A lone plume of smoke rose over the desert, while windblown sand swept across the sky.
Several rocky hills dotted the boundless sea of sand, all a murky yellow. Totems depicting shepherding and sacrifice covered their surfaces, exuding a primitive, sinister aura.
A cave had been carved beneath the tallest hill in the center. Its interior bore the marks of smoke and fire, and screams rang out from it from time to time.
Two monsters twice a man's height guarded the entrance. They had human bodies and animal heads, one a fox and the other a wolf, and wore pitted bronze armor. One carried a saber, the other a dagger-axe. They kept feeding firewood into the cave-mostly long-dried desert poplar and thorn branches.
"Xianya, I've heard Qiang flesh is delicious. The Yin people always chose them for sacrifices. They're wonderful eaten alive, so what do you think they'd taste like roasted-" The speaker was a slightly shorter fox monster with crimson fur. He kept peering into the cave, sticking out his scarlet tongue as saliva dribbled from the corners of his mouth, seemingly ravenous with craving.
The aroma of cooked flesh assailed his nostrils, stirring such hunger that his eyes almost reddened. He wanted nothing more than to rush inside and gorge himself. "Even better, naturally."
The much taller wolf monster beside him seemed composed. He sat cross-legged, cradling his dagger-axe, his iron-gray fur coated in sand. "Your big brother here has traveled north and south. Northern Di flesh is tough and tasteless; the Southern Barbarian Tribes play with venomous insects year-round, so their bodies are steeped in poison; the Eastern Yi love hunting with bows, and I barely escaped their hands. Only the White Qiang, especially boys and girls in their early teens, have flesh that's neither fatty nor