Chapter 9 — Burning
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 3
Gao Yang stood gazing for a long while toward the horizon. In those first few minutes the sheer cognitive shock had left him unable to guess what he was looking at. Whatever it was, it was vastly different from the sun he knew.
That broad and magnificent arc continued to rise, and in its early phase it climbed far faster than the sun did, so before long Gao Yang could see a portion of its curved surface. That surface was indeed glowing, its rim bearing hazy colors and indistinct, cloudlike structures. This world's light and heat must come from this thing, yet its radiance was not so piercing that one could not look at it—in fact quite the opposite. Gao Yang could look straight at that curve, and even make out some fine patterns upon it.
After roughly judging the curvature of the thing, Gao Yang realized that its visual diameter was dozens or even a hundred times that of the sun. Its true size, of course, must be smaller than a normal star—it was simply far too close to the earth.
At this distance, if it rose fully, it might blot out a fifth of the sky... Of course, that was only Gao Yang's crude sensory estimate; he had been so shaken that any intuitive judgment was bound to be wildly off.
To watch a colossal celestial body rise before one's eyes brings a sense of oppression that is hard to put into words.
He swiftly searched Gao Yang Cecil's memories, and sure enough, he found countless equally magnificent "sunrises" there. That thing in the sky was no strange phenomenon, but the most ordinary of sights in this world.
Then what was the explanation?
Gao Yang soon produced numerous interpretations based on the knowledge he possessed. Perhaps the physical laws of this world were utterly different from those of his homeland's universe, so that a star's luminous and thermal efficiency was quite low, and the planet beneath his feet orbited very close to it, which would account for so immense a sun while the earth was not scorched. Or perhaps that thing was no sun at all, but a hole radiating light and heat, or some other thoroughly unscientific, thoroughly magical contraption...
But more likely still, the planet beneath his feet did not orbit a sun at all, but revolved around a gas giant. It was no planet, but the giant's moon, and what rose in the sky...
Was this moon's parent star.
In that moment, the sense of being "in an alien land" struck Gao Yang more powerfully than ever before.
"Ancestor? Ancestor?" Heidi's voice came from beside him, at last rousing Gao Yang from his stupor and brooding.
"Ah... ah?" Gao Yang snapped back to his senses and looked at his great-granddaughter beside him with some bewilderment.
The beautiful noblewoman had left that dark, cramped, and perilous underground tunnel, and now she had recovered a little of her former bearing. She bowed slightly to Gao Yang. "Ancestor, you were woolgathering just now, but we must leave this place first."
Gao Yang mumbled a couple of vague sounds to brush it off, and only then noticed that the tunnel's exit was on an exposed little hillside. Standing there foolishly while the situation around them was unclear was indeed unwise, so he nodded. "Let's go up high first and get a look at our surroundings. The terrain I know is from seven hundred years ago—it may not serve us well today."
And so, under Gao Yang's direction, the group set off toward a nearby slope, and along the way Gao Yang could not resist glancing up at that enormous "sun" several more times.
"Ancestor, you keep looking at the sun?" Rebecca, walking behind Gao Yang, asked with some concern. "Is something wrong?"
Amber spoke up casually from the side. "Your Xuanmai Sect slept seven hundred years without seeing the light of day. Of course you'd stare at the sun a few extra times now that you finally see it."