Arriving at the northwestern corner of the small town, Li Wangyi saw a giant tower a hundred feet tall and a forest of stone tablets. He dispersed his wind-ride and proceeded on foot. He had read about this ruined tower and the stelae forest in a travelogue titled *Records of Strange Towns in the Northern Prefecture*, which described the sights of Spirit Tortoise Town; he had never imagined it to be a hidden ruin within the town itself.
It was truly bizarre.
Li Wangyi and Little Qianjun quickly reached the ruins. The giant tower was indeed a ruin; although over a hundred feet high, its structure had been eroded by time, leaving it mottled, crumbling, and stripped of its former majesty. At a glance, the interior was equally decayed and dilapidated, leaving nothing but an empty shell and a stone staircase leading to the top—though whether it remained intact was uncertain. Behind the tower stood an expansive forest of stelae, quite grand in scale, containing over five thousand stone tablets. Most, however, were shattered, and one would be hard-pressed to find a single one that remained unscathed. The record in the *Northern Prefecture* travelogue was accurate, though it was unclear whether the inscriptions on those fragments still held any profound or lingering meaning.
Chapter 19