The first ray of morning sunlight slanted in through the broken walls of the ruins, turning last night's embers an ashen white. By the time Shen Xiu opened his eyes, Liu Qingyan was already awake. She sat cross-legged beside him, head lowered as she fiddled with several pottery shards, carefully arranging them in the dawn light as though trying to piece together some sort of pattern. The morning light gilded her lashes with a faint layer of gold, and her focused profile looked especially serene and beautiful.
"Awake?" Liu Qingyan did not look up, but the corners of her lips lifted slightly. She knew he was awake.
Shen Xiu sat up and rolled his slightly stiff shoulders. He had slept against a wall all night. Though that little discomfort meant nothing to him, the human body sometimes insisted on protesting such positions. He glanced at the neatly arranged shards before Liu Qingyan and asked curiously, "What did you piece together?"
"A sun." Liu Qingyan pointed at several of the shards. "Look, these pieces fit together to make a complete sun pattern. Just like the mural we saw in that courtyard yesterday—a circle surrounded by rays. The people of this city must have worshipped the sun."
Shen Xiu leaned closer for a look. Just as Liu Qingyan had said, the shards formed a complete circular design, surrounded by twelve radiating lines representing the sun's rays. Though the edges of the shards had long been worn away, the pattern remained clearly discernible. Those simple yet powerful lines reminded him of an ancient system of belief from ten thousand years ago.
"They held rituals at sunrise," Shen Xiu said. His spiritual sense wandered through the memories within the lightning, catching fragments of those ancient ceremonies once performed upon this land. "They lit bonfires