Amid the verdant distant mountains was a speck of white; a closer look revealed the snow-covered summit of a towering peak. Through wilderness and forests flowed the shimmering Great River-white mountains and black waters, a magnificent landscape.
Liaodong had been bitterly cold since ancient times. In years past, Duke Huan of Qi had helped Yan State expand its territory by a thousand li, striking fiercely at the Eastern Hu.
But this had merely spared Yan State the danger of destruction. In an age when population and land represented national strength, those thousand li of territory had brought almost no increase to Yan State's power.
The reason was simply that, in an age without adequate means of combating the cold, Liaodong was truly unsuitable for human survival.
Human beings were genetically inclined to yearn for warm places where all four seasons felt like spring. Even in modern times, people living in bitterly cold regions could not help moving toward the warmer south, let alone in this age when one could freeze to death at any moment.
Exile here was the harshest of punishments, even exceeding exile to Lingnan.
Apart from exiled criminals, Han people were unwilling to live here. The only inhabitants were the various tribes descended from the Eastern Hu.
In the forests and between the mountain ranges, Hu tribes hunted to survive. The weak died, and only the strong lived.
The colder and harsher the land, the worse the conditions for survival, the fiercer and braver its tribes became.
For they had nothing to lose but their lives. The Hu people who lived among these white mountains and black waters had always possessed exceptionally formidable fighting strength.
The strongest tribes of the Grasslands always arose among these white mountains and black waters, then rapidly advanced west, destroying the other