The timekeeping of the powerful was always vague. A single retreat could last an ordinary person's entire lifetime. Close your eyes, then open them, and your mortal friends might have already been gone for years.
The same was true for present-day Taibai City. In just a few short decades, it had undergone earth-shaking changes.
On this day, everyone in Taibai City crowded around the city gates. As the countdown ended, the heavy gates slowly opened, and the barrier that had shrouded Taibai City for thousands of years began to ripple before gradually fading away.
Some elderly people watched the dissolving barrier in the sky, their complicated gazes tinged with excitement.
Zhao Weiguang, Huang Shengli, and the other elders were especially filled with emotion.
That barrier had been both protection and restraint. It had protected Taibai City's atmosphere and oxygen, ensuring the survival of ordinary people, but it had also confined them within this tiny city.
Wealth could be inherited, but learning ability and cultivation talent were difficult to pass down. And producing enough cultivators required an enormous population base. Thus, Taibai City had many ordinary people.
Today, the barrier was finally no longer needed. Newer technology, powerful Creation Technology, had directly transformed the environment of the entire Thousand Island Basin.
A teenage girl followed beside Huang Shengli. Watching the barrier rapidly recede from the sky, she chattered away, asking, "Great-Great-Grandpa, the news said that embracing the sky is only the first step, and that the next step is green mountains and clear waters. What are green mountains and clear waters like?"
"Green mountains and clear waters?" Huang Shengli looked at the dim crimson sky, and his memories seemed to return thousands of years, back to the time when they had set out. He said leisurely, "It means expanding the garden