The sky-mirror was crystalline, the vault of heaven lofty and distant. Silvery stellar mist drifted, trailing one strand of multicolored starlight after another like a suspended Milky Way.
Water-like starlight cascaded over the mountain ridges, draping the divine mountains and earth in a thin, translucent veil. Amidst the undulating peaks, an ancient and vicissitudinous aura pervaded; nothing had changed, yet everything seemed as though it had already transformed.
Beneath a cliff, a nine-headed lion lay prone, his eyes filled with bewilderment. He had not submitted to that woman; there was no bond between them—he was merely carrying her drowsily as she traveled.
Chapter 182