Chapter 170: So, you're Ying Zheng?
The wind and rain over Yan's capital did not ease for a single breath. Even deep into the night, the steady patter drilled into people's thoughts like a slow curse.
By morning, dark clouds still smothered the sky. Dawn existed only as a thin, reluctant smear of light.
Consort Yu opened her eyes.
The inn room was quiet. Xu Fu was kneeling by the wall, eyes gently shut, fast asleep like a child who had finally run out of courage for the day.
Consort Yu's gaze swept the room once.
He was not here.
"Where is that guy?" She sat up abruptly. Her robe slipped, exposing pale shoulders and the curve of her chest. Damp strands of dark hair clung to her cheek. Her lips parted. Her crimson eyes hardened.
He did not run off alone, did he?
Her arms tightened around the Rowe doll as she rose, ready to move.
A voice sounded from the doorway, perfectly timed, as if he had been listening for the moment she woke.
"Awake?" Rowe's tone carried lazy amusement. "If you are awake, it is time to eat."
He raised an eyebrow at her sharp, almost spring loaded motion and chuckled.
"Are you doing some kind of middle school calisthenics routine?"
Consort Yu did not know what that meant, but she understood she was being mocked. Still, the instant she saw him, something inside her loosened. A calm settled in her chest, sudden and unwanted.
Her mouth refused to admit it.
"None of your business."
She stood straight, ignoring what her robe revealed, and walked toward him with long, controlled steps, chin lifted in defiance.
Rowe carried breakfast in and set it on the table.
Three bowls of plain porridge. Two eggs. A plate of pickled vegetables.
He had kept the storm going through the night using his Authority, but weather had its own inertia. Once the water vapor was linked into a vast, continuous flow across the land, it drew more of itself naturally. After the first push, he no longer needed to hold it by hand.
So he had stopped and gone out to buy food.
Even in this era, the roots of China's culinary habits ran deep. This simple combination already existed everywhere, as ordinary as breathing.
Consort Yu had long since grown used to Rowe keeping the rhythm of a mortal life.
Human food did nothing for her. No energy. No nourishment. Only flavor.
But she had eaten with him across the Six States. Habit had become comfort, and comfort had become something dangerously close to dependence.
She sat down like it was the most natural thing in the world.
The soft clink of bowls and chopsticks woke Xu Fu at once.
She opened her eyes wide, then immediately panicked.
"Monarch. I am sorry. I promised to accompany you, but I fell asleep."
Her apology came first, instinctively.
Then she noticed the chopsticks being offered to her.
"Eat first," Rowe said. "We leave after you are done. It has been raining all night. That is enough."
It was enough.
After a quiet breakfast, Xu Fu followed Rowe and Consort Yu out.
The world outside was drenched. Rain still fell, steady and heavy. Water vapor hung everywhere, turning rooftops and distant towers into blurred silhouettes, like ink wash scenery half remembered.
And parked in front of the inn was a carriage.
Xu Fu stared at the beast harnessed to it, lips parting slightly.
"This is…"
Consort Yu's expression sharpened into smug disdain.
"Ignorant little girl. Do you know what that is?"
A towering divine steed stood in the rain.
Twelve wings spread wide, stirring storms out of the air itself. Eight hooves shifted with restrained power. Its face was hidden behind an iron mask, and iron plates layered its body like armor. Lightning fragments hissed from its nostrils, leaving a faint hum in the air.
A celestial horse once tied to the storm gods of northern Europe.
After the end of that conflict, it had vanished back into the depths of the primordial domain it belonged to. But if Rowe wanted it, then with a single thought it would descend.
During the journey through the Six States, he and Consort Yu had ridden it more than once.
Before, it had concealed its wings and divinity.
Now it displayed itself without restraint.
In the rainy streets of Yan's capital, people avoided looking. They stepped away as if they had seen nothing at all.
A small sensory suppression technique. Magecraft, clean and simple.
"So cool…" Xu Fu looked at Rowe with shining eyes, longing spilling out of her like light. "As expected of the Monarch."
Rowe smiled faintly.
"Come. We take this."
"To Great Qin."
The divine steed neighed. Hooves struck ground.
Rowe rose with Consort Yu and Xu Fu and settled onto the carriage. It was open on all sides, crowned by a grand canopy that swayed like gathered cloud. Small bells chimed under the storm, crisp and clear.
Rowe sat at the back. Xu Fu and Consort Yu sat before him, one on each side, like two opposite seasons trapped in the same frame.
Lightning ripped through the sky.
The storm steed surged forward, pulling the carriage into the wind, following the direction of the boundless water flow, southward toward Qi's great river.
Silver white light washed the world.
The people of Yan looked up blankly, catching only a fleeting glimpse of a celestial carriage vanishing into rain.
On a stone bridge, Huang Shigong watched it go, beard damp with mist, eyes bright.
"Farewell, Monarch."
Nearby, a Confucian scholar sighed.
"Entering Qin, entering Qin. Qin truly is a land of destiny." His expression tightened. "Unfortunately, Qin respects only law. It does not respect Confucianism."
A disciple behind him asked softly, "Master, what will you do?"
The scholar's eyes narrowed. After a long pause, he answered.
"Then I will also enter Qin."
"The struggle for orthodoxy is not won by silence."
He straightened, voice steady.
"I will go under my true name. Shusun Tong."
Thunder rolled.
In Yan's princely residence, Prince Dan woke as if struck. He had spent the night turning cowardice into excuses, and now the morning made the truth unavoidable.
He had missed another chance.
He could only bow, bitter and reverent all at once.
Elsewhere, the Juzi, Legalist heirs, and countless others felt the same pressure in their hearts and lowered their heads.
A farewell to the Immortal Monarch entering Qin.
Storm and cloud descended into the linked flow of water vapor. At first, the celestial horse galloped along the ground. Then it hit the vast current and its twelve wings lifted it higher, higher, until it ran on the sky itself.
Wind screamed. Rain surged.
Xu Fu leaned forward, eyes wide, drinking in the sight of the world beneath them. She understood, vividly, that she was now in a place mortals could not touch.
Consort Yu tried to keep her disdainful expression, but joy leaked through her eyes anyway.
Not for the scenery.
For the simple fact that she was still traveling with him.
Rowe leaned back beneath the canopy, gaze fixed ahead.
The immense water vapor rushed past. In a blink, Yan was far behind. Qi's territory spread beneath them.
Before they even reached the Great River, someone was waiting.
A hermit of Qi, already stepped into the immortal realm.
Those who reached that threshold formed a connection with the planet. Even from far away, he had read the shift in air and flow and understood what was coming.
So he waited at the edge of the storm and spoke.
"Why does the Monarch enter Qin?"
His voice was distant, carried through wind and rain, threading into the storm of water vapor itself.
Rowe's lips curved.
The man continued, stern and urgent.
"Qin is tyrannical. It intends to destroy the Six States and seize the world. You are revered in Chu as a new Heavenly God, a righteous deity who protects the people."
"Why go there?"
"Are you going to help Qin?"
Rowe's answer came without hesitation.
"Is a unified world not good?"
"A unified world under Qin is not good," the hermit replied. "The fall of nations brings slaughter without end. It is worse."
"I once heard Zhou prospered through benevolence, and Shang fell through tyranny. Qin is no less lawless than King Zhou."
Rowe's gaze did not change.
"That has nothing to do with me."
He spoke evenly, almost casually.
"I go to Qin because in this world, only Qin can unify. That is the direction of history."
The hermit frowned.
"Mandate of Heaven?"
Rowe laughed, open and bright, and the thunder answered him.
"What Mandate of Heaven?"
His voice hardened for a single beat, cold enough to cut.
"My will is Great Qin."
"I am the Mandate of Heaven."
The hermit's mind jolted as if struck. While the water vapor still filled the sky, the celestial carriage had already passed him, leaving only storm and the echo of a presence too large to argue with.
He stood there, bewildered, then lowered his head anyway.
He was not qualified to debate Rowe. For Rowe to pause and answer at all was already a mercy.
Unwilling or not, he could only submit to that mercy.
And he was not the only one.
Along the route, anyone who asked, anyone who doubted, anyone who sought, Rowe answered without delay. Not because he owed them gentleness, but because it served a purpose.
To spread thought.
To stabilize the Plate.
And because a god who claimed to stand with living beings did not explain himself only to kings.
Rowe tapped the Chaos within his mind and drew in the malice and turbulence gathered across the banks of the Wei River.
So the land heard an invisible bell.
So the land saw the vast canopy of water vapor merge into the Great River, its surging essence finally joining the mother current that crossed the Divine Land.
The carriage descended over the river.
Currents boiled. The eight legged steed drove forward, gathering wind and rain, collecting water vapor like an ocean being folded into a single line.
Xu Fu closed her eyes, shivering as she felt the laws of Heaven and Earth converging. Her face flushed deeper, her body trembling with awe, captured by the sheer scale of Rowe's Authority.
Consort Yu yawned lazily and waved a hand through the mist as if it were smoke.
The steed snorted lightning. Hooves thundered. Wind screamed.
And then a new sound began to rise, something not present before.
A dragon's roar.
In the Divine Land, mountains and rivers were dragon veins.
The celestial beast, foreign to this land, circled the Great River and absorbed the flow like it was drinking dragon blood.
A horse became a dragon.
A transformation permitted by lineage and ownership.
It was a descendant of a god, bearing Loki's blood, and here, dragons were themselves divine.
So it had the right.
"It can become a dragon?" Wuzhiqi's true body stirred under the Wei River. Chains rattled in the depths. Her laughter rolled through the dark water.
"Fine. Let me help you."
She revealed the dragon veins of the Wei River, offering them like a key.
Thunder nurtured life. A lush green spread across the beast's back.
Green Dragon.
Goumang.
The east that carried spring.
Roar.
The transformation completed in an instant.
The roar echoed across the Nine Provinces, reaching Hangu Pass itself.
Outside the Pass lay Qin.
In Xianyang, on the banks of the Wei River, dark clouds covered the sky. Wind tore tiles from roofs. People ran in blurred shadows beneath the storm.
Yet in the dimness, countless lamps glowed.
A ribbon of light stretched from Xianyang's roads all the way to Hangu Pass.
Qin was welcoming someone.
This was not hidden. Civilians knew it. Soldiers knew it. The entire territory was guarded like a drawn blade. By royal order, sorcerous methods had gathered the essence of the sun and burned it into lamps that illuminated Qin through the night.
And the one being welcomed was arriving today.
"Are you certain?" In the Qin palace, officials gathered. Ying Zheng sat high on the throne, eyes lowered, voice calm but heavy.
Zhao Gao stepped forward.
"Reporting to Your Majesty. It is today."
Another high official spoke with quiet confidence.
"Your Majesty need not be anxious. Since that one comes, he will not hesitate. No one in this world can stop him."
Ying Zheng's brow tightened, about to respond.
Then he heard it.
The vast sound of water outside the hall.
He looked up.
A torrential rain fell, flooding the world into haze. The sky darkened further, and the lamps scattered like sparks in the gloom.
Heavy rain.
Strong wind.
Wind and rain were coming.
"Officials." Ying Zheng rose, voice deep and carrying. "Follow me. We welcome him."
The words rippled through the palace.
In Xianyang, armored soldiers stood in the rain, halberds and blades cold and bright.
Outside the city, the Qin army had already assembled, stretching like a steel horizon. The road from Xianyang to Hangu was lined with Great Qin banners, snapping in the gale, refusing to bow even under thunder.
Ruler and subject. Soldier and civilian.
All displayed a solemn grandeur.
At this moment, the King of Qin held the Qin sword.
At this moment, Great Qin itself was the Qin sword.
Hangu as its tip.
Shu as its hilt.
Guanzhong as its edges.
The people as its blade.
Unified within and without, a single will above and below.
A heavy sword of a nation, point aimed eastward, intent set on sweeping the world.
And now, by royal decree, that sword was drawn to welcome the foremost saint of this era.
Monarch.
In the Wei River, the current surged.
For this moment, the river seemed to reverse, layers of water driving from east to west as if returning home.
Officials poured out to greet. Ying Zheng stood at their head, posture straight, gaze fixed ahead.
Clouds rolled.
Then a brilliant line of light appeared on the horizon like sunrise cutting into storm.
It pierced the water vapor, scattering strands of radiance, and formed a rainbow bridge in midair.
Heaven displayed wonder.
On the ground, water vapor condensed into countless droplets, and inside and outside Xianyang it felt as if a hundred flowers opened at once.
The god entered.
The wind ceased.
The rain stopped.
Majesty, perfectly performed.
Officials fell to their knees.
Only Ying Zheng remained upright, composed, watching the carriage descend at the end of the rainbow.
The beast pulling it was now an eight legged, twelve winged Green Dragon.
The canopy swayed. Bells chimed.
Crisp, yes, but the sound struck more like a great bell reverberating through Heaven and Earth.
It reached Ying Zheng's ears.
He put a hand to the sword at his waist, ready to speak his welcome.
Then the bell sound carried a whisper inside it.
A question that sounded like it was aimed at him alone.
Are you the King of Qin?
No.
Not exactly.
The voice shifted, casual and sharp in the same breath, as if the speaker were choosing between formality and amusement and decided neither was necessary.
Ying Zheng listened carefully and finally heard it clearly.
"So you are the one called Ying Zheng?"
"…"
His expression tightened for the first time.
"???"
<><><><><>
[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]