At Moonview Residence, the autumn chill was vexing. Several cicadas shrieked desperately in the garden.
They shrieked until the leaves at the branch tips turned yellow, yet still refused to yield, as though they would cry the large lake behind the inn into winter cold.
Bao Xiaoqin leaned quietly by the window, gazing at several clumps of chrysanthemums in the garden that were about to wither.
Morning dew clung to the broken petals like teardrops, or perhaps the last traces of rouge.
Her fingers unconsciously stroked the grain of the wooden window frame, her gaze somewhat unfocused.
She had meant to ask Wang Xian out for a stroll... The fellow had rarely been in such high spirits and said he wanted to see how Sunset City's market differed from those elsewhere.
But before she could rise, Wang Xian's voice transmission came hurtling through the air.
Startled, she shot to her feet. Her skirts knocked over the teacup at the corner of the table, and tea dripped down the table leg—drip! drip!—yet she did not notice at all.
She was about to head outside when her steps abruptly froze.
From the inn's front courtyard, the voices of several guests in the main hall carried through the wooden wall. They came in fragments, yet every word was clear.
"You probably don't know this, but after I saw that sight in the night sky, the instant I stepped out of my home, everything vanished!"
"It happened in the blink of an eye. That golden light on the horizon was faster than lightning, brighter than the blazing sun, and then... there was nothing. Was it all just an illusion?"
"I heard a demonic dragon appeared in Sunset City last night?"
"Old Sun next door said he saw it with his own eyes. That dragon