A lone plume of smoke rose straight over the vast desert; the setting sun hung round above the long river.
In the boundless Death Desert stood a city of the Cangling Kingdom: Great Desert City.
Great Desert City lay only five hundred li from Cangling's interior. To the north, it directly faced the North Sea Kingdom's former capital, the Han Palace Royal Court, some eight thousand li away, while Weizhou lay to the east.
This was a supply point for the Desert Star Cavalry legion. Since Great Desert City stood amid the endless sands, anyone without a familiar guide could easily lose their way in the boundless desert.
"Father, the Shenzhou Army is attacking the city again!" A dark-faced boy who looked only fifteen hurried into the city lord's residence, pushed open the doors, and shouted to the man inside.
The man's face was weathered. Years of exposure to the blazing sun and blowing sand had left him, though not yet forty, with the worn look of a sixty-year-old who had endured a lifetime of hardship. He was Qin Shang, lord of Great Desert City.
"I heard."
"Father, can we hold them off?" his son Qin Rong asked. "The Shenzhou Army has at least two hundred thousand troops, while we only have... Why don't we escape in the confusion when the time comes and head to the capital for reinforcements?"
They could not hold them off, and no one knew where the Desert Star was.
Qin Shang thought for a long while before saying, "We'll act as circumstances dictate. But what I simply cannot understand is how the Shenzhou Army over at the Royal Court found our Great Desert City."
Indeed, how?
Great Desert City had been hidden in the Death Desert for hundreds of years. Outsiders had never known