Sandora put her trench coat back on, concealing that breathtakingly extravagant imperial regalia.
Yet not a shred of her majesty was hidden with it.
She walked toward the center of the lawn, where an ancient stone table and several stone stools had silently appeared at some point.
She sat down first and made a gesture of invitation.
Everyone looked at one another. In the end, still carrying lingering shock and doubt, they gradually gathered around the table.
"Let me introduce myself again," Sandora said. Her voice was clear and steady, as though she were recounting an ancient tale that had nothing to do with her. "I am Sandora, Emperor of the Old Hilling Empire, and also the... creator and exile of the Abyssal Hilling Empire."
Dead silence fell around the stone table, broken only by the rustle of wind through the grass.
"The Old... Hilling Empire?" Mio was the first to seize upon the key point amid her shock. "You mean that before the empire ruled by His Majesty Emperor Hua Wei, there was another Hilling Empire?"
"Not 'before,'" Sandora said, gently shaking her head. "It was 'another path,' 'another possibility.'"
She raised her right hand, and a dazzling star map constantly shifting and evolving appeared above her palm.
Within the star map, civilizations rose and fell like fireworks, eventually converging into a magnificent silver empire spanning countless worlds.
"We once tried to understand and control the nature of the void." There was no pride in Sandora's voice, only the calmness and weight accumulated over endless ages. "But the deeper we went, the more we discovered a helpless truth: the void's nature is disorder—chaotic and uncontrollable. So long as the void exists, chaos and Destruction will remain Eternity's backdrop."
In the star map, the empire's territory began boldly extending toward