The sun and moon turned; the years flowed like song.
The moment Chen Cuo grasped the long seal, he sensed an ancient aura. It seemed to connect with the past, yet differed from the River of History.
But before he could savor it, the desolation and deathly stillness around him receded like an ebbing tide. In the blink of an eye, they had vanished without a trace, and when Chen Cuo came to his senses, he was still in Chang'an City. He calculated on his fingers: everything he had just experienced had taken only an instant here. Only when he looked at the long seal in his sleeve did he know it had not been an illusion.
There was something strange about the Qiu Ruins. The antiquity contained within seemed different from the River of History!
He recalled what he had sensed at the final moment, and doubt stirred in him.
Yet everything I've seen, including the secrets I learned from the Black-and-White Elders back then, has stressed that history is rooted in the River of Time, and the River of Time gathers its sediment from history. Could there truly be an antiquity apart from the River of History?
As he pondered, the strands of purple qi coiled around him began to divide and change. Some dispersed, merging back into the Great Tang tree now hidden in the void and replenishing the foundations of the Li Tang Dynasty.
One glance was enough for Chen Cuo to see what was happening.
*The foundations of Li Tang have suffered no small depletion, but it is, after all, a unified dynasty destined for three hundred years of National Fortune. Its Fortune was once immense, and it is a nation fated to leave a bold stroke in history. So despite its losses, its purple