The bright moon hung high, a wisp of dark cloud curling around it like the eye of an ancient god gazing down upon the mortal world. It cast a cold, clear light as it watched the world below with casual indifference.
In the city beneath the moon, streetlights stretched east to west like a dragon. Near the dragon's head lay a patch of silent shadow: a magnificent palace complex resembling a dormant beast. Palace lanterns occasionally flickered within, like the beast opening its eyes, only to sink back into deep slumber moments later. The night was peaceful and serene.
"Where is this?"
After finishing his conversation with Zhu Juntang, Liu Chang'an had asked her to send him into the World's Number One Dragon Roar Grand Array. Zhu Juntang had merely snapped her fingers, and he had appeared here.
Before him seemed to be a complex of traditionally styled buildings, with carved beams and painted rafters, murals and ornamental wall decorations everywhere. The structures were luxurious and beautiful in both design and materials. Even the paving bricks beneath his feet followed the famous style of "Qin bricks."
The roof tiles bore the Four Divine Beasts—Azure Dragon, White Tiger, Vermilion Bird, and Black Tortoise—designs representative of decorative art from Wang Mang's era. They were exquisitely crafted and breathtaking. Even in the twenty-first century, with vastly improved productive capacity, it was difficult to find palace-scale architecture that made such extensive use of bricks and tiles requiring such complex, costly processes.
Looking around, the most striking feature was the rooftops of the palace complex. Most used the highest-ranking "hip roof" style of Tang Dynasty architecture, or the second-ranking "gable-and-hip roof" style. The most famous surviving hip roof in China was that of the Hall of Supreme Harmony in the Forbidden City, while Tiananmen was