Longevity Lord, already wearing the Star Emperor's crown, actually shook its jade tassels.
His gaze drifted through the gaps between the beads, like those secret eyes in distant years, hiding within the Southern Dipper Secret Realm and spying upon the authority of human emperors.
He had once looked upon Ying City in just this way.
He watched it rise from brambles. He watched a rough and wild hero of the grasslands ultimately don a majestic, splendid dragon robe.
He watched that land of miasma and smoke later raise a mighty city, with war chariots streaking across the sky and blades and spears standing thick as a forest.
At last came families that enjoyed the state, dukes and marquises for a hundred generations, splendid finery and elegant figures...
And then a descendant king called Xiong Ji pointed at his crown and pressed a sword to the top of his head.
The utmost humiliation!
He had watched this barbarian's descendant babble as a child!
Why, when he himself sought the Dao in response to the stars at Calamity Deliverance Peak, that man's ancestor, Xiong Yizhen, did not yet know which gambling den he was loafing about in—
As everyone knew, Xiong Yizhen had begun as nothing more than a rotten gambler who owed money to countless gambling houses.
Who knew how those people had gone blind, all of them willing to lend him money one after another.
And what of him, a peerless genius destined from childhood to bring glory to his sect?
When Xiong Yizhen had brazenly come to his door in rags to demand payment, he too had had no choice but to lend out some capital...
That favored child of heaven, who had inherited his predecessor's ideals and gazed up at the starry sky since childhood, had ultimately circled