"How beautiful," Li Qingshuang said in awe.
As far as the eye could see, the main gate of Daluo Palace stood at the foot of Eastern Mountain. Four cyan dragons coiled around its pillars, with shrines to the Seven Mansions interwoven among them. A grand staircase of exactly 1,296 steps, shaped like a "Cyan Dragon Emerges from the Water," snaked its way up to a platform halfway up the mountain. There stood the first hall of Daluo Palace—the Spirit Official Hall.
Li Qingshuang vaguely recalled the craftsmen who built Daluo Palace mentioning something about it. They said each step symbolized one hundred years, meaning the 1,296 steps represented a total of 129,600 years—the duration of a cosmic epoch. To walk from the mountain gate to the palace was to traverse the great calamity of an epoch, to transcend the Three Realms and the Five Elements, and to arrive at the Daluo Celestial Palace itself.
