Heavy iron-soled boots rang across the seamless green expanse of the royal ruins.
Clink—clink—clink.
Every step produced the clear, ringing chime of steel striking high-thickness crystal.
Where the Hall of Supreme Harmony had stood for three hundred years, there was now only a vast, circular volcano bowl of glass-fused quartz and green-gold glass.
The rising morning sun broke over the eastern horizon, casting long, brilliant rays across Tianjing.
The light struck the volcano bowl. That turned the five hundred paces of melted royal foundations into a blinding sea of refracted emerald and gold.
Beneath the semi-clear surface of the glass, the hardened bones of the Dragon of Sins and the melted yellow silk robes of the Emperor were frozen forever, entombed in stone that would never rot.
Lu Chen walked south.
