Chapter 138

After leaving Jizhou and traveling for several days, they finally arrived at Youzhou City. If Jizhou was the realm of the living, then Youzhou was hell. A single provincial boundary line divided those under the same sky into two different worlds. Months after the floods had receded into the riverbeds, the scars left upon Youzhou remained. The entire region was a scene of utter devastation; starving people were scattered everywhere as far as the eye could see. Corpses were piled haphazardly along the river embankments, bloated and rotting in the water, the stench filling the air with a bleak, oppressive gloom. Inside the city, the mud was a foot deep. If you walked and stepped on something soft or hard, there was no need to look—it was certainly a corpse.