After packing up food and water for several days Lie Mo leaves the fortress. The first goal is to find out what shape this forest has. Because of that he follows the side of the valley as far as possible. This valley is long, straight and mostly flat. His starting point is the forest without beasts. Then follows the flat desolate region with the taller trees and then follows the region with the sharp white stones.
After walking in the white stone region for a while he finds an opening in the hill side. He recognizes that opening as the place where he entered the valley.
After walking further up the valley a new region starts. This region has only bushes and a lot of white smooth pebbles. Here he starts to feel uncomfortable. As if his energy is being drained out of him. Because of that he goes back to the white stone region. Ten he goes to the hillside where the normal landscape begins. And he walks in the normal landscape along the live draining valley. After the white pebble region a new region starts. This one has white grainy sand with yellow grass in it. He enters it and leaves right away. Here the life draining effect is even stronger.
After the grainy sand region another region opens up. Here it is only white powder with no plants anymore. This region is the smallest one and it has a big crater in the middle. This crater is filled with a pinkish liquid.
Lie Mo isn’t stupid enough to enter that region. Because of that he hunts down a rabbit. Then the throws the living rabbit with a rope attached into the powdery area.
The rabbit immediately stops moving. After a while he pulls at the rope to get the rabbit out of here again. After leaving the area the rabbit starts moving again. This rabbit is covered in the white powder. But that doesn’t affect it at all. Apparently, the white stones are not that problematic. But it is still not worth it loosing the fertility over something stupid.
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After cleaning the rope he starts moving again. He also tested the effect on bugs as well. They reacted the same way as the rabbit. This desolate area seems to just drain the live out of people but it doesn’t seem to have a lasting damage. And it also doesn’t look like this is the backyard of some powerful cultivator. It just looks like a mysterious liquid that drains life along a single specific valley. That is already strange enough though.
His first goal is to walk around the white powder area once. That journey bears no fruits.
His second goal is to climb a hill next to the area. Perhaps he finds something noteworthy from there.
And that one is a jackpot.
The pinkish pond is right in the middle of the white powder area. The pond is an almost perfect circle. And the pond seems to be quite deep. At least the floor isn’t visible. And close to it is a human skeleton covered in this white powder. Besides that the area is empty.
Now there are two possible answers to this valley. Either the skeleton has an answer or the answer is in the pond. But both of them are in the middle of a region that nobody can enter.
Time for a new plan. Can someone get used to this live draining situation. And is this live draining situation really without long term damage. If both things are the case then the answer is easy. Get used to it, enter the region and go look personally. If not then there is no good answer.
And there is only one way to find out. It’s time to catch some rabbits. Each region gets its own den with rabbits in it. Besides the last one. Because when the bunny can’t move, it also can’t eat. And then it just dies.
And this is the start of a long term project.