More than half a year had passed since the great battle that decided Chenli's future fate.
The destruction martial artists had wrought upon the terrain, the remnants of those Supernatural Abilities, would endure for thousands, even tens of thousands of years, until the next great war. Yet apart from these near-permanent changes, Chenli had now become more beautiful than it had been in years past.
On a plain beside a mountain range in southwestern Chenli, around the Taku River—named after the settled tribe there—lush green spread endlessly along both banks. At the river's source, the mountains and forests were deep and verdant, and the azure spiritual radiance remained strikingly brilliant even beneath the blazing noon sun.
At the meeting point of mountains, hills, and riverside plains stood a town in Tieli style. Along one side of the town, towering waterwheels turned with the rushing river.
The Taku River's water was so clear that the pebbles on its bed could be seen. Meltwater from the snow mountains of the northwest flowed all the way into Da Chen territory, eventually joining other mighty rivers before reaching the estuary of the West Sea in Beixuan Jizhou.
The waterwheels creaked as they turned. A road ran through the town like a river, leading straight to the neatly ordered cultivated forest not far away.
The spring wind swept past. Children played amid the trees, walking along the road by the river and roaming through safe areas, listening to the voices of wind and forest.
It was a very ordinary sight. For countless centuries, most people who settled here had lived this way. Children playing hide-and-seek and tag ran and leaped about, brimming with the vitality of life.
But on closer inspection, one would notice that the speed at which these children ran and jumped, and