Immortal cranes swept over the palace roofs, their wings beating so slowly that they seemed to be out for a stroll.
Several snow-white spirit deer wandered the corridors between the palaces, occasionally lowering their heads to nibble a spirit herb beside the steps.
In this world of spaceships and alloys, this place was like a drop of ink wash spilled onto an oil painting. Out of place, yet a world unto itself.
The main gate.
Two stone pillars, each a hundred feet tall, supported the lintel. A plaque hung above it.
The writing carved into the plaque was not the common script of this starfield, but the Huaxia script of Blue Star.
"Haotian Sect."
Three characters. Bold, vigorous strokes filled with gold paint. They matched nothing around them.
Yet no one in the Heavenly Expanse Starfield failed to recognize those three characters.
The sect had been founded seven hundred years ago. From nothing, from a small foreign sect that could not even speak the local language, it had grown into one of the Heavenly Expanse Starfield's great powers.
All because of its sect master.
At that moment, on the terrace of a floating immortal palace at the sect's highest point.
Chen Siyao stood before the railing.
Her skirt was pale blue-green, her waist cinched with a silver sash. Her wide sleeves billowed like two thin wings when the wind filled them.
She wore no crown in her hair, only a jade hairpin loosely securing it at the back of her head, the rest spilling over her shoulders and down her back.
One thousand and twenty-five years.
Her face had never changed. She still looked as though she were in her early twenties.
Cultivators retaining their youthful looks was nothing unusual. But what had settled into her eyes and brows no