Every official knelt. The ministers bowed their heads, the envoys bent at the waist, and countless commoners prostrated themselves.
Those powerful clan leaders who had harbored secret misgivings and defiance now pressed themselves hard against the ground, their foreheads against the cold stone. Their bodies trembled uncontrollably, and they lacked even the courage to raise their heads and look up.
It wasn't that no one felt defiant.
Some hid deep within the crowd, concealed in the shadows, or beneath their lowered heads.
But faced with the absolute pressure of those ten divine Soul Rings, the terrifying power of the five-colored radiance, and the vast divine might of the true god before them—
All their resentment, schemes, resistance, and ambition were crushed to pieces, rendered insignificant.
In the presence of the gods, mortal thoughts were as tiny as specks of dust.
Xu Yanli did not tell them to rise.
He stood quietly atop the high platform, letting the people kneel before him and the thunderous cries shake heaven and earth.
He raised his eyes toward the north, where the Ming Capital lay.
Then he turned south, toward his homeland, Star Luo City.
In a daze, he thought of his mother.
The woman he had never been fortunate enough to meet, whose appearance he had pieced together from countless people's accounts, and whose lifelong obsession he had come to understand.
The road she had spent her whole life trying, but failing, to reach its end of—he had walked it for her.
The grand dream of ruling the world that she had sought all her life but never realized—he had fulfilled it for her.
Mother.
He murmured the word in his heart, so softly that scarcely anyone could have noticed.
Did you see?
The morning breeze swept across the land, stirring his golden