Dao Calendar 20,037, late spring.
Li Prefecture, Cloud Ferry City, north of the Third-Grade Cangyun Prefecture.
A rather aged Cloud Ferry Ship, after several months of travel, slowly came to a stop at the dock.
Cultivators of every sort formed a long queue and disembarked from the Cloud Ferry one after another.
Amid the crowd was a youth whose aura was obscure and utterly inconspicuous.
That youth was Mo Hua, who had long been away from home.
At fifteen, he had set out alone for Gan Province to study. After ten years of weathering countless upheavals, perils, and hardships, he had finally returned to Li Prefecture, to the homeland from which he had been separated for so long.
Ten years of study, nine years of cultivation.
He was now twenty-five years into his cultivation, at Foundation Establishment Late Stage, with Twenty-Pattern Golden Core Divine Consciousness.
He was Void Gate's one and only Senior Martial Brother, a Second-Grade High-Level Array Master, and the dual champion of Ganxue Array Dao.
The Mo Hua of today was no longer the same as before.
Yet beneath his restrained brilliance and return to simplicity, no one could discern any of those extraordinary identities.
At this very moment, he was merely a wanderer returning home.
Mo Hua raised his head and gazed out over Li Prefecture's vast sky and the rolling reddish-brown mountain ranges in the distance.
Li Prefecture's sky differed from Gan Province's.
Gan Province's sky was lofty and far-reaching, boundless and ever-renewing.
Li Prefecture's sky, meanwhile, was mottled and scorching. Red clouds flickered at the horizon, like Flowing Fire.
And that, too, was the scent of the homeland he knew so well.
Mo Hua drew a deep breath, his heart surging with emotion. Then he followed the crowd down from the Cloud Ferry.
After