Five thousand years ago, the chaos rift in Kunlun Ruins closed, and the great battle in Zuzhou ended in a hard-won victory for humanity. Changxi scattered her pure radiance to mend the sky screen, while Dayi shot down nine suns, leaving a spark of the Golden Crow's fire deep within the earth. Changxi became the moon, drawing the essence of lunar yin away from the ancestral star. Laozi traveled west through Hangu Pass, using the Dao De Jing to suppress the baleful energy of the underworld. The gods cast the Nine Tripod Cauldrons in an attempt to repair the Heavenly Dao, but because the Great Dao is fifty and Heaven's evolution yields forty-nine, the elusive "One" was absent from the world.
Five thousand years passed. The myths of the primordial world became textbook trivia, and ancient battlefields were buried beneath concrete and steel. Modern people swiped through short videos, debating the mysteries of Sanxingdui and marveling at the deities in Dunhuang murals, unaware that the Twenty-Eight Mansions were growing brighter with every passing day. The light of Jiao Mu Jiao swept past skyscrapers, the glow of Dou Mu Xie lit up a lighthouse in the dead of night, and the crimson rays of Yi Huo She coiled around airline routes. The constellations were gradually taking physical form and descending into the human world.
Even more astonishing, legendary figures had blended into everyday life. At a boxing gym at the foot of Mount Wudang, a white-haired old man was teaching a group of retirees to practice tai chi. Beside Lingyin Temple in Hangzhou, a mad monk appeared, gnawing on a chicken leg.
An astronomical warning reported that Polaris had shifted three degrees. War drums rumbled from the depths of the East China Sea, blood-red patterns seeped from the Dunhuang murals, and the broken branches of Sanxingdui's bronze sacred tree began to resonate on their own.
When phantom battlefields began appearing between heaven and earth, spiritual energy surged, and primordial purple qi poured out of an unknown spatial rift. As treasures such as the Heaven-Mending Stone and the Eight Trigrams Diagram resonated at once, minor worlds emerged from spatial nodes, and people dressed in ancient attire began walking among the living. Nations around the world entered the highest state of military readiness. The five-thousand-year countdown came to an end, and the final battle was about to begin in modern society.
