The moment Crimson Flame Kirin's massive head fell into the valley, the oppressive clouds above Mysterious Fantasy City seemed to be scattered by an invisible force. Long-lost sunlight pierced the heavens and spilled over the scarred streets and alleys of the city.
The first sound was a child's cheer. The child poked their head out from their mother's arms, pointed at Hua Qiang standing in the clouds with blade in hand, and cried in a clear little voice, "The bad guy is dead!"
Then, cheers surged from every corner of the city like a rising tide, sweeping across all of Mysterious Fantasy City.
In the marketplace, vendors who had once been forcibly taxed by the Kirin Guard threw down their account books and embraced one another in joy.
At the city gates, guards wounded by Crimson Flame Kirin's claw winds propped themselves up with their spears and waved forcefully toward the sky.
Even the children of prominent Lineages, who had previously shut themselves indoors out of fear of the city lord's might, pushed open their lattice windows one after another, their eyes shining with the light of survivors who had escaped calamity.
Yet the cheering did not last long. No one knew who was first to redden their eyes and choke back sobs as they fell to their knees. Then more and more people bent down. Tears mixed with dust as they fell onto the bluestone pavement, while weeping and words of gratitude intertwined and echoed above the city for a long while.
Xiang Wanqing supported her elderly mother, tears already blurring her vision.
Three months earlier, her father had refused to offer up the ancestral Warm Jade to Crimson Flame Kirin and had been thrown alive into raging flames, leaving not even bones behind.
These past days, she had