The Great Wall - The Official Movie Novelization

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The mountains looked like something from a dream. The many layers of sandstone and multi-colored minerals had been compressed together over millions of years, creating rock formations both bizarrely garish and breathtaking in their beauty. Beneath the desert sun they glowed in vivid stripes of red and yellow, green and blue. It was an artist’s palette of color, a phantasmagoric feast for the eyes.

Despite its beauty, though, this was a harsh landscape. People died here every day. The unprepared and the foolhardy expired from hunger and thirst; others fell prey to wild animals or brigands. Vultures wheeled in the sky, knowing that carrion was never far from their hooked beaks. The desert dust beneath the sparse clumps of greenery was rich with the powdered bones of the dead.

For now the air was still, the desert undisturbed. A lizard basked motionless in the heat of the slowly setting sun. Then, sensing vibrations beneath its feet, it darted for cover. Next moment a blot of darkness appeared on the horizon, wreathed in a churning cloud of dust.

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