Frio e Estranho

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The night was as tranquil as water.

Yet tonight, it was not as ordinary as other nights.

At the edge of night, the shroud encircling this brightly lit city—Abyssal Pool Mountain—almost blocked out the sky on this side. Beneath the moon, only the outline of the mountain was visible, as if a dome had descended, erecting a barrier to obscure the world beyond the city. Though Dingtan Mountain was not the city’s actual boundary, it always gave the illusion of one.

One could say the city dwelled within the mountains, but for such a vast city as Yexiao, it would be difficult to conceal it with a single peak. The undulating hills and ridges merely “enclosed” the city, but only this stretch, profound and strange, its peaks touching the heavens, had earned this mysterious name—Abyssal Pool.

Here was but an unremarkable corner of Abyssal Pool Mountain.

An open ground, paved with stone tiles, bordered with stone railings and a stone stele, with only a few lamp posts casting their cold, faint light.

The lamp posts stood by the railings on the edge of the cliff, facing the city, barely illuminating this deserted place.

By that dim white light, one could see the solitary stele in the center of the open ground. It looked battered, half its height buried askew in the soil, one end worn almost beyond recognition. The inscribed characters, though still visible, were mottled and faded. Aside from this patch of open ground, darkness reigned here. Nothing could be seen of what surrounded it—whether forest or something else, none coul