On a spring afternoon, the warm, gentle sun had yet to set completely.
The streets of Starshine City bustled with activity as usual.
There were the hurried footsteps of martial artists and the cries of peddlers carrying shoulder poles, hawking their wares at the top of their lungs.
There were also children tugging at adults' hands, clamoring for snacks...
Since the City Lord's Manor had recovered the Cloudzhi Immortal Tree two days earlier, the city's four gates had reopened, and Starshine City had regained its former vitality.
In the streets and alleyways, many people were still heatedly discussing things.
The stunning spectacle of Source Emperor Realm experts fighting that night.
And the punishment the Famed Sword Sect might face.
And just who the Black-Clad Man who had stolen the immortal tree and been slain by the city lord really was.
Everyone enthusiastically discussed these matters that were so far removed from their own lives.
At some point, on an arched bridge in the city.
A little girl with horn-shaped pigtails, holding a stick of candied hawthorn in an adult's arms, pointed up at the sky and asked in her childish voice.
"Oh, Mother, why is the sky bleeding?"
The middle-aged woman looked up and indeed saw, high in the sky.
Above the City-Protecting Grand Formation that had shrouded Starshine City for countless years, blue as the sea and sparkling with starlight.
A speck of starlight suddenly turned bloody red. The color rapidly deepened and spread across the formation's light barrier.
Looking up, it was as though "the canopy of heaven was dripping blood."
"Huh...?"
The middle-aged woman was astonished.
More people raised their heads and looked into the sky.
By now, more specks of starlight on the City-Protecting Grand Formation were glowing blood-red.
The bloody color swiftly stained the City-Protecting