LSL | Prologue

Vast as the universe and boundless as the starry river, a beam of brilliance bright as a meteor approached from afar and fell into the Milky Way Galaxy, landing on Earth, a world brimming with limitless vitality.

At that time, Earth was desolate. The stone fell into the deep sea, which covered two thirds of the planet’s surface. From then on, the stone lay sleeping in the depths of the ocean, and that dazzling light seemed like a fleeting illusion, never to appear again.

As time passed and space shifted, as the saying went: “The Dao gives birth to One, One gives birth to Two, Two gives birth to Three, Three gives birth to all things. All things carry yin and embrace yang, and through the blending of vital energy they attain harmony.” Heaven and earth changed from nothing to something, and Earth’s vitality gradually began to flourish.

Life faded away in one cycle after another, only to be born again in another. Life and death turned in endless reincarnation, one rising as the other fell. Times changed and the world transformed, and the deep sea of those years gradually gave way to vast stretches of land.

The stone that had once come from the universe to Earth was also buried by time, tightly wrapped within a rock. Nothing about it could be seen from the surface. It stood there in silence, without a trace of flourish.

No one knew how many years had passed before there was finally movement beside the stone.

A seed was blown over by the wind and fell beside the stone. It sprouted one spring, grew through one summer, and became a small, lush, upright sapling, its roots sinking deep into the cracks of the rock. The stone, already brittle from wind and rain erosion, became even more fragile under the sapling’s fierce vitality, its cracks widening until it seemed it would shatter at a touch.

In 2005, a secluded Yunnan Town that still retained a strong old-world atmosphere welcomed three guests walking in through the dawn glow one morning.

Su Cheng’s family had come to Yunnan on a trip to celebrate Su Cheng getting into a key provincial high school. Before they came, they had heard about this town from others, so they headed straight here to have fun. The town had no name, its transportation was relatively isolated, and it still preserved the simple customs and way of life of ancient times. Its buildings and traditions were the same.