Chapter 166: The Divine Land Grand Assembly, Spiral View, and Wuzhiqi
In Great Qin, Xianyang.
Sunlight poured over the imperial palace, turning its stone and bronze into a cold kind of brilliance. Beneath that vast roof, the man seated at the highest point slowly opened his eyes.
His hair was bound beneath a tall crown. Beaded strands hung from the imperial cap, cutting his gaze into calm segments. A black robe embroidered with dark birds draped over his shoulders like a second shadow.
Ying Zheng, King of Qin, looked down at the bamboo slips on the table.
Great disaster in Chu.
Eastern Monarch.
Grand Unity.
Each line was a clean incision. A report that did not dare embellish, yet could not hide the weight of what it described. The darkness over a thousand li. The warped sun. The sword that answered it.
As ruler of the strongest state under Heaven, Ying Zheng had already pulled every thread he could, and obtained the full account.
Which was why that silk letter existed.
Which was why he sat here now, still, and yet not truly at rest.
"Zhao Gao," Ying Zheng said, eyes lifting. "Has the letter been delivered?"
Below the steps, a figure bowed low.
"Reporting to my King. It has been delivered into Xu Fu's hands."
Ying Zheng rose.
The motion was sudden enough that the hall itself seemed to tighten. His hand moved to the sword at his waist.
Steel sang.
The Qin sword left its sheath in a flash of cold light, and the air cracked from the pressure of it. The blade fell.
The table split apart. The stone beneath it fractured, spiderweb lines racing outward like startled veins.
Ying Zheng looked at the ruin, then at the sword in his hand, as if confirming a simple fact.
"This sword is sharp enough."
He repeated it, quieter, as though speaking to himself rather than the hall.
"My Qin sword is sharp enough."
His lips curled, not quite a smile, more like anticipation given a human shape.
"But what kind of splendor does the Immortal Lord's sword possess?"
He sheathed the blade with a single clean motion.
"Issue the order."
All eyes lowered.
"From today onward, Great Qin shall keep lanterns lit at all times. Gather the essence of the sun and pave the road to Qin."
His gaze was steady, almost serene.
"To show Great Qin's sincerity."
"To welcome the Immortal Lord into Qin."
In later years, ink would compress that day into a few lines.
In the ninth year of the First Emperor, an order was given to gather the essence of the sun to pave the road, and to light lanterns for ten days, awaiting the Eastern Sovereign's arrival in Qin.
Records of the Grand Historian, Basic Annals of the First Emperor.
Elsewhere, in Yan, the rain had softened into mist. Water still ran along the streets, collecting into thin streams that followed the slope of stone and dirt as if the city itself was bleeding slowly.
Jing Ke reeked of alcohol and confidence.
She tugged Rowe by the sleeve as if dragging a familiar friend, not a being whose presence could bend weather.
"Even if you are an Immortal Lord, you do not know mortal affairs as well as I do."
Rowe glanced down at her hand, then back to her face, amused.
Jing Ke puffed herself up, swaying slightly.
"Do not look at me like that. I may not have stepped into immortality, but when it comes to friends in the Divine Land, I, Jing Ke, am famously abundant."
She hicced, then grinned as if it only made her more credible.
Consort Yu's expression darkened in a way that would have terrified any court.
"What an impolite person," she said, voice sweet with danger.
Rowe did not react as if bothered.
He had never believed that divinity made him superior in temperament. If anything, seeing beings that dwarfed him had cured him of the habit of looking down at anyone.
He laughed.
"Then you will have to show me."
"Show you? Of course I will show you." Jing Ke leaned closer, eyes bright. "Come, come. Follow me."
Carefree. Reckless. The sort of courage that made sense only when someone had already decided their life was a coin to be spent.
Rowe had seen that kind before, though not always in a human face.
Jing Ke pulled him forward.
Then Rowe felt his other sleeve tighten.
He looked to the side and met vermilion eyes.
Consort Yu glared at Jing Ke like a cat looking at a dog that forgot the concept of distance.
"Slow down," she snapped. "Rushing around like that, where is your grace."
She huffed, then added as if lecturing a child.
"Do I have to teach you everything. How annoying."
It was an excuse. For what, even she did not bother to name.
Jing Ke threw her head back and laughed.
"What use is grace. Not as good as wine."
She pointed at Consort Yu with the gourd.
"And speaking of wine, I have seen far more than you. Have you ever smelled Du Kang's first brew."
Consort Yu paused.
Rowe felt the shift, subtle but real. A sore spot had been found.
Jing Ke's eyes lit up, instantly curious.
"Du Kang? The wine god who brewed under Xuanyuan. You have tasted that ancient liquor?"
She squinted at Consort Yu, then nodded solemnly as if reaching a conclusion.
"As expected of the Immortal Lord's attendant immortal child."
Consort Yu's face went blank.
Then, very slowly, her brow twitched.
"Attendant."
"Immortal child."
She stared at Jing Ke with pure disbelief.
"You are the immortal child."
"You are the attendant."
Rowe, caught between them, looked less like he was being dragged and more like he was escorting two loud problems down a street.
Passersby stared. They could not help it.
Yet the real attention gathered around Rowe, quietly and irresistibly. Even concealed, something about him made the world look twice.
A voice called from ahead.
"We await the Immortal Lord's arrival."
Consort Yu lifted a brow, already annoyed.
Jing Ke's grin widened.
"Elder Huang Shigong, you came too?"
From the mist at the end of the street, an old man stepped forward. He looked kind, almost ordinary, if one ignored the way the air around him felt slightly more structured.
"I heard the Eastern Monarch was coming," Huang Shigong said, bowing. "How could this old man not come."
Jing Ke turned, pleased with herself.
"See? I told you. My friends are abundant."
Huang Shigong shifted his gaze to Rowe and bowed deeper, solemn now.
"Immortal Lord, this old man is…"
Rowe nodded once.
"A descendant of Fuxi, and a Daoist heir of Jiang Shang's lineage. Supreme of Heaven and Qi."
Huang Shigong's eyes widened in a way he could not fully hide.
Rowe's tone remained calm.
"I have long heard your name."
This was not like standing across the sea from Xun Kuang and returning courtesy with courtesy. Now Rowe carried the titles spoken by a whole state. Grand Unity. Eastern Monarch. The structure of status had become rigid again, and Huang Shigong could not accept a proper bow back from him without violating that structure.
Huang Shigong stroked his beard and forced himself to breathe.
"To know Heaven and Earth with a single thought, truly worthy of an Immortal Lord."
He waved them in, voice brightening.
"Come. Come. It is a rare honor for you to visit. Unprecedented since the end of Shang."
Jing Ke bounded forward, happy as a child entering a festival.
At the end of the street, mist rose in layers.
One step.
The street vanished.
Mountains and clear waters appeared on all sides, painted into reality with a precision that made the mundane world feel crude by comparison. Distance folded. The air changed. The sky above looked too clean.
One step, and they were nowhere near Yan anymore.
Rowe's eyes narrowed slightly, not in fear, but in analysis.
If he used the dead language of Atlantis, he could call it spatial folding.
If he used Western magecraft terminology, it resembled a Reality Marble.
But the structure felt external, not an inner world forced outward. It behaved more like a high grade bounded field that had been layered until it became a domain.
Consort Yu inhaled sharply.
"This is… a grotto heaven?"
Her surprise was real, and for a moment she sounded less like an immortal who had slept through centuries, and more like someone realizing the world had kept moving without her.
"And an ancient one."
Huang Shigong chuckled, clearly delighted.
"As expected of the Immortal Lord's attendant immortal child. Truly knowledgeable."
Consort Yu stopped.
She did not want to speak.
Unfortunately, someone else did.
A radiance swept through like a whisk drawing a line across space. A figure emerged from it, tall and slender, posture measured.
He bowed.
"Your arrival honors this place."
His eyes held the tired determination of someone holding up a collapsing roof.
"Now that the Age of Gods fades, we are forced to gather, if only to preserve what remains."
He lifted a hand, and the air responded.
"With our inherited methods, we gather boundless spirals to form a stable Foundation. We call this place Spiral View."
Rowe watched the bounded field layers, the spiraling reinforcement, the way the domain fed itself.
A Foundation.
The West had built one, an organized framework that made mystery reproducible. The East, lacking the old gods who once anchored everything, had begun to imitate the shape of that solution with different tools.
The man continued, still bowed.
"If the Immortal Lord is willing to assist, we will be eternally grateful. If not, we still request your observation."
Then he introduced himself, voice steady.
"This one is a successor of the Mohist school. I greet the Eastern Monarch."
Another stepped forward, broad shouldered, older, hands like farm tools.
"A successor of the Agricultural school greets the Immortal Lord."
One after another.
"A successor of the Military school greets the Immortal Lord."
More followed.
Most were heirs of the Hundred Schools, each carrying fragments that traced back to ancient sages and ancestral gods. Daoism to Fuxi. Agriculture to Shennong's ideas. Military thought to Xuanyuan. Confucian tradition to the Duke of Zhou.
They were not merely philosophers.
They were the last scaffolding of the Divine Land's mystery, trying to keep the world from becoming entirely mundane.
Jing Ke, who belonged to no school and cared for none, stood among them anyway, included by sheer force of personality and martial skill.
Rowe stood among them as well, dragged in by fate and rumor, bearing titles too heavy for this gathering to ignore.
And then a voice dropped from above, bright and impatient.
"Everyone is finally here? You made me wait so long I fell asleep."
Branches shook. Leaves whispered.
A figure leapt down from a tree and landed lightly in front of them.
White hair fell like a waterfall, half hiding her face. A bell hung at her ear, chiming softly with each movement. She wore a pale silk dress that outlined a tall, wild grace. Her features were exquisite, and her eyes carried defiance like it was a birthright.
Huang Shigong bowed with more caution than before.
"Wuzhiqi. We apologize for the wait. We were awaiting an esteemed guest."
The white haired woman did not let him finish.
She looked straight at Rowe, then at Consort Yu beside him.
"And you brought an old acquaintance," she said, smiling wider. "Did you not, Immortal Yu?"
Consort Yu's mouth twisted.
"I was wondering who it was. Turns out it is you, you stinking monkey."
Wuzhiqi laughed, unapologetic.
"Same temper. Not a single change."
Consort Yu's eyes narrowed.
"Have you found a master yet?"
"You are the one who found a master," Wuzhiqi shot back, delighted. "You wild female monkey."
"Wild monkeys do not have masters."
"Enough," Consort Yu hissed, clearly ready to escalate.
Rowe spoke, calm and precise, cutting through their noise.
"For you, I have heard quite a bit, Wuzhiqi. The water demon of the Huai, the calamity that once stirred rivers and seas."
Wuzhiqi's expression shifted, nostalgia flashing across her face.
"Stirring rivers and seas," she repeated softly. "I miss those days."
Then she shrugged, as if discussing a minor inconvenience.
"I played too much. Emperor Yu suppressed me. Even now I can only move around with a clone."
Rowe could see it. This body was a vessel shaped through connection to the land, flexible, functional, and not truly alive in the way mortals defined it. Her real body remained sealed beneath the Huai by a power left behind by Yu.
Which was why she had not followed the other gods beyond the stars.
Like Consort Yu, who had slept and watched, Wuzhiqi was one of the few ancient beings still here.
And now, she stood at the heart of this gathering, invited as an important component of the Foundation Spiral View was trying to become.
Wuzhiqi stepped closer, curiosity sharpening into something almost provocative.
"But you."
She circled Rowe half a step, eyes bright.
"Where did you come from? I have never heard your name among the old gods. Eastern Monarch?"
Then she leaned in.
A raised finger lifted Rowe's chin as if she owned the gesture.
Rowe did not flinch.
Somewhere behind him, Consort Yu's patience audibly cracked.
"You monkey," she snapped, stepping forward.
Wuzhiqi waved her off without looking.
"Do not waste your effort. You could not beat me back then. Even now, with only a clone, you still cannot beat me."
Consort Yu's aura surged.
Rowe, expression unchanged, tapped the chaos within his mind.
Not outwardly. Not with a chant.
Just a deliberate contact, like striking a bell.
Thud.
Wuzhiqi's eyes unfocused.
Her brain rang with invisible sound, resonance carrying countless whispers. For a heartbeat she saw chaos, inversion, disorder, and heard the kind of muttering that did not belong in any sane world.
She froze in place.
Rowe asked, mildly, as if correcting a child's posture.
"Can you speak properly now."
Wuzhiqi jerked, then suddenly spat out a vulgarity with perfect clarity.
"May your mother be well."
Rowe blinked once.
Silence landed.
Then Rowe's mind, unhelpfully, supplied the worst part.
It sounded like classical phrasing.
He had tried to sober her up, not teach her new techniques in profanity.
Wuzhiqi inhaled hard. The wildness in her expression dulled, replaced by something almost thoughtful.
"Hah… a restless heart is difficult to control."
She rubbed her temples, then laughed once, embarrassed and annoyed.
"No wonder Emperor Yu wanted me to subdue my inner monkey before I could break the seal."
The innate nature of a monkey. The impulse, the provocation, the refusal to remain still.
She looked at Rowe again, and this time the light in her eyes was not just curiosity.
It was interest. Sharp and hungry.
"Your ability," she said slowly, as if tasting the idea. "It can help with that."
Consort Yu stepped between them, protective and furious in equal measure.
"Enough."
Jing Ke, watching all of this, grinned like someone at a theater performance.
"Hahaha," she said, delighted. "How lively."
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