An eight-armed divine ape clung to an enormous tower, all eight arms moving at once as it carved something into the tower's walls.
A one-horned kui ox stood in a plaza within the city and threw back its head in a long howl. The sound was like thunder, making the surrounding buildings hum and tremble.
Nor was the sky above the city empty.
Countless gigantic flying beasts soared through the heavens.
Dragons, phoenixes, rocs, eagles, kites, cranes, bats, butterflies... Some were large and some small; even the smallest measured dozens of zhang, while the largest blotted out the sky and covered the sun.
They circled, chased one another, played, or simply floated in silence, like islands suspended in the sky.
Whenever their wings beat, the fierce winds they stirred up howled through the city, blowing the trees below every which way.
Ye Lin raised his head and looked toward the very center of the city.
There floated something larger than every other structure.
It was a dragon.
A real, living dragon—so colossal it filled one with despair.
Its body was at least several hundred thousand zhang long, coiling through the void and completely occupying the city's central region.
Its scales were dark purple, every single one as vast as a mountain. Dense patterns had naturally formed upon them, glowing faintly like stars twinkling in the night sky.
Its horns were like two ancient trees that reached the heavens, with countless branching prongs, each one like an enormous sword stabbing toward the firmament.
Its whiskers hung down like two surging rivers, drifting in the wind. Every sway churned the void until it trembled.
Its eyes were closed.
It was sleeping.
Yet even in slumber, the pressure emanating from it made Ye Lin feel a trace of strain.
That pressure made Ye