The road was quiet and deserted. Xing Yan and Qiong Rong chatted intermittently, and now and then he teased the graceful girl who was shy with words. Before long, the three of them reached the great Zhen River, which stretched from east to west.
The Zhen River was one of the famed waterways of the South of the Ridges. Now that he had come close enough to see it, Xing Yan found its grandeur truly extraordinary:
The riverbed spanned some three or four li between its banks. Gazing toward the opposite shore, even with his keen eyesight, he could make out only a hazy blur of scenery-at most, the rough outline of the far riverbank.
Yet although the Zhenshui River's bed was broad, its waters were nowhere near as extensive now. Owing to the drought, the water covered only half the distance between the banks, its edge far below the high shore. A vast stretch of dried riverbed lay exposed between the bank and the water, covered in tortoiseshell cracks. Scattered through the silt, which the fierce sun had baked into hard earth, were shells left by creatures long dead.
The post road the three had followed ended at a stone-built ferry landing beside the Zhenshui River. Now, however, the place where ferries actually took on passengers lay a hundred paces away from that landing.
Once they reached the crossing, Xing Yan did not hurry to wait for a ferry. Instead, he wandered a while longer over the hardened river flats. The wide, exposed riverbed was thronged with people and bustling with activity; from a distance, it looked almost like a market.
Many of these people had come to fetch water. As the saying went, "When the great river runs low, the little rivers run dry." Just as Xing Yan