Chapter 157: Abigail? The Xia Dynasty, where ancient gods were everywhere
When Rowe looked over, Consort Yu hesitated.
She clearly had not expected him to latch onto that single line. For a heartbeat she looked caught off guard, then her expression tightened into something proud, almost smug.
See? I do know things.
It was the kind of pride that came from possessing knowledge you could not truly use. As a Stellar Spirit, many human paths were simply incompatible with her existence.
"You definitely don't know, do you?" Consort Yu lifted her chin, lips curving. "Fine. I'll tell you."
She tried to look intimidating, baring just a hint of her small canine teeth.
"Fourteen centuries ago, during Xia, a meteor fell."
Her voice lowered, as if savoring the weight of the words.
"And it brought calamity from beyond the cosmos. The Great Old Ones."
She watched Rowe for a reaction.
Rowe only gave her a look that was half amusement, half patience, as if she were a child threatening a storm with a paper sword.
Consort Yu deflated by a fraction.
Supreme existences really were hard to scare.
Then her irritation resurfaced.
She had woken up, been stepped on, been tricked into drinking something that tasted like an underground curse, and then watched her home get casually claimed. Ever since this man arrived, she had done nothing but lose ground.
Her eyes narrowed.
"I won't say anymore unless you beg me."
"I can beg you."
Consort Yu froze.
The answer was so immediate it felt like mockery.
He was a supreme god. Could he be less direct?
And why did it feel even more annoying when he actually did what she asked?
"I did what you said." Rowe stood, adjusted his sleeve with calm precision, and smiled. "Are you going to take it back now?"
He looked at her until a faint flush touched her cheeks, then turned his gaze away as if it had never mattered.
"But even if you refuse, I can already guess most of it."
He spoke lightly, as if reciting an obvious equation.
"Fourteen centuries ago, in the time of Xia, something fell from outside the firmament. The stone sank into this land and carried shadows that should not exist. Someone glimpsed an evil god within it and obtained a ritual. A ritual that called the Great Old Ones."
Consort Yu blinked.
"…How do you know?"
Rowe blinked back, perfectly innocent.
"You told me."
"Eh? I…" Consort Yu panicked.
She had not said that. She absolutely had not.
Then she realized it.
Again.
He had guided her into it, then watched her trip over her own pride.
Rowe exhaled quietly.
"Isn't it easier to be honest and enjoy yourself?"
Consort Yu glared, then looked away with a huff that sounded like surrender.
"Forget it. I'll tell you."
She smoothed her long dark hair with fingers that looked carved from jade, then sat beneath the Fusang Tree, letting its vast shadow cover her like a curtain.
"The truth is simple," she said. "It happened exactly like you described."
In the era when the dynasty ruling this land was still called Xia, a meteorite fell.
Not from the sky.
From beyond it.
Not the way Atlantis left ruins and embers behind, not the way a lost civilization might arrive with knowledge and machines.
This one arrived with terror.
Twisted patterns clung to the stone, symbols that bent the mind if you stared too long. Within those patterns was a path, a method that invited something unspeakable from outside the cosmos.
The beings behind it were called the Great Old Ones.
"Some people deciphered the patterns," Consort Yu continued. "They caught the attention of those beings and received a gift of power."
Her lips curled in contempt.
"That group rose quickly. They gained a foothold in Great Xia. They called themselves Witches."
The word carried disgust in her mouth.
"They used dance and rites to summon gods. Not the gods of this land. Gods from beyond. They drew power down into their bodies like drinking fire."
She paused, eyes narrowing as if seeing an old scene she hated.
"Power never descends without a price. Especially not power that arrives too easily."
Every one of them, without exception, met the same end.
Destruction.
Not clean death, not heroic sacrifice, not even punishment that felt like justice.
They died in endless babbling madness.
"Even knowing the danger, they still rushed into it," Consort Yu said, agitation rising in her voice. "Humans really are ugly. Their greed is endless."
Rowe sat down beside her. Not close enough to touch, close enough to share the shade.
Sunlight cut through the mist and landed on him, turning the edge of his profile warm.
"Humans are ugly," he agreed, voice even. "But humans can also be beautiful."
Consort Yu scoffed immediately.
"Beautiful? Greed, slaughter, destruction. That is what they do."
"You know Xia," Rowe replied. "So you must have seen its palaces. Magnificent. But you likely only watched the people who stood on those heights."
He looked toward the sea, as if seeing something far beyond the horizon.
"You rarely looked at the ones who built them."
"What you notice does not represent all of humanity. What you ignore can."
He spoke softly, almost like he was talking to himself.
"It might be too early to say this in an age like this, but one day people will understand."
His gaze steadied.
"The common people who work for tomorrow, the ones who make the world slightly better without ever being praised, they are the shape of that beauty."
"I want the sun I command to shine on them."
Consort Yu stared.
She had not expected those words from him, and she hated that they felt sincere.
For someone like her, who had lived too long and seen too many cycles of desire, it was easier to dismiss humanity as a stain.
Rowe's answer forced a question she had never bothered asking.
She looked at him, tall and warm in the light, and felt something unfamiliar stir.
Confusion, maybe.
Or the beginning of curiosity.
Still, her pride would not let her soften properly.
"A bunch of ants," she muttered. "What beauty could they possibly have?"
But her voice lacked conviction.
She bent her knees, drew them to her chest, and tucked her face down, words muffled.
Perhaps… she should actually go and look.
After all, she had been here for far too long.
A moment later, she resumed her explanation, returning to what was safer.
"No matter what, Xia perished in madness."
"The last ruler, Jie of the Xia house, also practiced witchcraft. He was the most outstanding Witch of them all."
Her ruby eyes sharpened.
"He held power comparable to the Heavenly Gods. And he was more mad than anyone who came before him."
He slaughtered indiscriminately. He challenged the immortals and gods. He caused countless deaths without hesitation, as if the world were a toy he could crush to hear it crack.
"The immortals and gods finally lost patience," Consort Yu said. "The Heavenly Gods ordered the fox demon Meixi to bewitch Jie and delay his madness. It was nothing but a drop of water in a burning sea."
Even Meixi fell.
Even the fox demon became a demon.
"So the Heavenly Gods relinquished the position of Heavenly Emperor and entrusted it to a qualified candidate, Di Ku, so that his descendants, the Shang, would replace Xia as rulers of this land."
Her voice turned colder.
"And Jie…"
"He twisted into a God of Chaos."
"He died after his five orifices were gouged out. Even after his death, the witchcraft he unleashed cursed the land with decades of drought and famine."
Silence followed.
Rowe's brows knit slightly as he processed it.
Xia sounded like an era where ancient gods were everywhere, an age dense with Mystery and direct divine interference. From Consort Yu's description alone, one could grasp how catastrophic those outside entities were. If the gods had not moved decisively, it might not have stopped at Xia. It could have infected every era that followed.
It also implied something grim.
Even the gods of this land could not truly destroy those existences. They could only contain them, suppress them, keep them from spreading.
Rowe's thoughts turned inward.
Could it really be that system?
A mythology from his former world, a fiction that people treated like a horror story.
Here, it felt too real.
If the gods of the land were manifestations of Gaia's laws, then those beings represented something beyond the planet's framework entirely. The unknown of the wider universe, the kind of contradiction that the World itself could not comfortably digest.
And that made Rowe's pulse quicken.
Not with fear.
With interest.
Indescribable evil gods.
A perfect method for seeking the one thing he wanted.
Death.
Consort Yu tilted her head, watching his eyes brighten while he listened.
She looked genuinely puzzled.
How could someone become excited when told a forbidden domain existed?
But she did not press him. Instead, she huffed and continued, more stern now, as if trying to hammer caution into a wall that refused to crack.
"No matter what, that is absolutely forbidden."
"The Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors, even the Star Creating Gods, warned all immortals and mortals. Do not approach. Do not look. Do not touch."
Her lips tightened.
"Even after Xia fell, the influence was not completely erased. And I heard the Investiture of the Gods six centuries later was also connected to it. It was initiated to wipe out the last remnants of the Great Old Ones' influence."
She glanced at him, expression sharp.
"So I advise you to give up that idea. With your current power, you are already top tier even in an age where immortals gathered. There is no reason to gamble on something like that."
Rowe listened, and only grew more certain.
If it was not dangerous, it was useless.
If it could not kill him, it could not satisfy him.
He was beginning to feel that this might be the road he had been searching for. The chaotic and unknowable nature she described aligned far too neatly with the premonition that still clung to his mind.
Then Rowe noticed something else.
"Wait," he said quietly. "Don't you think it's too quiet?"
Consort Yu stiffened.
She noticed it too.
The tide had stopped.
The waves were frozen mid breath.
Even the distant sound of the Fusang Tree swaying had vanished.
Those sounds were the background of this place. Consort Yu had slept to them for countless years.
Now they were gone.
And she felt it.
Something was watching.
Rowe chuckled softly.
"Whatever is thought, is known."
"As expected," he added, tone almost approving, "impressive."
"Ah, ah, ah, why are you still smiling?" Consort Yu tried to be irritable, but it came out strained. "So annoying. So annoying. So annoying. I really shouldn't have talked to you."
She understood the problem.
If it had been only her, she would not have attracted their attention. Ants do not interest dragons.
But Rowe was different.
Because of the name he carried.
Yahweh.
A name once tied to a spirit of the void. A name heavy enough to act like bait, heavy enough to drag the gaze of incomprehensible beings across a distance that should not be bridged.
Then it came.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
A drumbeat that did not belong to the world.
Rowe heard it.
Consort Yu heard it too.
Alongside it came roars of invisible writhing things and whispers that scraped against sanity.
The pressure poured in, not as a physical force, but as contamination.
Chaos.
Confusion.
Madness.
Consort Yu's eyes swam, her breath hitching as her mind struggled to keep its shape.
Rowe, however, remained steady.
This was where the advantage of the name became clear.
Yahweh acted like armor.
It allowed him to see what should not be seen and endure what should not be endured.
So Rowe looked directly into the outside.
Into the boundary where the world's laws thinned, where the texture of reality frayed into something closer to the Imaginary Number side of existence.
And there she was.
A delicate girl in a black dress, holding a small cloth doll.
Her eyes were hollow.
A dark keyhole sat on her forehead like a wound that had never healed.
She floated within the interlayer, and her voice was sweet enough to be mistaken for innocence.
"Big brother, you're so interesting."
"You can actually see us?"
She tilted her head, doll hanging limp in her hand.
"Are you also looking for Father? Can Abi play with you here for a while?"
Abi.
Abigail.
A name that should not exist in this time, carrying the scent of something that belonged to the future and yet did not belong to humanity at all.
Rowe only glanced at her, then withdrew his gaze immediately.
He ignored her disappointed expression.
He ignored her bright, eager smile.
"Big brother," her voice followed him anyway, cheerful and certain, "I'll definitely find you. Then we can play."
Rowe stepped forward and reached Consort Yu.
He raised his hand, and his fingers settled against her brow.
"Let me bear it," he said.
He suppressed his excitement and forced his tone into something casually indifferent, as if afraid the outside would reconsider and pull away.
"Let me take the burden of their power."
Consort Yu's mind cleared slightly.
Then her legs went weak.
She pitched forward before she could stop herself.
Her body fell against Rowe.
Instinct made her arms wrap around him, gripping him as if the world had tilted.
Rowe caught her without thinking. He pulled his outer garment around her to block the wind, more practical than intimate, and then closed his eyes, focusing on sorting the foreign pressure now pressing into his own consciousness.
He did not notice what his hands were doing.
Consort Yu did.
As her awareness sharpened, her eyes widened.
Impolite.
He had saved her, yes.
But his hand rested on her waist, warm through the fabric, brushing skin with an accidental intimacy that made her breath stutter.
She tried to shift away.
Her thighs trembled.
The attempt only made the contact worse, friction turning her movement into something that felt humiliatingly like a caress.
The more she tried to retreat, the more her body betrayed her.
Rowe's breathing was steady.
His heartbeat was steady.
She could hear it clearly.
And it made her feel as if she were suffocating.
Too hot.
Far too hot.
Part of it was the aftershock of staring into that forbidden domain.
Part of it was the residual weakness.
And part of it was something else entirely.
The strange, overwhelming presence of Fusang's new Emperor, Rowe, pressing close enough to erase distance.
Consort Yu's mind went dizzy.
And for the first time in a very long life, she did not know which part of the sensation she hated more.
<><><><><>
[Check Out My Patreon For +50 Advance Chapters On All My Fanfics!]
[[email protected]/FanficLord03]
[Every 100 Power Stones = +1 Bonus Chapter]
[Join Our Discord Community For Updates & Events]
[https://discord.gg/MntqcdpRZ9]