Duke descended at the mouth of an abandoned mine and reached out to touch the rock cross-section on the inner wall.
On the cross-section remained faint traces of Dark Red Crystals—tailings left in the Wise Stone Ore Vein after Philosopher's Stone had been mined. Judging from the degree of weathering of the tailings, this mine had been abandoned for at least a hundred years.
He turned back into a breeze and continued along the ancient riverbed.
Soon he saw more signs of human activity: a rudimentary gravel road surface, mine tunnel support frames reinforced with wooden posts, several handcarts abandoned by the roadside, and a few wisps of cooking smoke rising between distant hills.
Below the smoke was a settlement built on the alluvial plain of the ancient river, not large in scale—about a hundred low houses of gray-white stone. Between the houses wound narrow, crooked dirt paths, their surfaces paved with cobblestones taken from the riverbed.
