15 minutes later, Leonard and others' vehicles entered the mountain area, where the environment was just as harsh as the surrounding landscape, with little vegetation to be seen. However, the mountains here blocked the sunlight and the winds, so many traces of the past were preserved on the mountainsides, looking the same as they did decades ago.
On their way, Leonard and the others noticed obvious signs of man-made excavation on the stone walls to either side of them, including several spots that were clearly the result of explosives used for blasting.
"There's no doubt, this is typical engineer corps work," Leonard gripped the steering wheel and cautiously drove on, saying, "Only the military would use such large quantities of explosives to blast open a road to save time."
The road itself wasn't very wide; wider vehicles might have had some trouble getting through, so at this point, Leonard was glad he had rented a relatively narrow off-road vehicle.
