The Great Western Desert had not tasted a drop of sweet river water since the First Epoch broke the land-wide divide.
Covering three million square miles of shifting, razor-sharp yellow sand and scorched sandstone canyons, the wasteland was flanked by the raging, untamed torrent of the Heavenly River.
Every spring, when the snows of the Kunlun ice-slow plateau melted, the river rose eighty arm-lengths above its banks, drowning thirty mortal kingdoms in the Central Plains and washing millions of tons of fertile topsoil out to sea.
Yet three leagues to the west, millions of desert mortals starved, their tongues swollen with thirst, praying to stone dragon statues for a single bowl of rain.
“The Heavenly River Flood is the Karmic Payback of Jiuzhou!” announceda grand minister from the Great Da-Qi Ministry of Rites, rising from the front row of the spectator terrace on Tongtian Apex.
He held up an ancient, yellowed royal scroll sealed with black dragon wax.
“For ten thousand years,” the minister declared, his voice trembling with sorrowful gravity, “our greatest Water Sages have built dikes of dragon-scale jade and chanted the Sutra of Pacifying Waters! Yet every spring, the Dragon God awakens in fury! Water and Sand can’t compromise! The flood is Heaven’s inescapable trial, destined to test the humility of emperors!”
