So whatever it was he built, he’d forbid anyone to touch it, and he always wished desperately that he could glue the fragile sheets together so that it’d never collapse. When he was even younger, if he saw his golden palace fall apart, he’d be distressed to the point of refusing food and sleep until the king and queen coaxed him from his shell. The golden palace before him now was grand, made of hundreds of layered foil sheets, and fragile like an egg, as if a gentle breeze could blow it down. Xie Lian couldn’t help but chant mentally: Don’t collapse, don’t collapse. A brief moment later,
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