In the distance, invisible winds carved an azure road through the white clouds. At its center, an enormous fishlike beast swam beneath the heavens. Every stretch of its immense body swept aside the clouds lining the road, like a great fish swimming through a sea of clouds.
Wooden flying boats surrounded the fish beast, looking like tiny insects beside its immense bulk. Below the azure road lay a dense, irregular sprawl of houses.
A somewhat elderly man approached Cheng Yu and said,
"Hahahaha! Spectacular, isn't it? No matter how many times I see the Skywalk, it never fails to take my breath away."
Cheng Yu looked at the old man and asked,
"Do you happen to know how the Skywalk came to be, old lay Buddhist?"
The old man shook his head.
"Its true origins can no longer be verified, but there is a legend I could tell you."
Cheng Yu led Niu Ba along as he walked with the old man toward the cluster of houses.
As he listened, Cheng Yu felt certain that this supposed legend was probably true.
The story began over ten thousand years ago, at the end of the Second Heavenly Demon War. The Peacock Great Sage had used Transforming Oneself into a Pass, and the Northern Continent had shattered. Two-thirds of its land had been absorbed into the Eastern Continent.
The collision between the Northern Continent and the Eastern Continent had created many natural wonders. The Skywalk had formed during that time as well.
A powerful Spirit Wind had risen from the Eastern Continent's eastern coast and swept across the entire Great Northern Waste Land, carving out the Waste River and the Haiyou Mountains, passing over West Sea Prefecture, and dissipating deep in the skies above the Central Wild Sea.
The spiritual energy within