Chapter 164: Scolding the fox into a daze with unspeakable gibberish
Rowe had always assumed something would go wrong eventually.
At some point you stop calling it pessimism and start calling it experience.
Even now, even with death still sitting on the edge of his plans, he was no longer clinging to it as a single minded finish line. More often, he treated the post mortem evaluation as a safety net. A guarantee that even if he acted on impulses, even if he gambled with his own existence, the result could still be measured and recorded.
Because he did not fear the end, he could afford to be willful.
Holding back and insisting on fighting in a human frame was part of that willfulness.
He still wanted this land to remember him as one of its own, not as a foreign machine divinity that happened to wash ashore.
He just never expected the people to solve that problem by slapping Taiyi on his forehead.
Even if they carefully avoided the full ancient title.
Even if they only said Taiyi, not the Eastern Emperor.
A divine name was never a casual label. In this era, a single stroke could be the difference between an Authority and a curse.
And yet the shift happened anyway.
Faith surged into him like a flood, and what he had scattered into the world returned all at once, heavier, hotter, denser. It did not merely refill the hollow. It widened it, then filled the wider space.
Because he was being treated as Taiyi, the old formula snapped into place.
Taiyi gives birth to water, and water nourishes Taiyi.
The nourishment came through his water Authority, through the threefold cycle he had already condensed as the Water Official Great Emperor.
The outcome was immediate.
What should have ended in mutual destruction flipped into an overwhelming reversal.
The burning sun swelled and tore the darkness apart. Sword light swept outward. Tentacles from the Abyssal Sun shattered on contact. The Six Heavens old ghost wailed as pitch black flesh was pierced by radiance, scorched into pale scars.
The whispers became uglier.
Chaotic. Malicious.
Afraid.
It was afraid of him.
No, it was afraid of what stood behind him.
The people.
As a primordial existence, the additional weight that the name Taiyi placed on Rowe was limited. But the compatibility was brutal. Faith did not only add power, it sharpened the Attribute relationship. Purity and light, carried by countless simple hearts, became a natural restraint against disorder.
Taiyi was order.
Taiyi gave birth to water, and from that, the world took shape.
Light overwhelmed chaos.
The fire of the people still drifted upward.
Even if it could be obstructed, the tide had already turned.
Rowe lifted his sword and brought it down.
A fine mist fell. Brilliant light refracted into rainbow layers. Colored clouds scattered like torn silk.
The pitch black Abyssal Sun vanished inside a single sword flash.
Annihilated.
Or perhaps swallowed whole by that radiant rising sun.
"So that is how it works," Tamamo no Mae said softly.
In the Valley of Tang, she smiled, vermilion lips curved, but her expression had become uncontrollably solemn.
"Burn yourself out. Empty your reserves. Make room."
"Then you can take in the people's faith in one breath and use compatibility to crush the Evil Taiyi."
Her gaze followed the figure descending from the sky. Wide robes stirred in the wind and rain. The rainbow edge of the sword on his back still shimmered with leftover heat.
Rowe's feet touched the ground.
The Evil Taiyi was gone.
Tamamo no Mae studied him and lifted an eyebrow.
Rowe almost said no.
Almost.
But it was not entirely wrong.
He had emptied himself.
He had made a void on purpose, then let faith pour into it at the exact moment it mattered.
The confrontation had become a clean victory.
Unscathed.
From the outside, it looked like perfect courage, perfect compassion, perfect calculation.
Tamamo no Mae's tone changed.
"After that, your consumption must be obscene."
She rose with practiced grace atop the crumbling dome. Nine tails swept dust away where sunlight touched stone.
Her feelings were tangled. Was it regret that he had not died. Relief that he had not. Or something worse, the irritation of being impressed.
Whatever it was, she did not hide the one thing that mattered.
"Do not forget. We are still opponents."
Her hand moved.
Invisible formulae formed at her fingertips, like threads catching light.
She could tell his reserves were not stable. Even with the Attribute advantage, Evil Taiyi had been a remnant carved from the Eastern Emperor Taiyi's negative side. Crushing it instantly still demanded an enormous price.
The faith he had gained was already starting to thin.
His natural recovery was returning.
Not fast enough.
Not against a fox of the same tier.
"What, you want to fight me now?" Rowe asked, amused.
"I would never dare trade blows with the Monarch," Tamamo no Mae laughed. Her chest rose and fell gently. She sat again, legs crossed, posture deliberately casual.
"I only want to borrow these mountains and rivers and invite you into a cage."
She flicked her sleeve.
Streams of light unfurled. Formulae linked to the Valley of Tang itself, to the ruin soaked in myth.
"You are Taiyi," she said, voice honeyed and sharp. "Not the Eastern Emperor, but the successor. The one who continues that line."
"New Taiyi and old Taiyi share a lineage. This is the Valley of Tang, the place where the Eastern Emperor once dwelled."
"Here lies his lifeline."
The formulae hooked into that conceptual anchor and closed into an invisible lock, binding Rowe inside a square shaped cage.
Tamamo no Mae did not hesitate. She had been startled by his new name, but she was still Tamamo no Mae. Desire and cunning were her native elements.
She had already prepared a second move while he was still cutting down Evil Taiyi.
A fragrant breeze brushed his face.
Soft fingers lifted his chin.
Her phantom slid close, lips brushing his neck, her body pressing against him with deliberate insistence.
"I will not harm you," she whispered. "I will not ruin you."
"I only want you."
Because in Rowe, she had glimpsed a shadow of the ancient gods she had always resented and admired.
Even with Authority at stake, she no longer wanted him dead.
She wanted him in her hands.
She wanted to bind him, take him, steal his heart, and prove something to a heaven that had never acknowledged her.
Rowe lowered his gaze.
He could not deny the temptation. His body was human. Human desire was a simple mechanism, and she was built to exploit it.
Heat rose.
Then stopped at his throat, strangled by his control.
Rowe smiled.
"Did you hear that?"
"Hear what…"
Alarm rose in Tamamo no Mae's eyes. The cage formulae flared. She had not forgotten what happened the last time someone finished a sentence like that near her.
But no lightning came.
Instead she heard a series of hard clacking sounds.
Like wheels turning. Like teeth grinding.
Not from the sky.
From right in front of her.
From the body she was pressed against.
From inside Rowe.
Gears turned.
A furnace core roared.
Rowe's body expanded in an instant.
The explosion of dust swallowed the ruins. The cage formulae cracked, then shattered like glass. Tamamo no Mae managed two syllables before her phantom was crushed a third time.
The Valley of Tang shook. Jagged boulders collapsed. Ruins slid and shattered into the ravine.
Tamamo no Mae reformed above the valley, landing on a cliff edge, face twisted with horror.
"What is that?"
In the rolling dust, a colossal figure rose.
A steel shell layered over something that resembled muscle. Patterns circulated like molten blood under metal plates. A blazing heart pulsed in the chest like a miniature sun.
Gears moved between limbs. A helm like a steel mask lowered, eyes braided from gold and red.
A form that did not belong in this era.
Tamamo no Mae froze.
She could feel the specification.
It brushed past her true body.
Even if only by a hair, that hair was enough to be obscene.
After reaching the primordial, progress was agony. Any genuine step forward meant a qualitative difference.
And this was a qualitative difference.
Rowe hesitated for a beat, then answered, muffled by metal.
"This is my Authority manifestation."
Tamamo no Mae snapped, baring teeth.
"Lies. I have seen plenty of manifestations, but none of them look like a walking furnace with teeth and gears."
Rowe's mechanical body hummed.
"That does not matter."
"If I say it is my manifestation, then it is."
He tilted his helm slightly.
"If you dislike the name, fight me."
Tamamo no Mae twitched.
She did not move.
She could not beat him like this.
There were differences among primordial beings, and this form pushed him closer to the kind of pressure only true ancient kings of the Age of Gods carried.
Not enough to make her helpless.
Enough to make her very careful.
But foxes were foxes.
Cunning was not a substitute for pride, it was how pride survived.
Tamamo no Mae did not abandon her goal.
If anything, staring at that colossal mechanical divinity only made her more excited.
It was strong.
It was beautiful in a way this land had never seen.
A brutal, alien elegance.
"I know your trump card now," she said, voice returning to silk.
"We will meet again."
"I will not give up on you, Eastern Emperor."
"New Taiyi."
With one last glance, she vanished.
Her phantom dispersed.
The projected consciousness departed with it.
Rowe did not try to stop her. On the same tier, with different specializations, her concealment and escape were not something he could casually override.
But he did smile.
"There is one thing you guessed wrong."
The steel helm angled downward. A flicker crossed the expressionless faceplate, as if a grin tried to exist in a place that had no lips.
"I did not empty myself to make room for Taiyi worship."
"I did it to absorb the chaos inside the Evil Taiyi."
Seeking death was only one layer.
His real fallback went deeper.
Inside his consciousness, chaos erupted.
The colossal mechanical form wavered, and behind it rose a massive distorted shadow. Something that resembled the Evil Taiyi, but also did not.
An Outer God shadow, a contamination shaped like a presence.
The ancient gods of this land and the things beyond the stars were not the same.
A glance from what lived beyond the firmament left rot in the mind.
In a palace hidden in a different layer of reality, Tamamo no Mae's true body opened her eyes.
"Interesting."
Nine tails stirred.
She smiled, captivated, as if she could already feel the texture of Rowe's existence under her fingers.
Then a voice spoke.
"You conquered nothing."
Tamamo no Mae snapped upright. Her tails tensed. Golden eyes raked the chamber.
"Who's there?"
"I am your father."
Silence.
Then rage.
"What?"
"You want to know about your mother? A fox who never bathes can only daydream."
Tamamo no Mae exploded.
Primordial pressure tore through the palace like a blade, reducing walls and ornaments to rolling dust.
No figure appeared.
No intruder stood in the debris.
Then she realized.
The voice was not in the room.
It was in her.
Inside her own mind.
The babbling contamination of the Evil Taiyi, one of the ways Outer God influence expressed itself.
But why was it all insults.
Why was it only insults.
"Stupid fox. Dumb fox. Even your split off selves can find someone, but you are an ancient fox who cannot get married."
Tamamo no Mae clutched her head and crouched like something cornered.
"Stop. Stop it."
It did not stop.
It flowed through her thoughts like poison poured into water.
Perhaps even Rowe had not expected what shape the babbling would take after he let chaos sprout.
It was absurd.
It was humiliating.
It was unstoppable.
Back in the Valley of Tang, Rowe's expression became painfully vivid.
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