My brother entrusted his child to me, and I livestreamed raising the baby, making the Empress cry wi

Yao Jingyuan leaned against the car wall, a slight smile playing on his lips.

He glanced out the window—people were coming and going, shoulder to shoulder, the sounds of hawking, laughter, and drums mingling together, bustling into the carriage.

These merchants from all over the country, these dazzling array of goods, these throngs of people—aren't they the best proof of the prosperity of the Great Flame Kingdom?

He recalled the scene on the screen that day—buildings taller than mountains, iron boxes that could run on their own without horses, golden grains, and fruits whose names he didn't know.

fake!

all fake!

He hasn't appeared for over a month; he must have been unable to hold on any longer.

The Great Flame Kingdom before them was the real one.

This is the real Suzaku Avenue.

These shops, these people, these laughs and shouts—that's the real thing.

His Rou'er rode in a sandalwood carriage, wore brocade clothes, and ate meals carefully prepared by the imperial kitchen.

What can that Lin Ye, that fiend, give that little wild child?

They are nothing but illusions created by trickery.

Once those illusions shatter, that little bastard will discover that he has nothing at all.

Who knows, we might not even survive.

Thinking of this, Yao Jingyuan couldn't help but curl his lips up a little more.

Soon, Shu Rou's sugar painting arrived. She nestled in Yao Jingyuan's arms, holding up the newly purchased sugar painting.

The golden dragon glittered in the sunlight. She stuck out her tongue, licked it, and squinted her eyes.

"Daddy, this sugar painting is so sweet!"

Yao Jingyuan lowered his head, reached out to brush away the stray hairs from her forehead, and said with a doting look in his eyes, "Tianjiu—"

He hadn't finished speaking.

Suddenly, the carriage lit up—

White light surged in from all directions, a fierce and unexpected white that suddenly shone through the Shu brocade curtains, illuminating the interior of the carriage.

Shu Rou was startled, and the sugar painting in her hand fell to the ground with a "thud," the golden dragon shattering into several pieces, with fragments splattering all over the ground.

Yao Jingyuan's smile froze on his face, and his pupils suddenly contracted.

"Daddy! My candy..." Shu Rou's voice was choked with sobs.

Yao Jingyuan ignored her. He suddenly lifted the carriage curtain and looked up.

The image on the sky was now clear.

That's a road.

A road he had never seen before, ridiculously wide and shiny gray.

"The sky—the sky!!!"

That shout startled the entire street.

Everyone stopped what they were doing.

The straw target, laden with candied hawthorns, weighed at least twenty pounds in the hand of the man selling candied hawthorns. With a tremor of his hand, the straw target crashed to the ground with a "thud".

The hawthorn skewers scattered, with strings of red berries coated in glistening sugar bouncing and jumping out.

He was completely oblivious, his head tilted back, his mouth agape wide enough to fit a fist.

The master sugar maker was puffing out his cheeks and blowing air into a sugar figurine, his cheeks bulging like two balls, and his veins were bulging.

The moment the sound rang out, his breathing became erratic, and he swallowed the entire contents of the sugar figurine.

"Pfft!" The sugar figurine exploded, scalding hot sugar syrup splattering everywhere, covering his face and burning him so badly he gasped for breath.

But he ignored it, just staring intently at the sky, not even blinking.

Along the entire Zhuque Avenue, millions of people craned their necks, like a wheat field flattened by a raging wind, all lying down in the same direction.

Among the crowd, the envoys from various countries dressed in exotic clothing reacted even more dramatically.

A merchant from a small kingdom in the Western Regions was riding a camel, holding the reins in his left hand and holding half a naan bread in his right hand, which was still steaming.

The moment he saw the sky clearly, he was as if struck by lightning, frozen in place, completely motionless.

The naan bread slipped from his hand, but the camel beneath him tilted its head and snatched it whole into its mouth.

The camel chewed loudly, but its owner didn't react at all.

The vendor's mouth was agape, revealing the crumbs of naan he hadn't yet swallowed. His eye sockets were stretched to their limit, his eyeballs almost popping out, the blinding white light from the sky reflected in his pupils.

"What...what...what is this?!" he howled in broken, fiery language, his voice booming as if someone were choking him, the last syllable rising to the heavens, "The...the gods have punished us?!"

A man from a South African island nation nearby tumbled off his horse.

He was there for sightseeing and didn't know how to ride a horse at all. He forced himself to get on, and his legs were already trembling as he gripped the horse's belly.

As soon as the sky brightened, he was startled and immediately lost his balance. He fell off the horse, landing directly on his buttocks, his tailbone slamming into the blue bricks, the pain contorting his face instantly.

Ignoring the pain, he scrambled to a nearby fabric stall, pulling back the stall's cloth and shrinking into a ball, revealing only his slanted, triangular eyes.

"Sorcery! Sorcery!" he screamed.

"Is your Great Flame Kingdom plotting to harm me?! Is it?! Is it?!"

He shouted, and his body trembled, causing dust from the bottom of the stall to fall and cover his face.

The envoy from the northern grassland tribes had arrived and was currently on Vermilion Bird Avenue. He was rather bold, remaining seated on his horse without moving, but his horse had sprung a fright.

The prairie horse was so frightened by the white light in the sky that its front hooves reared up, its mouth gaped open, and it let out a neigh.

The messenger leaned back abruptly, gripping the reins tightly with both hands. Veins bulged across his forearms like earthworms, and the reins dug into his palms, almost embedding themselves in his flesh.

After a while, the horse's hooves landed, scraping the bluestone slabs with a harsh scraping sound, almost grinding sparks out.

The horse circled twice before finally regaining its footing.

The messenger's face had turned pale, his lips were trembling, and his Adam's apple bobbed up and down several times, as if something was stuck in his throat. He tried desperately to swallow, but he couldn't.

His mouth opened a crack, then closed, then opened again, but he couldn't squeeze out a single word.

His eyes were fixed on the screen of light in the sky, his pupils motionless, as if nailed there.

On the sky, the road became clearer and clearer.

The gray road surface was both gray and shiny, so shiny that it seemed to reflect people's images.

It is marked with neat white lines, one after another, as orderly as the squares of a chessboard.

The road surface was so smooth, it was like the surface of a bronze mirror.

No! It's even smoother than a bronze mirror.

The bronze mirror at least had polished lines, but this road had no gaps or seams; it was a single piece from beginning to end, as if someone had flattened a large gray boulder and laid it on the ground.

The barrage of comments instantly flooded in.

[Commoner Zhao Dagang: My God!!! What kind of road is that?! How can it be so flat?! It's even flatter than my bed board!]

[Commoner Sun Shitou: That gray... is it paved with stones? No way, there aren't stones this big...]

[Commoner Li Niangzi: Look at those white lines! So white and straight, line by line! What were they drawn with?!]

……