The Plain
The wind kept blowing in the open area.
Long Tian and Yu Jin walked along a shallow ditch flanked by bushes for nearly an hour. The grayish-green low vegetation on both sides grew denser as they walked, and scattered stones began to appear on the ground—of varying sizes, with edges smoothed by wind and sand, scattered among the bushes, arranged as if they had been placed, but without forming any discernible pattern. Long Tian squatted down, picked up one of them, and examined it. It was ordinary sandstone, with no carvings or polishing marks on its surface. He put it back and continued on his way.
After walking for two hours, a shallow depression appeared in the center of the open area ahead. The depression was not large in diameter, and a ring of denser bushes grew around its edge, as if moisture had gathered there. Long Tian walked to the edge of the depression and looked down—the ground at the bottom was a darker color than the surrounding area, covered with a fine layer of grayish-white powder, consistent with the texture he had seen in the shallow trenches of the sea cave. The grayish-white powder covered the bottom of the depression in a thin layer, and there were traces of wind stirring at the edges, as if something had been taken from it, leaving a ring of fine, continuously extending outwards, spreading outwards on the dry ground along the direction of the wind, like a path that had been repeatedly blown away and deposited.
He crouched at the edge of the depression without going down. Yu Jin stopped behind him; the light from the dark gray bead brightened slightly as it approached the depression, then dimmed again, like a compass needle deflecting near a vein of ore. The two stood at the edge of the depression for a while, then continued forward. The layer of grayish-white powder remained at the bottom of the depression, and when the wind blew from the open ground, it would occasionally lift up a small piece of the finest powder from the surface, like fine sand falling in an hourglass and sinking to a lower level.
After walking for another half hour, a low earthen wall appeared at the edge of the field of vision ahead. The wall was not high, its surface pitted and uneven from wind erosion, and the remaining bricks had been worn away by the weathering, leaving only blurry outlines. Its height was just up to an adult's chest. The wall stretched across the plain, like a forgotten boundary line extending forward along some unseen dividing line. Long Tian approached and saw a slightly darker-colored stone brick embedded in the surface of a section of the wall. The surface of the brick was smoother than the surrounding bricks, as if it had been deliberately polished. Dragon Shadow lowered its head at that spot, and the light layer on the edge of its scales shone slightly when it approached the dark stone brick before returning to normal.
Long Tian squatted down in front of the stone brick and examined it for a moment. There were no engravings on the brick surface, but there was a layer of wear different from the traces of wind erosion—it looked as if it had been repeatedly rubbed by some soft material, leaving a very shallow polished surface. He touched it with his fingertip and felt it; it was cool to the touch and there was no residual Soul Power. He stood up and continued walking along the wall for a while. After extending forward for about half a mile, the wall gradually began to shorten and finally disappeared completely into the ground, as if it had been reconnected to the ground by the same plain at this point.
He stopped at the end of the wall. Behind him, Dragon Shadow slightly raised the angle of its wing membranes, all four eyes simultaneously looking towards the point where the wall disappeared into the ground. Its faint gaze followed the base of the wall for a short distance before settling on the cracked glaze on its forehead. At that moment, a sliver of light appeared on the surface of the vertical line on its forehead. Following Dragon Shadow's gaze, Long Tian saw a stone slab half-buried in the soil on the back of the wall's end. The slab was covered in soil and dry moss, and the exposed corner was made of a different material than the wall's bricks. He crouched down and brushed away the soil, revealing a symbol carved in the center—the same three-wave pattern as on the East Sea fish skin paper, only several times larger, with deep and coarse engravings, as if repeatedly chiseled out with a stone chisel, its edges rough and uneven.
Long Tian squatted in front of the stone slab for a long time, staring at it. Yu Jin squatted down beside him and reached out to touch the edge of the slab, tracing the outline of the engraving with his fingertip. When he withdrew his hand, his fingertip was covered with a layer of extremely fine grayish-white powder, the same kind of powder found in the depression and the sea cave. The powder lingered on his fingertip for a moment before being blown away by the wind, like a wisp of dust rising after being released. Long Tian covered the surface of the stone slab with soil again, and when he stood up, he patted the dirt off his hands. Without saying anything more, he turned and continued walking towards the direction where the wall extended.
A dry, warm wind blew continuously from the open field, carrying the scent of dust and withered grass stems heated by the sun, like the lingering moisture absorbed by the inner walls of an old earthenware jar left under the eaves for many years. The density of the bushes gradually decreased along the way, and the gravel on the ground became finer and looser, like the aftershocks of some large geological event extending further into the distance, forming faults on the uneven soil surface, each slightly tilted in the same direction, pointing towards the low mountain range in the distance, its outline blurred by the sunlight. Long Tian walked on the gravel path. He adjusted his pace to maintain a steady speed. His boots trod across the pebbles, each step sending a short, sharp screech as the pebble fell back to the ground before being carried away by the wind. The distant mountain range remained a constant distance from him as he moved forward, like an unreachable landmark placed there by the earth to conserve visual space, forcing all those approaching it to constantly adjust their expectations and gradually adapt to its approaching speed.