The frontier city of Fengsha had earned its name—the City of Wind and Sand—hundreds of years ago. But never in its history had the title felt so much like a curse.
Built along a strategic horseshoe bend of the Heavenly Mother River, Fengsha had long served as the western gateway of the Great Qian Empire. In normal seasons, over three hundred thousand souls thrived within its high adobe walls. Barges laden with Shu-brocade silk, mountain healing herbs, and western jade filled the bustling wharves, while stone aqueducts carried sweet river water to every ward and courtyard.
Now, as the All-Terrain Rolling Slime Barge rolled through the collapsed southern suburbs, the city looked like an open-air tomb.
The great riverbed surrounding the city walls was a dry, gaping trench of yellow mud, cracked into hard slabs of baked clay. Stranded timber barges lay tilted on their keels like rotting whale carcasses, their hemp ropes frayed and their decks covered in drifted sand. The famous stone aqueducts were bone-dry, choked with dead leaves and blown thistle.
Above the city, the twin suns burned with unrelenting intensity. He cast long, harsh shadows across empty avenues. Dozens of black-winged vultures perched lazily along the crenellations of the outer castle walls. Their beady eyes tracked the slow, painful movements of the citizens below.
