Chapter 1 (1):The Naming of Haotian
### 1976, Summer/ Somewhere in China
That summer, the scent of earth and iron hung heavy in the air.
Beyond the shimmering heat haze, the construction site of Longteng Group's first major expressway project lay exposed, its red soil raw and bare.
The roar of heavy machinery. The staccato hammering of driven piles.
It was like the birth cry of a city forcing itself to stretch toward a "future," emerging from an era of chaos.
A black car slid into the site office.
The man who stepped out: Li Chengtian.
As head of the Li family, he bore the literal responsibility of rebuilding "the city's skeleton."
"President Li, a call for you. Your wife, just now--"
At his secretary's trembling voice, Chengtian's steps halted.
Without even wiping the sweat from his brow, he took the receiver.
A brief report.
In the year of the Dragon ascending high into Heaven, his frail legitimate wife had carved away her own life to deliver
what would likely be her first and last child: a son.
Chengtian set down the receiver and turned his gaze back to the construction site.
Around him, executives chorused their congratulations.
But in Chengtian's expression, there was not a trace of the gentle joy one might expect from a father.
He simply looked up at the summer sky, endlessly high, scorched by the merciless sun.
Not a single cloud.
Fathomlessly blue, and with a cruel completeness that encompassed everything--an overwhelming expanse.
This was the sky he had spent thousands of hours gazing up at, to lay the first road through this land.
(Xia Wei Haotian...)
A passage from the ancient text *Erya* flickered through his mind.
"Spring is the Azure Sky, summer is Haotian."
The words meaning "summer sky" were also another name for the supreme deity that governed cosmic order.
"The name is decided."
Chengtian's voice cut through the machinery's din.
"Haotian. Li Haotian."
It sounded less like a "wish" bestowed upon an infant, and more like a "command" bestowed upon a god.
And more like marking a name on a map.
Not a blessing for the child to be loved as a person,
but a decree: to survey all from above like heaven itself, to preserve order, to bear the weight of the city on his back so that the massive system called the Li family would never collapse.
To Chengtian, his son was not "someone who would make him happy,"
but "a vessel destined to stand, like himself, on an inescapable summit."
The clear blue sky--
No matter how long you gaze up at it, it possesses a vastness you can never claim.
That name, he gave to the child just born.
For Longteng to lay roads across this country,
to build bridges, to transport people,
to carve lines that wouldn't crumble for decades--
a child bearing the name of heaven was necessary.
"...Don't fall."
A murmur, so quiet no one could hear.
Where Chengtian's gaze fell: an unfinished bridge pier that would, for the next decades, continue to support the weight of millions.
Midsummer light burned white across the father's back, and across the unseen fate of his son.
