The Golden Sky-Cruiser cut through the upper cloud deck like a golden plow.
Twenty minutes after leaving the battlements of Azure-Mist City, the lush green hills below turned sharp, jagged, and gray. The Broken-Jade Mountain Range rose from the earth like a row of broken stone teeth.
No trees grew on the barren slopes. The soil was cracked and dry, bleached white by three thousand years of spiritual starvation. Scattered across twelve windswept ridges were clusters of low stone huts thatched with wild mountain grass.
As the massive five-hundred-meter warship descended into the central valley, thousands of gaunt figures in ragged leather tunics emerged from the stone dwellings.
Men with sunken eyes held chipped flint spears. Women carried hollow-cheeked toddlers whose bellies were swollen from chewing bitter mountain bark. Yet despite their starvation, their formations were disciplined. Not a single person broke ranks. They formed a defensive perimeter around an ancient stone altar in the valley center.
[SCANNING LOCAL POPULATION...]
[DETECTED POPULATION: 15,000 INDIVIDUALS (12 ANCIENT MOUNTAIN-GUARDIAN CLANS)]
[AVERAGE GOODNESS SCORE: 88–94 / 100!]
