The Affairs of the Martial World - Vol 2: Chapter 8

The next morning, before Fuying had fully woken up, he heard a woman’s voice, “Quick, look, what is that?”

Fuying thought he was dreaming, but when he heard the voice of Zhu Que, he finally woke up. He got up and saw Zhu Que and Shui Mingyue standing on a dune, facing west and gazing intently. Fuying followed their gaze and was immediately stunned.

To the west, not far from them, the ruins of an ancient city emerged. It wasn’t visible yesterday, but upon waking, it appeared in the morning sun as if it were a miracle. It must have been the massive sandstorm last evening that swept away the sand covering the ancient city, revealing it.

Everyone was extremely excited. Although there was still some distance to the ruins of the ancient city, most people wanted to set off immediately, even neglecting to eat breakfast.

The ancient city did not seem far away, yet it took a full half day to reach it.

When they arrived at the ancient city ruins, it was noon, and the sun was blazing. Everyone was tired and hot, but seeing the dilapidated city before them revived their spirits. They wanted to go inside to take a look, hoping to find some water or treasures so the trip wouldn’t be in vain.

As the crowd entered the ancient city, they found it in a state of utter ruin. Many rooms were filled with half a room’s worth of sand. Although the roofs and walls outside were in tatters, many areas inside remained intact, with numerous patterns carved into the walls. Zhu Que believed these patterns were actually characters, but no one knew what they said.

After searching for half a day and scouring dozens of rooms, nothing valuable or useful was found. The group gathered together, their eyes fixed on a castle-shaped building in the far west.

If every city has a lord, then that building should be the place where the lord resides, while the other places should merely be the houses of commoners.

So, everyone decided to give up searching elsewhere and go directly to that place that was neither a fortress nor a palace.

On the way, Fuying said confidently, “This should be an abandoned city.”

Zhu Que asked, “How can you tell?”

Fuying said, “There isn’t a single person here.”

Mu Qingshan said doubtfully, “This place has probably been buried in the sand for hundreds of years. How could there still be people here?”

Fuying quickly explained, “I’m not talking about living people, but if someone is buried down there, the bones should be visible, right? In the houses I went to see, there were no human bones, not even the bones of livestock.”

Others nodded in agreement, indicating that they had not noticed anything.

Zhu Que asked promptly, “Therefore?”

Fuying concluded, “Therefore, before this town was buried in sand, everyone must have moved out. So, I guess there won’t be anything of value in that big house ahead.”

Everyone felt there was some truth to it, so their disappointment was evident.

However, since they had come this far, naturally, no one was willing to leave without a clear understanding, so they decided to go ahead and take a closer look. Fuying followed along; although he thought that way, he also didn’t want to be right in his guesses.

Before the crowd arrived at the castle, they discovered it was remarkably well-preserved, far surpassing the other houses that should have belonged to commoners.

As they got closer, they could feel the grandeur of the castle even more. Neither the thick walls nor the stone roof appeared dilapidated due to the passage of time or the ravages of wind and sand.

If it weren’t for the flood-like sand surrounding it, everyone would have knocked on the door in front of the stone gate first to confirm whether anyone was living inside.

The castle’s main gate was made of stone, exceptionally heavy. Zhu Que tried to push it, but the gate door didn’t budge at all. The Mu brothers came over to help, yet they still couldn’t move it. With the combined strength of the three, even an iron door should have opened, but now, the gate door remained completely still.

Fuying guessed, “Is it because there is sand inside the door as well that you can’t push it open?”

Zhu Que thought it was not a wrong guess. He walked to the wall and used the lizard wall-climbing technique, flipping himself over the gate door. Looking inside, he couldn’t help but chuckle; it turned out the gate door opened outward; no wonder it couldn’t be pushed inward. However, there was no handle on the outside, so it seemed that opening and closing the gate door was done from the inside.

Zhu Que opened the gate door, allowing everyone to enter. Inside was a vast main courtyard stretching dozens of yards deep, partially covered by sand. At the back were the buildings.

Looking at the scale, the city lord was definitely not an ordinary person. The buildings were exceptionally tall, resembling a miniature palace. However, this palace was constructed entirely of stone blocks and slabs, with a rugged style far from the delicacy of the palaces in the Central Plains. It seemed that in this harsh desert environment, the architecture prioritize resistance to wind and sand, with practicality far outweighing aesthetics.

A few people eagerly opened the main hall’s door, which also swung outward. With the handle on the door, it opened easily without much effort.

The camels couldn’t conveniently enter the hall, so they stayed in the courtyard. Mu Qingshan, fearing the camels might wander off again, tied their reins together.

Although the sun blazed outside, as soon as one entered this hall, a sense of coolness was immediately felt. The entire place was filled with wooden tables and chairs. Perhaps due to the dry air of the desert, these tables and chairs showed no signs of decay.

The entire hall seemed dim because there appeared to be no windows around it.

Fuying turned around inside and said, “There are windows, but they are all closed, so there isn’t a single grain of sand here.”

Everyone took a look around and indeed found that it was unreasonably clean inside.

Behind the hall was a stone wall like a screen. Feng Yichuan walked to the wall, took a look, and called out to everyone, “There’s a door here.”

Everyone followed him, passing through the door. Behind it was another courtyard, which had two rooms. Between the two rooms was a passageway, and at the end of the passageway was an archway. Looking through the archway, the roofs piled up one after another, and it was unclear how many more rooms there were.

This was simply a small town within the city.