PS: Month after month alike, year after year different. At dawn I peered into the bright mirror, my looks nearing those of a fading old man. Leisure was hard to come by in this world; half the matters touching my life came to nothing. How long could this floating life last? Do not begrudge getting drunk on the spring breeze.
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Hou Niao and his party arrived a month later at a place called Dragon Whisker Ravine.
Dragon Whisker Ravine was called an ancient riverbed, and that "ancient" could be traced back over a thousand years. Once, this too had been a place of lush grass and plentiful water, with a great river-the Dragon Whisker River. Cattle and sheep had thronged the entire river-bend region, which had sustained countless herders.
Yet after the spiritual energies of the Splendid World began to awaken, this place had instead slowly turned barren. Windblown sand moved south, undead creatures ran rampant, and the original inhabitants were driven ever farther south, with no sign of it stopping even now.
The Dragon Whisker River had long since vanished, leaving only Dragon Whisker Ravine. In truth, even calling it a ravine was no longer quite appropriate. After a thousand years of change, endless dunes and sweeping sandstorms, where could anyone still make out traces of the riverbed from a millennium ago?
Only by rising into the air and looking down from a bird's-eye view, judging with a cultivator's Divine Sense, could one faintly discern a winding line of slightly lower ground. That was Dragon Whisker Ravine, and even that was broken and indistinct.
"So this is Dragon Whisker Ravine? If it weren't marked so clearly on the map, who passing through by chance would ever think there'd been a river here a thousand years ago?" Nan Xiangye