Chapter 254: Forging the Sword
The mist around them was endless. The distant skyscrapers were gone. Even the nearby rides of the amusement park had vanished from sight.
Rowe and Enkidu had both stepped out of the present world, entering another layer through the ley line hub at the foot of Mount Fuji.
If he had to name what he was seeing, perhaps it should be something like Epang Palace.
Looking up, a colossal palace hung in the pale void, majestic and impossible to ignore. It looked like a three dimensional prism, built from countless stacked structures, like a city folded into a single monument.
It was a palace.
It was also a computational intelligence.
It was the First Emperor, Ying Zheng, who had transformed into an Ancestral Dragon, then seized the mechanized colossal body of another self from a different world.
And beneath that suspended Epang Palace, standing before them with a laugh that made no attempt at restraint, was Ying Zheng's human form.
The Ancestral Dragon of the Divine Land, who had sworn to guard Huaxia for ten thousand years from the summit of the world.
He wore a twelve tassel white jade crown and a deep black imperial robe embroidered with the Xuanbird. He stood straight, a sword at his waist, handsome features set into stern lines. In his golden red eyes burned an intensity that did not belong to ordinary life.
The moment Rowe and Enkidu entered this domain, he sensed them.
He had been waiting.
"It seems Your Majesty has not changed much," Rowe said.
"Hahahahaha. What is there to change?" Ying Zheng stroked his chin, smiling. "But you, you have a new companion. And a strong one at that."
He looked directly at Enkidu, delight obvious.
"A blessing so romantic even I find it difficult to describe."
Enkidu smiled, saying nothing.
Rowe, however, felt a faint chill crawl up his spine.
He knew Enkidu was not opposed to such things. If anything, she often encouraged him. Still, she was one of the first people he met in this world. Saying that in front of her carried an indescribable wrongness, as if the world itself had decided to test his sense of shame.
Rowe coughed once and calmly stepped around the topic.
"For these past millennia, the Divine Land has been under Your Majesty's care."
"The Divine Land is Great Qin's domain. What care is there to speak of?"
Ying Zheng lifted a hand. His sleeve swept lightly, and the black imperial robe moved like a curtain of night.
Above him, Epang Palace rotated subtly.
The mist churned, then receded in an instant.
The pale ground condensed into a flat black floor. Two pillars rose. Three massive walls closed in, forming a grand and pristine palace hall, as if the world had been rewritten between one breath and the next.
"Both of you, sit."
He pointed. Two seats manifested from nothing, woven into existence.
Rowe lifted a brow.
"Turning falsehood into reality. Solidifying information."
"After so many years, if I had not improved at all, would I not be ashamed to call myself your friend?"
Ying Zheng grinned, narrow eyes sharp with smug satisfaction.
"Though I am still not as good as you, across ancient and modern times I can stand beside the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors. Perhaps even surpass them."
"Indeed."
Rowe's gaze drifted past the palace gate.
Beyond it lay mountains and rivers, waterfalls like silver threads, scattered cities, living people, and birds and beasts moving through green. A miniature world. A hidden utopia.
He held Enkidu's hand and sat opposite the First Emperor, smiling.
Ying Zheng had formed a complete realm within Epang Palace. Inside it was a miniature but whole celestial structure, mountains, waters, all living things, a full ecosystem. As the manifest will of that miniature world, the First Emperor's existence had reached a truly primordial grade.
He had thoroughly digested the power of the Lostbelt First Emperor. The former could also be called primordial in a sense, but only in computation. His information could cover the planet, yet he could not weave a complete ecosystem or consolidate his being into a stable whole. His instantaneous output could not reach the same threshold.
The current Ying Zheng had taken another step.
A genuine planet scale existence.
With that strength, across ancient and modern history, if the Divine Land still existed as it once did, among the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors, fewer than half could reach this stage.
"How is it?"
The First Emperor chuckled and lifted the wine cup waiting before him.
Rowe lifted his own cup, took a small sip, then exchanged a glance with Enkidu.
"It tastes better than Uruk's wine," Enkidu said.
"Hahahaha. Uruk. A fine place indeed."
Ying Zheng smiled, a rare note of regret in his voice.
"It is a pity that before my death, I could not truly lead Great Qin's iron cavalry to conquer it."
"But Your Majesty achieved your wish," Rowe said, tapping the table lightly. "The Qin system endured for two thousand years without being uprooted. Even now, in a new era of republic and democracy, the framework still borrows heavily from Qin."
"The bright moon of Great Qin still shines through the window of every household."
"Excellent!"
Ying Zheng clapped and laughed.
Enkidu tilted her head, emerald eyes carrying a hint of amusement as she looked at Rowe.
Rowe rubbed her head and smiled, wiping a trace of wine from her lips with an unhurried motion.
He knew what she wanted to say.
Rowe had never hidden his history from those close to him, so Enkidu naturally knew of the First Emperor's existence, and of Rowe's acquaintance with him. They had once shared only a few drinks, yet it had the taste of a gentleman's friendship, light as water.
But meeting him now, Enkidu felt something oddly familiar.
Like someone else.
"Like Gilgamesh," Rowe said, confirming her thought.
Enkidu's expression did not change, but the corners of her eyes softened. A silent yes.
"Gilgamesh? Who is that?" Ying Zheng asked, curious.
"The oldest king of Uruk," Rowe replied. "The king I first served."
Understanding flashed across Ying Zheng's face. He was about to speak, when Rowe added calmly.
"A fool."
Ying Zheng choked and quietly swallowed the praise he had been preparing.
Rowe shook his head.
"Arrogant, and yet undeniably a great king in human history."
"Interesting."
Ying Zheng rubbed his chin, pondering, then looked at Rowe with a more direct gaze.
"Lord Rowe. You did not come here merely to drink and reminisce, did you?"
"Of course not."
Rowe set down his cup and released Enkidu's hand, posture turning sharper.
"Your Majesty, as the king of a former Lostbelt, you know what our timeline will face next."
"Hm. Naturally."
Ying Zheng's expression grew more serious, then he praised with genuine weight.
"The feat of pulling the Throne down into the present. No matter how many times I hear of it, it remains marvelous."
He paused, then continued, voice measured.
"However, balance is not a superstition. There is a Western saying I have always agreed with."
"Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown."
"This world, because of you, gained the possibility of breaking free from its shackles. Precisely because of that, the future it represents, the life it nurtures, will attract covetous eyes."
Rowe's Earth, because of what he had done, now shone far too brightly in the sea of stars.
Even the most brilliant light needed time to be noticed by distant civilizations. The wandering star was not the real threat. Silicon based civilizations like Atlantis, growing by absorbing star cores, were also not the true crisis.
The true crisis was internal.
In the sea of stars were countless swallowed worlds, countless dead timelines.
"What is dead is dead," Ying Zheng said softly, "but what lingers will plunder out of instinct."
"Next, seven worlds that are dying but not yet dead will attack."
The First Emperor, whose body had once been taken from the ruler of a dead world, understood this better than anyone.
That was precisely why Rowe came to him.
The white jade curtain of the twelve tassels swayed.
Ying Zheng raised his hand.
The table remained, but the space around them rewrote itself. The palace hall stretched into a vast display of scenes.
"The first is the God of Beasts, Ivan the Terrible, who wields thunder."
A golem like beast, continent sized, stood within the sea of stars, slowly awakening.
"The second is Surtr, a giant of destruction from the Nordic end."
Behind that beast rose a giant vast as a star, flaming sword in hand, his whole body wrapped in annihilation.
"The third," Ying Zheng said, then grinned, "is me."
He pointed upward.
Epang Palace hovered like a judgment.
"An inside man?" Rowe asked.
"Precisely."
Rowe could not help laughing.
"Just like me."
The images of Ivan and Surtr confirmed Rowe's guess.
The attackers were all from Lostbelts he knew.
Ivan the Terrible, a tyrant who abandoned humanity and became an ultimate demon god. Surtr, the fire giant who became what he was after devouring gods.
Both were terrifying, but neither was a true problem for Rowe.
Even if they were stronger than he remembered, Ivan's scale alone put him in the highest planetary tier. Surtr, after devouring the Norse gods, further devoured an exhausted planet of the Age of Gods.
Even so, they were still only peak primordial. They had not crossed into the power that truly broke boundaries, the kind that could create stars.
Rowe could defeat them.
And on top of that, Ying Zheng himself stood here, a planet scale existence, and an inside man.
But those were only the first three.
"The fourth is the God of Destruction from the eon of creation and destruction."
A slender dark figure appeared amid twin lotus flowers, an echo of myth. The atmosphere turned heavy.
Arjuna, the God of Eternal Destruction, son of the Indian pantheon's heavenly king. The one who destroyed and recreated his world three thousand times, keeping a Lostbelt on the verge of death balanced between dying and not yet dead.
A true star creating existence.
Rowe's expression tightened.
This was the first great enemy.
Still, it was within an acceptable range.
"The fifth," Ying Zheng said, voice lowering, "is Chaos from the interstice of the cosmos."
The image shifted.
An eye of molten rock, like a nebula, followed Arjuna into view.
Rowe almost cursed.
From planetary to stellar in one step.
A scale that pressed toward the galactic.
How were you supposed to fight that?
Then understanding struck.
"The original Earth did not attract it much," Rowe said quietly, "but an Earth that now carries the characteristic of eternal life would be irresistible."
"Is it not natural that it would come?" Ying Zheng said, solemn.
He continued.
"The sixth is the Horned God, Cernunnos."
A mass of death, Celtic ruin made solid.
Powerful, but not absurd.
"And the last."
Ying Zheng's gaze sharpened.
"ORT, the Oort Cloud Ultimate One."
A colossal spider.
This one did not come from the sea of stars. It awakened in North America due to six outsiders.
Sevenfold destruction.
Sevenfold disaster.
"I can handle the first two," Ying Zheng said. "I can also hold back Arjuna of Eternal Destruction, barely."
He made the judgment with the calm of a mind that had computed it a thousand times.
"Even if we gather the power of the entire planet, we can at most deal with two more."
Rowe understood what he meant.
Chaos was the largest obstacle.
The most difficult hurdle.
"Leave Chaos to me," Rowe said.
Ying Zheng narrowed his eyes.
"Have you thought it through?"
Enkidu also looked over, head tilted.
"Just a try," Rowe replied.
He ruffled Enkidu's hair.
"Do not worry. Nothing will happen."
Enkidu usually looked calm and unbreakable in front of outsiders. In front of Rowe, she was always docile in a way that made the world feel less sharp.
Rowe did have a plan.
Chaos, a star level main body, was indeed terrifying. Even with only a fraction of its energy remaining, it once killed Zeus with a single gaze.
That Zeus was monstrous. At minimum, he was no weaker than Tiamat in the same era, and his influence reached the scale of a solar system.
Even so.
Rowe was not without a method.
"I am not without solar system level power either."
A pale light appeared in Rowe's eyes.
The Moon.
Not the physical moon alone.
The Moon Cell.
The oldest thing on Earth, once stationed on the moon, a supercomputer capable of recording all information within the solar system.
Rowe had taken it and sealed it within himself, maintaining its basic functions while slowly digesting its power. Even with Rowe's current authority, he could only mobilize fifty one percent of its computation.
But if he could fully wield it, if he could release all of its output.
It might be possible to fight Chaos.
It might even be possible to crush every outsider in one sweep.
"Such computation and energy," Ying Zheng said, unable to hide his awe, "it is feasible."
"Before it, even I feel like a drop in the ocean."
From fifty one percent onward, every additional point was an abyss.
"But to use all of it," Ying Zheng continued, "no one can do it."
"Then let everyone do it."
Rowe smiled.
"I cannot do it alone."
"But what if the power that drives it is the power of the entire planet?"
That was why Rowe wanted to integrate all of humanity, all of human order.
Heroic Spirits. Divine Spirits. Humans. Fairies. Immortals.
To wield it with the will of the people.
Then perhaps the Moon Cell could be unleashed in full.
"How do you intend to do it?" Ying Zheng's eyes lit up, then he frowned. "If I am not mistaken, it has already merged with you. No one else can use it."
"It has merged with me."
Rowe's eyes sharpened.
"Then if I forge myself into a sword, would it not work?"
The light in his gaze flared. The Moon Cell within him responded like a fire exposed to air, radiating a brilliance that bordered on violent.
"Using myself as a sword."
"My bones as the edge."
"My will as the blade."
"Entrusting the people with…"
"The power to judge all realms."