Sea Circle Calendar, year 1520. Upper Yard, Sky Island.
Morning light pierced the thin clouds high above, spilling golden-red radiance across the sky ten thousand meters overhead. Beside the scorched ravines eaten away by Blue-Gold palm prints, freshly turned "Island Cloud" soil gave off its distinctive crisp scent. Most of the ruins of the Shrine of God, once a symbol of Enel's rule, had been cleared away. In their place, the skeleton of a vast but plainly styled building was rapidly rising-the future Sky Island Governor's Office.
Guan Yu stood on a temporary lookout platform, his green robe snapping in the sea breeze. His hands rested behind his back, and the jade-green dragon horns on his forehead shone with a gentle yet imposing luster in the morning light. His molten-gold slit pupils slowly swept across the land undergoing profound changes below.
To the east, the settlement originally belonging to the Skypieans was expanding outward. Under the guidance of craftsmen sent by the Empire, Sky Island's distinctive "Island Cloud" was cut into regular blocks and combined with timber and stone shipped from the Blue Sea to rapidly build neat rows of houses. Skypiean men and women in simple work clothes bustled about, using rudimentary cranes powered by "Jet Dials" to lift building materials. The various "Dials," once restricted to "God's Trial" or decoration under Enel's rule, were now systematically classified, tested, modified, and put to use in production and construction.
To the west, beside the Shandia warriors' camp, synchronized shouts rang out from a newly opened training ground. A hundred selected elite warriors, bare to the waist, practiced basic formation drills and physical conditioning under Wyper's leadership. They no longer used the rough fighting methods passed down through their tribe, but the imperial army's revised "Basic Battle Formation Manual," which could