"Why didn't anyone tell me we had a new colleague?" Aventurine looked up at the sky and muttered to himself.
"An Immortal Dragonkin?" Yanqing was no less shaken than anyone else.
Yet that Dragonkin Aether Spirit was not what frightened him most. He stared up at the sky, his sword hand so tense it was nearly cramping.
High above the vault of heaven...
Dawn arrived without a sound. The Great Sun hung over the snowy night, pouring clear light across millions of miles of winter locked in Eternal Night.
The Abundant Ebon Deer raised its head toward the sky. Wherever it had stepped, gentle moisture nourished new growth, and the bitter wind began to carry spring's richest fragrance.
Together, they seemed to melt the winter and bring spring back.
"You are one, and you are ten thousand." All creation found its voice, sacred and ethereal. Amid the music of light elements, everyone felt as though they had returned to the age of myth in ancient verse.
The cocoon of light, its outline impossible to discern, gradually broke apart. It was as though millions prayed as one, praising a great being supreme above all.
"You are the Primordial Light, who was, who is, and who shall be forever."
Countless rays bent and twisted, weaving together into a colossal tree that held up heaven and earth amid the cosmos.
The branches of the great tree of light swayed. Then its trunk split down the middle and fell to either side, opening the gates to the Kingdom of Light.
As though roused to wrath—or awakened—the blinding light suddenly contracted, then burst outward.
Countless feathers of light drifted down, and the sacred realm among the stars shone. Fiery meteors streaked across the sky, and from that radiance and those holy voices...
A figure with