In the forty-first year of Yongnian, early spring.
Li Xun wore a thick camouflage uniform as he moved through the deep forest. Every gesture seemed to blend into the mountains and woods, causing not the slightest ripple.
Even when he brushed past birds and beasts, he did not startle them in the least.
After walking like this for several hours, Li Xun finally stopped in a place where the trees were somewhat thinner. He ate and drank a little, intending to rest briefly.
Through gaps in the trees, the sky above remained a tapestry of interwoven colors, like a resplendent oil painting.
Li Xun knew that, supposedly, this phenomenon had persisted for forty-one years.
Since the first year of Yongnian, when the Grand Ancestor Emperor ascended to the heavens with sword in hand and the female Grand Ancestor Emperor took the throne bearing the Grand Ancestor Emperor's imperial decree, the sky had remained ablaze with dazzling divine radiance all these years.
Of course, that divine radiance was not completely unchanging. Its shifts were simply exceedingly slow; even over the course of a year, its form would barely alter.
It was said that this radiance was the lingering afterglow produced by the Grand Ancestor Emperor's battle against fiends beyond the heavens.
Within the Empire, belief and disbelief in this claim were more or less evenly split.
Many of the older generation firmly believed it, especially those soldiers of the Heaven-Answering Army from back then. Though they had now grown old, none believed it more unwaveringly than they did.
The younger generation, on the other hand, did not particularly believe it.
They had studied mathematics, physics, and chemistry since childhood. They believed the heavenly phenomenon had been brought about by the "revival of spiritual energy," and that so-called spiritual energy was merely