The Stars Beyond

The Scattered Arts, lost pages of manuals gathered from scattered archives from all across the world. Known also as the Old Arts, these are what remained from a vast collection of knowledge that was destroyed during the war that almost wiped out all of mankind. But we prevailed. Mankind rebuilt and reached for the stars. 

Wang Xuan, a student of the Old Arts Research Department, had read about tales of individuals capable of inhuman feats, of practitioners ascending to the realm of immortality. But in an age of technological wonders, not many would believe in such tales. Only the truly desperate, and with the wealth and resources at their disposal, could even dream of unlocking the secrets behind these tales. 

Corporate greed. This was how the research into the old arts started. But with new discoveries made in the New World, and the Old Arts declared obsolete in the way of the ‘New Arts’, the studies into the realm of the ancients is coming to an end. 

Are the immortals real? Can mankind truly break its shackle of mortality and escape death? These are questions that Wang Xuan desperately sought to answer. He was determined to walk down the path of the Old Arts even as he reached for the stars beyond. 

Original Blurb:

In the vast expanse of the universe, the birth and death of a galaxy are but fleeting flashes of light.

Gazing up at the starry sky, there's always a touch of melancholy, as if our fates have already been written. Where will you and I be a thousand years from now? Our homeland, the spark of our civilization, Earth itself, they are but specks of dust in the vast void of space.

A moment in the cosmos is a millennium on Earth.

The lifespan of an insect is but an autumn, and just like it, you and I are trying to navigate our brief existence.

What lies at the very edge of deep space?