Chapter 530 8.48 The River of Quicksand

Chapter 530 48 The River of Quicksand

The next morning, after a full night of rest, the Hashma Gang set out on their journey again.

The sky was still as blue as the deep ocean. After the wind changed direction, the dry air blowing from the north was rarely burning.

In the Middle Ages, human civilization was mainly concentrated in the East and West continents. The New World was slowly being incorporated into the mainstream due to its increasingly prosperous business.

However, what is hidden in the vast land north of the Sahara Desert is still a mystery to most residents of the Western Continent.

The reason is simple. There are almost no cities in this continent.

No explorer would be crazy enough to travel south from the Black Desert on camels, because even the free people did not know where the water source was hidden in the desert on the other side.

The only way to explore the south of the Black Desert is to drive a ship along the coastline.

But ships also need supplies.

There are no towns along the way, and even no human eyes can be seen. The continuous coastline is only towering stone mountains, and even beaches are rare.

Some ships carried psychics who attached their spiritual consciousness to flying birds and saw that the endless desert ended with an endless rocky mountain range.

Some explorers seemed to climb the coast when they ran out of ammunition and food. After walking for three days and three nights, they saw a primitive jungle full of giant snakes as thick as buckets.

It was lucky for two of the 10 explorers who went out to come back. And for this group of lucky people who knew how to return in time, there was a huge discrepancy between the navigation records and the maps drawn by each person.

In this medieval era, only the romantic emperor "Li Longji" who had a terrifying empire would mobilize the whole country and send a team of thousands of people to all corners of the nine continents to draw the "General Map of the World" in an attempt to benefit all mankind.

He only completed a small part.

Other scholars who were missing or suffered accidents hid in the corners of the world, and eventually, with the collapse of the Tang Dynasty's national strength, they fell asleep forever with the unfinished scroll.

After leaving the third day's foothold, the Hash Horse Gang slaughtered useless horses while continuing to move forward into the depths of the black desert.

Four days later, when they entered the next stop, on the top of an abandoned stone tower, the dried bones scattered in front of Loki gave him a very familiar feeling.

From the outside, they should have been dead for a long time.

The dry hot wind that continued day and night had turned all the flesh and blood tissues on the corpses into hard leather like rotten wood, but the wooden table in the room, which was converted from a vehicle, still retained its original appearance.

Reaching out to push away the fine sand accumulated on the table, he touched a piece of soft leather under the yellow sand. The words "General Map of the World" were written on the leather.

This leather book cover is exactly the same as the "General Map of the World·Submerged City Volume" that he got from Old Walder 17 years ago.

The erosion of wind and sand has corroded all the fragile paper in the book cover into ash. Except for this leather cover, nothing on the top of the stone tower has been preserved.

As expected, these skeletons should be the same as Mo Yiquan who went deep into the sunken city, and Xiao Lu, the traveler who led the fleet to the land of eternal night.

They went deep into the black desert to make maps for the Tang Dynasty in the East, but for some unknown reason they died on the high tower in the ruins of this city.

"King Loki, did you find anything on the top of the tower?"

Mergwen's loud shout came from under his feet.

The main reason why these skeletons can be preserved on the top of the stone tower is that the wooden stairs in this stone building have all been broken.

The lack of stairs to the tower, plus the overly broken outer wall of this building, does not look very safe.

Among the Hasma Gang, only Loki can jump 20 meters from the ground and jump directly to the top of the stone tower.

In addition to the skeletons, the leather book cover under the yellow sand, there are only a few rotten swords as crisp as eggshells, three or four telescopes, and a dozen silver coins with holes in them.

All other personal belongings of the Tang Dynasty explorers have been corroded into dust.

In a few decades, even these skeletons will turn into yellow sand, and there will be no trace of human activities in the whole room.

**

It is time for the sun to set again.

Standing on the top of the tower facing the setting sun, a thick "river" composed of fine yellow sand is slowly moving under the sand dunes where everyone lives.

This is the "Quicksand River", a natural wonder that only exists in the Black Desert.

Taking a last look at these dried skeletons, Loki leaped to the ground.

"Like the other villages we passed by, there is nothing on the top of this tower."

Not long after jumping down, Hans Welsh's cadenced voice came from not far away. During the journey of these few days, he was more like a tour guide than a scholar.

No matter where he went, he could use his half-baked knowledge in his mind to point at the ruins and talk big.

Unlike the bards who talk nonsense, most of the stories told by the scholars have a certain degree of reality as a reference. The journey was so smooth that a considerable number of members of the caravan would spontaneously gather around him to listen to him tell the ancient history of this land.

"Seven years ago, the library of the city received a large stack of 'Book of the Dead' from a merchant. One of the pages recorded the process of a shipbuilder entering the underworld after his death."

"Osiris, the Egyptian god of the underworld, respected his talent very much and even made an exception to allow him to retain his memory after reincarnation and continue to build more powerful ships.

This shipbuilder regarded this 'journey to the underworld' as the supreme honor. For this reason, he also asked the underworld priest to draw the ship he designed on papyrus and buried it with him."

When the chief scholars saw the shape of the wooden boat, they felt that this huge ship made of steel was very different from our common ships. After careful research and comparison, they found that the carpenter's ship was specially designed for the Quicksand River!

In the early civilization of this continent, this flowing sand river became a channel for many pharaohs to transport giant stones. They would move the huge steel ships to the sand river, fill them with stones, and then go down the river.

You may want to turn around and take a look. The "village" where we live tonight is where the ancient Egyptians docked their ships and loaded and unloaded goods.

This sand river is completely different from the rushing rivers on other continents.

Water is a substance with extremely high reflectivity and transmittance.

In the river at night, the water can reflect the moonlight and starlight, allowing the ferry to clearly see the outline of the river bank and avoid reef accidents.

But the quicksand in this sand river is exactly the same as the land on both sides at night! In order for the slaves driving the boats to identify the river bank, towering lighthouses are designed on both sides of all rivers. After entering the night, a blazing fire will be lit on the lighthouse to point out the direction for the ships in the sand river.

Our respected King Loki has just entered an ancient lighthouse that has been abandoned for at least two thousand years.