Chapter 189: Luring the Prey
The First Emperor wanted eternal rule over this Divine Land. He wanted to judge the people as an everlasting Emperor.
Rowe could not accept it.
Not only because he had no intention of watching this era get corrected into a proper Singularity repair, but because it clashed with everything he believed.
Humanity is great.
Not the greatness of one human.
The greatness of all humans.
If the First Emperor's plan became reality, humanity would lose the space to think for itself. Progress would lose its engine. Choice would rot into a formality, because everything would be decided by an Emperor's judgment. People would stop needing to decide. Stop needing to reach.
That was not the humanity Rowe wanted to see.
Not the species that crawled out of primitive darkness, chewing blood and raw meat, learning tools, making tools, learning fire, building fire, and inch by inch stepping out of the shadow of nature and gods.
"You are rejecting me?" Ying Zheng laughed, deep and unrestrained. "All humanity is great? Does the lofty sky truly care about such things?"
"Whether it cares is not for you to decide. Not for me, either," Rowe replied. "It is for them to decide."
The First Emperor swung a dragon claw, laughter still rolling.
"I believe that as well. I simply believe even more that I can coordinate it all. I can make that greatness greater."
Rowe frowned, then exhaled.
"It seems you and I walk different paths."
Their standing was equal. One was Heaven. One was the apex of humanity.
Their power was comparable.
At this moment, Ying Zheng encompassed the Divine Land. Boundless earth. Mountains as bones, rivers as blood, Great Qin as skin. It was an existence with strength on a scale that could brush the planet itself.
If he moved his body, the Nine Provinces would tremble. The terrestrial veins would overturn. With the territory fused into him, he could push back against the planet in return.
He was not Primeval, but he was close enough that the distinction had become academic.
On the same scale as Heaven.
And yet their philosophies could not coexist.
Rowe reached back and took hold of the sword behind him.
The Pure Yang Sword turned, its radiance sharp enough to sting the eye.
His fingers traced the flat of the blade with something almost gentle.
"There is a wound on your body," he said. "A sword mark."
In the vast Qin Palace, Azure Heaven confronted the Ancestral Dragon.
Or perhaps it was the Ancestral Dragon confronting Azure Heaven.
"There is damage," Ying Zheng admitted, lowering his head to glance at a black scale on his chest, slightly cracked. "It was a very sharp sword."
"Who?" Rowe asked.
"A person from the former state of Wei. Jing Ke." Ying Zheng's tone stayed matter of fact. "She carried the wishes of the people. Her sword was pure, righteous, and sharp. I ordered that her deed be recorded in history."
Jing Ke's assassination of Qin.
Rowe was not surprised that it had arrived late. Perhaps it was a fixed point for Human Order. Perhaps when the First Emperor distorted, history began to correct itself without waiting for the planet to force a repair.
And Jing Ke, that swordswoman he had met briefly in Yan, left an impression.
She always looked drunk.
But she understood better than most where her sword should fall, and for whom.
She knew.
Rowe knew even more clearly.
"You have already tasted Jing Ke's sword," Rowe said. "Now you will taste mine."
In the same instant, he raised the Pure Yang Sword and pressed it forward.
It was the Pure Yang Sword.
It was also the sword of the Heavenly Emperor.
What it represented was the sun made absolute, and the duality inside that absolute. The clear sky above. Sun and moon drawing from the same source of light.
The yin and yang within the sun.
When Rowe moved, it felt as if Heaven itself had tilted.
In Ying Zheng's eyes, the pressure became endless. Crushing.
Heaven falling.
The First Emperor shook his dragon body.
Dark scales surged, linking the four seas, the three sacred mountains, the five great peaks. A body tied to the vast territory of Qin rose into full strength.
Dragon shadows rippled across him.
He was Ancestral Dragon. Every mountain, every river, every earth vein within him was a dragon.
He commanded those countless dragon shadows to collide with the descending sword light.
Heaven and earth met.
Rowe's sword flickered.
Dragon roars braided together, vibrating until the Qin Palace groaned. If both sides had not focused their force into a single line, that palace and Xianyang itself would have been erased.
Even so, the shock lifted tiles and shook beams. Dust rained down.
After the dragon shadows, Ying Zheng rose.
Not only the shell of a dragon, but the shadow of a human.
The Ancestral Dragon was never inhuman.
Just like Rowe, he could take a dragon form without losing his identity as a man.
The supreme being of the human realm.
Black imperial robes shifted. The crown trembled. Beneath the beaded curtains, golden eyes held the weight of mountains and rivers.
He stepped down before the throne.
He raised his sword.
Rowe advanced, step by step.
Dragon roars shattered against the Pure Yang.
The First Emperor parried.
A single clash rang out.
Stone cracked. The floor collapsed in layers, and the dust that surged up swallowed the bowed officials like a tide.
Heaven and humanity collided.
The Heavenly Emperor and the Human Emperor struck each other.
Every move looked plain. Every move contained force that could have shaken continental plates. Where their blades met, the air fractured and fine cracks spread like spiderwebs.
Clang.
Again.
Pure Yang shifted.
Ying Zheng raised his sword, preparing to pour everything into the next strike, and then Rowe vanished.
Where is the sky?
Ying Zheng's mouth opened, and he realized what was above him.
Light descended.
The sky was falling.
"The sky is here."
Rowe hung in mid air and drove the Pure Yang Sword downward.
Ying Zheng's pupils widened.
He felt no pain.
Instead, his vision was flooded with light.
Space sank.
Ancient chimes rang from above, and mist like boundless Chaos poured out, swallowing the four directions.
Rowe's figure disappeared.
In its place were countless writhing tendrils, and at their tips, countless immortal artifacts and divine treasures, brandished like weapons and like eyes.
Ying Zheng's golden pupils tightened.
"A grotto heaven, a blessed land? No." His voice sharpened. "This is the Celestial Realm."
It was the Celestial Realm.
The highest layer of the Celestial Court. The Thirty Six Heavens. The formless and the form filled heavens, seated above the Disk, expanded from the foundation of the old Celestial Realm.
And those heavens were, in truth, the Chaos core.
Taiyi's main body.
Taiyi was Rowe.
"Our exchange just now was never merely swordplay," Ying Zheng said, understanding striking him like a bell. "It was to cut space open and let this Chaos descend."
Rowe's power was vast. His control of it was finer than Ying Zheng's.
Yet in swordplay they had been evenly matched.
That had troubled Ying Zheng.
Now the doubt resolved itself.
He had not been fighting Rowe alone.
He had been fighting the surroundings. The space itself.
He recalled the instant when the Pure Yang Sword flared with a red glow.
Perhaps that was not only the sun.
Perhaps it was also a force that could sever worlds and carve open reality, using the blade to open a path for the Thirty Six Heavens to fall.
"The present world cannot bear our power," Rowe's voice echoed, though his human form was gone. "So this is our battlefield."
Because he had become Chaos.
And Chaos was him.
The essence of the Chaos core spread out and covered the present world with the Thirty Six Heavens.
"Hahaha." Dragon laughter rolled. "Interesting."
Ying Zheng's human form vanished again, and the colossal Ancestral Dragon unfolded.
The coiled body extended and extended, revealing its true scale.
A continent sized behemoth swimming through Chaos, a single pupil lighting the endless expanse.
The great dragon faced the formless mist.
As Rowe had said, only here, only in this realm upheld by Chaos, both form filled and formless, vast enough to resemble Imaginary Number Space, could Ying Zheng fully manifest what he had become.
A being made from an entire continent.
Countless eyes opened within the Chaos.
Countless tendrils moved.
The Chaos core and the Divine Land Ancestral Dragon met gazes.
Would the battle continue?
It did not.
Because laughter came from the side.
"Hahahaha."
The Ancestral Dragon and the myriad eyes of Chaos turned at once.
"Truly remarkable."
Feathered robes shifted. Long hair, black with strands of azure, swayed in the drifting mist. A young and handsome face wore a pleased smile, as if he had arrived at a hunt just in time to see blood drawn.
This was the National Preceptor who had been outside the palace.
He had watched Rowe arrive. Watched the clash with Ying Zheng.
Now, like a spectator who could no longer hold his breath, he stepped into the Thirty Six Heavens.
He looked at Ying Zheng's colossal form and smiled.
"Your Majesty has exceeded my expectations. To take the method of dragon transformation I offered and push it this far."
"This form is only natural," Ying Zheng answered, as if it were obvious.
The man nodded, delighted.
"Indeed."
Then his gaze turned toward the Chaos opposite him.
"And the Heavenly Emperor I have never seen before." His smile widened. "This world, this timeline, is far more interesting than I imagined."
"A perfect subject for observation. For experimentation."
Normally, the first question would have been simple.
Who are you?
Rowe did not ask it.
Instead, the tendrils withdrew. The Chaos mist parted in layers, and the primordial human shape emerged, robed in wide cloth that moved like a shadow of the heavens.
"So it is truly you," Rowe said. "Another First Emperor. Or rather, a First Emperor from a world that was pruned, yet continued for more than two thousand years. A Singularity that grew into a Lostbelt, a twisted point expanded into a twisted plane."
The source of the anomaly had finally shown its face.
Ying Zheng let out a low sound of recognition.
He had felt it for some time.
The National Preceptor smiled.
"Yes. It is I. Another me." He turned his eyes toward Rowe. "And the Heavenly Emperor of this world."
As his words fell, dark imperial robes formed around him, and a crown with hanging pearl strings appeared. He laughed, and the laugh carried the weight of a ruler who never learned to stop ruling.
"I am the supreme sovereign who governed the Divine Land for two thousand years. A hegemon whose achievements surpassed the Three Sovereigns and whose virtue exceeded the Five Emperors."
"My world was pruned," he continued, as if stating a weather report. "But I can still exist independently here."
"I am exploring how to make a world last forever." His eyes gleamed. "And your world perfectly suits my purpose."
The First Emperor from the Lostbelt and the First Emperor of this world were clearly different.
Because the Lostbelt Emperor had become exactly what Ying Zheng had described to Rowe earlier. He decided the fate of the people across the space and time he ruled. He managed the world with absolute authority. His territory covered the entire Earth.
His people lived without worry.
And without thought.
A world with no future.
That was why it had been pruned.
After that pruning, the Lostbelt Emperor drifted through countless timespaces.
"I have left shadows in countless Great Qin worlds," he said, spreading his hands slightly, as if showing off a collection. "Just like the me standing before you now."
"I guide countless Ying Zheng onto paths that diverge from Pan Human History. I create Singularities. I create different futures, to see if any can persist."
"And your world is the most surprising."
"Another me who transformed into an Ancestral Dragon and merged with the land."
"A present world where gods and the Age of Gods mysteries are returning."
"And you, Azure Heaven of Qin. Heavenly Emperor of the Celestial Realm. Taiyi's Chaos."
He laughed again.
"Let me see if you can defeat Heaven."
The words had barely left his mouth when a massive dragon claw slammed down onto his head.
The impact scattered Chaos mist like spray.
Ying Zheng's golden pupils were cold.
"Who allowed you to speak so presumptuously in front of me?"
For a moment, the Lostbelt Emperor looked genuinely slow to react, as if his mind had to fetch the sensation called humiliation from a library he had not visited in two thousand years.
Rowe smiled, calm and knowing.
"I knew you would not be so easily manipulated."
"Of course," Ying Zheng said, lifting his great head. Dragon whiskers flared, and his colossal body stretched through the heavens of Chaos. "I unified the world. Even another me has no right to steer my will."
He turned his gaze toward the intruder.
"The reason I engaged Rowe was always simple."
"To lure you here. The one who started all of this."
There had been no prior conversation.
But one was Heaven, and one was Human Emperor.
Some exchanges did not require speech.
Rowe understood Ying Zheng's intent from the moment he stepped into the Qin Palace, from the instant their gazes met through that cold black dragon.
So he fought, but not with everything he had.
He cut an opening in the world.
He brought the Thirty Six Heavens down.
And after pulling Ying Zheng in, he left another opening.
A path for the Lostbelt Emperor to enter.
Now, that moment ended.
"The door is closed," Rowe said.
Ying Zheng's roar rolled through the Chaos.
"Enter the vessel you prepared for yourself."
Rowe's posture remained steady.
Ying Zheng's intent was unmistakable.
A trap had snapped shut.
And the prey, at last, had been lured inside.
The Lostbelt Emperor fell silent, suddenly thoughtful.
.....
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