn't been peaceful. The two sides might