Hundred Flowers Lane had experienced desolation, spectacle, destruction, and reconstruction. Its appearance from yesteryear had been replaced long ago, but it was more prosperous and yet quieter than before. Newly planted willow trees grew along the road. In the early spring, their new buds of light green were unable to conceal the eaves of the restaurants behind them.
Tianhai Shengxue gazed quietly for a very long time at the gate of the Orthodox Academy, deep within the lane.
The current gate had been built by the Tianhai clan, its old one having been rammed open at his order.
He thought back to that drizzling day in the capital, of how he had returned from the north with his subordinate cavalry and had a warhorse crash through the gate at his order. At the time, how brilliantly he and the Tianhai clan had shone, how arrogant they had been, but now?