The lion carriage entered Eight Gui.
The True Lord did not return to Shangzhen Palace on Dayao Mountain, but headed southwest all the way to the Southern Sea.
The coastal terrain of Eight Gui was rather unusual. Unlike Yan-Zhao, Qilu, and Jinling, where vast plains stretched as far as the eye could see along the Bohai and Yellow Seas, with relatively smooth, regular coastlines and few large inland bays, the shores facing the Eastern Sea began to develop sizable inland bays from Kuaiji through Eight Min, and the coastline grew winding and convoluted. Beyond Eight Min, along Yuyang's Southern Sea coast, this tendency became ever more pronounced. Rocky hills lined the shore, and under the combined impact of river water and seawater, inland bays such as Zhelin, the Lingding Ocean, and the Yellow Reed Ocean began to appear, leaving the coast broken into countless pieces.
Eight Gui was much the same.
The largest inland bay on the Eight Gui coast was called the Maowei Ocean, named for the maowei grass that grew thickly on its tidal flats. Since the bay also resembled a great cat's fluffy tail, it was also known as the Cat-Tail Ocean.
This bay lay at the very center of Eight Gui's coastline, between the continuous ranges of the Six Thousand Great Mountains and the Ten Thousand Great Mountains. The mighty Qin River wound around the Six Thousand Great Mountains from Yumian Commandery and emptied into it.
Broad within and narrow at its mouth, the bay offered wide waters, calm waves, and secluded channels. More than a hundred islands, large and small, dotted its waters like stars scattered across the sky or pieces across a board. Their irregular arrangement created numerous winding waterways between them, known as "jing." These channels were too tangled and numerous to count