Chapter 168: Consort Yu Wants to Be With Him Forever
With the direction decided, the rest was implementation. No one here was naive enough to believe a grand idea could sustain itself without a vessel.
"We intend to break this Grotto Heaven and use it as the container for the Plate," Huang Shigong said, opening with a statement bold enough to make the air tighten. His pale brows trembled as he spoke. "This place was opened by Daoist sages long ago. It hangs above the present world, independent from it, and it fits perfectly."
He paused, then added, "That is also why we invited the Great Sage Wuzhiqi."
To hold the Plate inside the Grotto Heaven, the space itself had to be disrupted and shattered, then reassembled as a new structure. Everyone present would pour the mysteries they still controlled into that structure, allowing it to be sorted and re woven around the core principle.
That kind of force was beyond the heirs of the Hundred Schools. Some had stepped into the rank of an Immortal, some had not, but breaking a Grotto Heaven at this level demanded an essence comparable to a chief deity elsewhere.
Wuzhiqi shrugged, unbothered, her smile bright.
"I am not needed anymore." She looked at Rowe. "With the Monarch here, why would you still need me?"
Rowe glanced at her. "You are willing to step aside from an opportunity like this?"
Shattering a near complete miniature world and reorganizing it was not far from reenacting creation in a controlled form. Even for Rowe, it was rare.
Wuzhiqi blinked as if the answer was obvious.
"I am stepping aside so it is easier to ask you for help later."
She leaned forward slightly, voice turning almost cheerful.
"Otherwise, how could I shamelessly ask you to suppress my nature?"
So that was it.
Wuzhiqi wanted her seal broken. She wanted freedom, and she wanted her own nature tamed enough to keep it.
Rowe understood. He also understood why she was choosing this method. A debt taken voluntarily was easier to collect than a favor forced by ceremony.
"All right," Rowe said. Refusing would be pointless, and he had no intention of refusing.
Huang Shigong rose and bowed deeply.
"Grand Ancestor, please take action."
The Juzi dropped to one knee.
"Grand Ancestor, please take action."
Confucian successors, Legalist scholars, strategists, the rest of them followed in unison. Their reverence was not only for Rowe's rank, but for the fact that the Plate itself had already acknowledged him as its master.
Rowe remained seated behind the low table.
He made a small, casual motion, and spoke a single word.
"Permitted."
The word rolled through the bounded field like a bell struck in a quiet hall.
Rowe touched the Chaos in his mind.
To shatter, one must first twist.
An invisible babble spread through the Grotto Heaven. It was not aimed at any single person, so the heirs only heard it as distant reverberation, like a sound remembered rather than heard.
Only Wuzhiqi's cheeks puffed slightly, as if she were fighting laughter. Her shoulders trembled once before she got control of herself.
The light dimmed.
The sky darkened as if ink had been poured over it. Mountains and rivers folded in on themselves, wrinkling like paper crumpled in a fist. Only the ground where they sat retained a patch of clarity.
Rowe pressed the Chaos again.
The foreign turbulence in his consciousness shook harder.
Wrinkles deepened. Space creased. What had been scenery became distortion, then distortion became light and shadow without stable meaning.
The sky collapsed, interlocking with the ground.
It was a return to a primordial state. Not a memory, not a metaphor. A forced reconstruction of the world's shape.
"I told you," Wuzhiqi blurted, unable to help herself. "You are more suited for this than me."
Her eyes followed the folding world with open admiration.
"If I did it, I could only flood this place with the Huai River until it washed apart. I could not do this. Not like this."
"Returning Heaven and Earth to Chaos," Huang Shigong murmured, almost entranced.
"Chaos is like an egg," he added without realizing he had spoken aloud.
Jing Ke was still drinking, but her eyes had widened. The wine did not keep her from recognizing the implication.
An egg.
And then, Pangu.
A roar answered the thought.
A furnace core flared, and fire surged.
Rowe's human form vanished, replaced by a colossal shadow. Steel and heat, plates and flowing lines that mimicked blood, a heart like a miniature sun beating inside a metal cage.
His machina body manifested fully.
The heirs of the Hundred Schools stared, caught between awe and disbelief. Even Wuzhiqi's mouth fell open, her gaze brightening with something dangerously sincere.
She had never seen anything like it.
And yet, her first instinct was not fear.
It was appreciation.
"Even Chiyou, with the bronze head and iron bones they love to brag about, never carried a presence like this," she said softly, as if speaking might break the moment.
The steel giant unfurled cold iron wings.
He braced himself against the chaos, hands lifting the upper layer, feet pressing down on the lower. Then a crimson storm erupted from beneath him, the logic of the Sword of Rupture and stellar dynamics made manifest, cleaving the egg open.
Magma like impacts from a first heaven surged at his joints, hands and knees carrying force that did not belong to any single era.
With that, the top and bottom separated.
A sliver of light appeared in the crack.
It was not gentle.
It was an abyss disguised as brightness, pulling everything toward itself.
The heirs poured their mysteries forward. Each school's remaining heritage was dragged into the opening, spiraling like a vortex around the steel giant.
At the core, there was emptiness.
And within that emptiness, a single ancient character.
Yi.
Change, as both form and formless source.
Dong. Dong. Dong.
A bell like resonance rolled through the chaos. Distortion scattered outward, as if the space itself had been struck until it remembered what it was supposed to be.
For an instant, it resembled the myth of creation.
No.
In that moment, it was creation.
"On the day the Monarch entered Chaos and found the world empty, the Monarch frowned and became a steel giant. He lifted the sky, pressed down the earth, and Heaven and Earth took form."
If anyone ever wrote it down later, they would write it like scripture.
When the process ended, the present world returned.
On the outskirts of Ji, the capital of Yan, mist drifted low and rain haze still clung to the streets. Figures appeared one after another, as if the air itself had decided to release them.
The Grotto Heaven had been broken and rebuilt as the Plate, suspended above the world as a new foundation. So everyone returned to where they belonged.
Rowe stepped onto solid ground.
Beside him, Consort Yu swayed, still half asleep from drink and exhaustion. Rowe caught her with one arm and steadied her. His expression turned helpless in the specific way that meant he was already resigned.
Wuzhiqi glanced at Consort Yu and made an odd sound, halfway between curiosity and amusement.
"So the Monarch still has things to do."
She tossed her pale hair back.
"Very well. I will trouble you again next time."
Rowe nodded. "Until next time."
The heirs bowed as one.
"We respectfully see the Monarch off."
The words repeated in a wave.
Rowe turned and left, supporting the drowsy Consort Yu as he went.
Above the firmament, a faint light shimmered.
The Plate had taken shape. It hung there like a star that did not belong to the sky, illuminating the vast Divine Land. Within it, the mysteries of the Hundred Schools stabilized around Yi, layered and orderly, no longer bleeding away with the decline of the era.
And because the Plate fed on thought, its growth would be tied to the spread of ideas across Shenzhou.
That meant the next conflict was inevitable.
"It seems we still need a battle of orthodoxies," Huang Shigong said, stroking his beard, smiling like a man who had seen this coming for centuries.
The Juzi frowned. "Mohism does not engage in pointless disputes."
"But it is still necessary to decide which teaching becomes the true mainstream," the Confucian successor replied calmly, eyes lingering on the star like light above.
Arguments were already forming.
"Educating the people is the duty of Confucianism."
"Non action is the path to great order."
"Only law as a foundation is fair to all."
Voices layered, old and new.
Four hundred years of lavish feasts and bloody stratagems had passed, yet China's long history was only beginning its next phase.
The gathering dispersed.
Jing Ke, left behind, swayed and let out a small burp.
From beginning to end, she had done little besides watch, and when the Plate formed she had only offered her own sword intent, a thin thread of will placed into something far larger.
Yet her mind cleared abruptly.
Because someone had finally dared to step out from the corner.
"Jing Ke."
She looked over, sober in the eyes even if the wine still clung to her breath.
"Yan Dan," she said, voice flat.
Yan Dan, Crown Prince of Yan, gave a bitter smile.
He had begged Jing Ke to bring him here. He wanted a master, someone who could help Yan resist Qin's eastern advance. He wanted to keep Yan from being swallowed.
He did not even witness the creation itself.
But even the aura that flashed for an instant had crushed him.
He had hesitated.
He had faltered.
As a prince, he could accept fear. As a man trying to change fate, he could not accept his own weakness.
"Yan Dan," Jing Ke said, looking at him like she was looking at a friend who had already disappointed her. "As a friend, I gave you a chance."
She sighed.
"It was you who did not dare."
Yan Dan's smile twisted. He did not argue, because there was nothing to argue.
"I have done what I can," Jing Ke continued. "If you had spoken, that person might not have refused you."
She turned away.
"But now it is too late."
"Goodbye, my friend."
Yan Dan froze.
Rain mist drifted between them.
After a long time, he whispered, voice hoarse.
"It is me. I disappointed you, Jing Ke."
He was timid.
And yet, he still did not want to give up.
Elsewhere, outside the city, the after rain haze wrapped the world in grey light.
Rowe returned to the city and found an inn.
Not to rest for himself.
For Consort Yu.
She needed sleep.
As he walked, Rowe reviewed the consequences of what he had done.
As the one who proposed the Way of Thought, and the one who directly created the Plate, Rowe received more than the heirs did. The Plate acknowledged him as its master, honoring him with a title that carried a different weight.
Gu.
The name that meant Pangu.
That Way, thought as the core, would answer him more easily than it would ever answer the schools.
But Rowe's attention kept drifting back to the Chaos in his mind.
He had used it as the tool to reshape Heaven and Earth. It had been a whim, yes, but also a test. He wanted it to grow, step by step, solidifying into something he could finally use to approach the goal he carried like a thorn.
It did not expand as much as he had hoped.
But it changed.
It became denser.
More coherent.
A qualitative shift, not merely quantity.
Rowe was satisfied.
He would have been more satisfied if someone did not insist on interrupting his mental accounting.
"Such good wine. More. More."
"Come on."
"So annoying," Consort Yu mumbled, voice slurred. "So much noise."
Rowe had not expected her to be this undignified when drunk.
He brought her into the room, set her on the bed, adjusted the blanket, then turned to leave.
A hand seized his collar.
Rowe was yanked down.
They collided into an embrace.
In the quiet inn room, breath rose and fell. Gauze curtains hung low. Consort Yu clung to him like she was determined to anchor herself to something that could not vanish.
Her arms wrapped around him. Her body pressed close, warm, unguarded, flushed with wine.
Rowe turned his head slightly and looked at her. Her face was delicate, pretty, and strangely vulnerable in a way she would never show while sober.
She buried her head at his neck.
"Do not," she whispered, breath hot, uneven. "Do not leave me."
"I do not want to be lonely."
"You brought me out," she said, voice thick with sleep and stubbornness. "You have to take responsibility."
Her logic was slurred, but painfully clear.
He brought her out, so he could not discard her.
So he could not leave her.
So.
"I want to be with you," she said, smile soft and bare. "Forever. Always together."
It was not a flirtation.
It was a plea dressed as entitlement, because asking directly was still too frightening for her.
Rowe fell silent.
Then he sighed, quiet and resigned, and gently stroked her hair as her breathing slowed.
Perhaps she was just a child.
Not in age.
In the place where she had been left behind.
Outside the inn, a carriage rolled to a stop on the street.
Rain mist blurred lantern light. The door opened, and a young woman's eyes widened with bright, eager surprise.
"This is the place," Xu Fu breathed, almost vibrating with excitement. "I can smell him. The Monarch is here."
The maid beside her nearly said that her mistress's nose was absurd, then swallowed it and kept her face straight.
"Yes, Miss."
"According to the hints in the King of Qin's letter, that person last appeared in the capital of Yan."
Rowe had never fully concealed himself. Anyone who knew how to look could track the pattern of his appearances, if they had enough eyes and enough patience. Qin could do it. Other states could as well.
Still, until now, only Jing Ke had dared to disturb him directly.
And now, Xu Fu.
"Let us go," Xu Fu said, then leapt down so fast the carriage rocked.
"Miss, manners," the maid blurted, too late.
Xu Fu was already gone, disappearing into the mist like a child chasing something shiny.
The maid stood there, stunned, then let out a long sigh.
Usually her mistress was timid, shy, half hidden behind her hair. Yet the moment she met something she liked, she became fearless.
The maid shook her head, then glanced at the other letter she still held.
It was from an informant in Yan.
She had not had time to report it.
"The one suspected to be the Monarch has entered an inn with a woman."
The maid folded the letter carefully and put it away.
Pretending she had not opened it.
Pretending she knew nothing.
And quietly hoping everyone would survive the night.
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