The great sun had set. The last blush lingering along the horizon resembled a crooked stroke of rouge a beauty had applied by accident. She could not bear to wipe it away, and it wanted to gaze upon the mortal world a little longer.
Inside the waterside pavilion, Rong Yu saw that the girl was no longer so tense. She rose, glanced at the darkening sky, and waited for the National Teacher to appear.
Han Yi remained seated bolt upright. Wei Bi was uncomfortable all over, so the fat man had no choice but to chat with the girl from out of town, Chen Xi, about amusing happenings in the capital. Making conversation out of nothing was a restaurant owner's stock-in-trade.
The Five Sacred Mountains Divine Lords and the Grand River Water Gods had withdrawn the grand formation, and their golden bodies had returned to their Daoist arenas. From beginning to end, it had been hard to see clearly, like looking at flowers through fog.
A pale nightfall had come to Treasure Bottle Continent. Gentle lights gradually appeared, illuminating perhaps a drinking party where cups passed back and forth, perhaps books fragrant with ink. Their glow might also fall upon an emperor's forbidding palace halls, the carved beams and painted rafters of ministers' mansions, or the wisps of cooking smoke rising from ordinary homes.
If an Immortal in the clouds looked down, he would find that Tongye Continent's night was no longer quite so lifeless. It held some vitality now, especially along the banks of the new Grand River, whose waters had yet to be joined. Construction went on through the night. Amid the immortal families' methods rising and falling across the land, splitting mountains and diverting water, millions of able-bodied men continued their work. They were paid by the