The southern cargo docks of Black Stone City's Outer City.
The gloomy rain made the already filthy area even muddier.
The river was crowded with black-canopied boats and cargo ships of all sizes. The air was thick with the stench of fish and the sour funk of rotting, moldy wood.
Dozens of yards from the main dock area, on a shabby, unremarkable cargo ship.
Song Mirror and Zhao Tie were not wearing their conspicuous Profound Armor today. Instead, they had changed into coarse, short garments stained with grease and fish scales, with tattered straw hats perched on their heads. They looked for all the world like two low-class laborers who spent their lives making a living on the water.
The two were huddled on deck behind a tall pile of moldy ropes, using a tattered sail for cover. Their eyes periodically swept toward a stilt house a few hundred feet away, diagonally across from them.
