The waxing half-moon hung high in the night sky, its pale silver light falling slantwise across rows of cold gravestones. The desolate wind whispered in loneliness, singing that ancient nursery rhyme in mourning for the dead who slept here.
The cemetery on the western outskirts of the Heaven Dou Empire was not meant for ordinary commoners. Those resting here had all been renowned figures within the empire, or people with powerful backgrounds.
Some graves were quite lavish, with the deceased's name engraved in gold on a marble headstone and fresh flowers laid before it. Far more, however, were plain, even crude. Some did not have so much as a headstone, and weed-choked burial mounds were a common sight. That could only mean one thing: the families of these dead had fallen into utter decline. With no descendants coming to pay their respects for years, the place had become this desolate.
A handsome young man in a white brocade robe strolled along the cemetery path beneath the stars and moon. He stopped before a recently erected headstone and fell into thought.
The marble headstone looked simple yet imposing, with a line of sharp, decisive lettering carved into its surface:
"Old Jack, village chief of Holy Soul Village."
Below that line were smaller inscriptions recording Old Jack's life. His greatest achievement had been raising the leader of the Sky-Blasting Gang to adulthood, making possible the gang's meteoric rise today. The account spared no ornate language, painting Old Jack as an elder possessed of exceptional discernment. Clearly, whoever had written it was either a member of the Sky-Blasting Gang or someone closely connected to it.
As soon as Yang Ming received news that his grandfather had died of illness, he hurried back overnight from Water 7, Weiss City, on the Heaven Dou Empire's