Luminous Eclipse Seal
While the decoration had changed since last she’d been here, the layout remained the same. Mei Xilan led Hou Jingshu down a pathway that was at once familiar and foreign to her. She felt her heart ache at the knowledge that many of the familiar decorations were gone, replaced with gaudy motifs of the sun.
Their destination was the main hall. They passed several rooms that used to serve as ancestral altars. These rooms were devoted to worshipping their ancestors. She and her family would burn incense, give offerings, and pray to their ancestors so they would find peace in the afterlife. But the buildings had changed since then. All the altars of her ancestors had been replaced by altars of the sun. It was galling. She wouldn’t be able to change them back to the way they were either. She’d been so young back then that she didn’t remember what the original altars looked like or who they were for.