Chapter 161: Monarch Enters Jingchu, Six Heavens Are All Old Ghosts
Consort Yu's reply was serious, almost stubbornly so, and Rowe paused.
He understood what she meant without needing it spelled out. A planetary spirit that had spent too long alone would treat companionship like a life raft. Tiamat had been the same. Loneliness did not always manifest as despair. Sometimes it manifested as an unreasonable need to hold onto warmth with both hands, even if it burned.
Rowe let the thought settle.
Then he nodded.
"Fine. We go together."
It was not mercy. It was practicality.
Consort Yu had walked this world since the Age of Gods. She had seen dynasties rise and rot, watched Divine Spirits withdraw, and learned secrets that never reached the mouths of court historians. Her knowledge mattered.
And Rowe needed knowledge the way a magus needed air, not to feel wise, but to find the blade edge in the dark.
He needed her.
She needed him.
Rowe reached out and took her hand.
Below them, the refugees still clung to the Kun fish and sobbed. They looked up and saw a blazing sun hanging in the sky. Warmth spilled down, driving away the chill that had been soaked into their bones from drifting all night.
It did not touch the hollowness in their eyes.
Calamity had done what calamity always did. It had taken homes, taken names, taken people. It had left the survivors with nothing but the instinct to keep moving.
Rowe leaned down.
"Do you want to go home?"
Home.
Of course they did.
But what did "home" mean when the place had collapsed into madness?
Their throats tightened. Their faces twisted. Someone finally dragged in a breath as if swallowing glass.
"I… I want to go home!"
It was the first spark. The second came immediately.
"I want to go back. I want to save my family!"
"I am willing to give everything I have."
"I beg you, please…"
More voices piled on, urgent, desperate, almost feral.
"Respected Sea God, we will offer everything. Whatever it takes. We want to go home!"
Consort Yu watched them, silent.
She had seen prayers before. She had seen people kneel until their knees bled and then stand up again the moment the threat passed. She had seen devotion used like a cloak to hide greed.
But this felt different.
Rowe smiled faintly, not kindly, not cruelly. Just… understanding.
"This is not just a plea," he said. "It is a transaction."
He spoke as if explaining a principle in a lecture hall that had never existed.
"People at the bottom learn early that the world does not hand out gifts. They know that if you want something, you put something on the table first. Even then, you might still lose."
He looked down at the crowd.
"They are not saints. They are not monsters. They are simply alive."
Human hearts shifted like water, but not everything in a heart was fluid. Some instincts stayed constant. Some truths did not change no matter how many eras passed.
Consort Yu glanced at him again. A thoughtful look flickered across her face.
This man really did talk too much.
And somehow, she did not hate listening.
Rowe leaned down again, voice steady.
"Are you willing to believe me?"
Then, as if confirming his own coordinates, he spoke his titles in a measured cadence.
"I am the god who governs sunrise and moonset. I am the master of the Fusang Tree. I am Fusang, the Great Monarch."
Different names. Different authorities. One presence.
He lifted his hand.
"If you are willing to believe me, then follow me home."
To your homes.
And also to the place I am about to carve into existence as mine.
The ocean answered.
The Authority of Fusang stirred, and the entire sea seemed to shift as if a giant hand had slid beneath it. A cold spray surged upward and fell over the refugees, washing grime and salt from their faces.
Some wiped tears away and stood.
Some clenched their fists until their knuckles went white.
Some remained frozen, unable to step into faith no matter how badly they wanted to.
Rowe did not force them.
Those who believed followed.
Those who did not stayed.
"Let's go," he said quietly. "We go home."
His gaze moved to Consort Yu.
Home.
Consort Yu blinked, then smiled.
She did not fully understand the word. She had never truly needed it until she had been given a body that could feel cold and warmth and distance. She only knew that, for the first time in a long time, her mind was not drifting.
There was a saying she had once overheard from humans, long ago.
When the heart settles, that is home.
If so, then wherever Rowe went, that would be her home.
"Whatever you want," she said, showing a flash of delicate canine teeth. Her tone tried to sound reluctant.
"I can go take a look."
Rowe smiled and tapped the light of the Pure Yang Sword with a finger.
The blade sang.
The sound rolled out through heaven and earth. Wind rose. The sea stirred. Across the East Sea, whirlpools bloomed like wounds opening in the water. Dark clouds gathered overhead as if the sky itself had been summoned.
Countless fish moved below. The Kun fish carrying the refugees let out a long cry and rose higher.
Only then did the people truly understand.
This was not an island.
It was a creature.
Those who wanted to leave were lifted by the descending clouds. Mist condensed into flying fish, water vapor shaping itself into carriers that bore them along the rolling current.
Ahead, a blazing sun opened a path. Morning light spread in a sharp line, cutting through wind and rain.
Behind them, the Fusang giant tree swayed.
Since ancient times, the land's shape tilted northwest to southeast. Rivers ran from west to east and poured into the sea.
But now the sea rose in layers. White waves rolled like fireworks, roaring upward, surging toward the high landmass of the Divine Land.
The sky filled with water vapor so vast it felt like a giant throat between heaven and earth, forcing the two to bite together.
And within it, a single line cleaved through.
Sunlight.
Dawn.
Along the Qi coastline, people looked up at the ocean and froze.
"What kind of sight is this…?"
It was not just the sea.
That line of light within the storm was even more dazzling than the waves.
In Linzi, capital of Qi, the official responsible for celestial phenomena presented a report to the King of Qi.
"Celestial signs have changed. The Emperor Star resists movement. The sun moves through the sky. After tribulation, new life will emerge."
The water vapor thickened, grew denser, expanded.
Yet it did not enter the Divine Land.
Rowe felt it then.
A boundary.
An invisible wall separating inside from outside.
Consort Yu stood within the sword light at his side and looked up at the unseen line with narrowed eyes.
"In ancient times, Yu cast the Nine Cauldrons to define the Nine Provinces," she said. "When the cauldrons were complete, the Nine Provinces were established."
Her voice was calm, like reciting something engraved into her memory.
"The Nine Cauldrons are a concept. The Nine Provinces are a formation that covers the Divine Land."
A formation on a scale that swallowed the environment itself and repurposed it. It gathered the world's magical foundation, the Elemental Qi of the land, and used it as a shell.
It was not a Reality Marble. It was higher, closer to a planetary bounded field shaped into a rule.
That was why Rowe's perception had been blocked from the East Sea to the Divine Land.
Yu had been a Heavenly Emperor.
The remnants of a primordial existence could do this.
It could even hinder Rowe's entry.
Rowe frowned. He glanced back at the rolling seawater and the surging clouds.
Then he smiled.
"If that is the case…"
"Then we tear it open."
The Nine Provinces formation had been built to protect the Divine Land.
But time changed everything. What had been protection could become a cage.
Rowe could see it. The barrier now restricted expansion and limited passage between inside and outside.
Good intentions did not excuse stagnation.
Change led to flow. Flow led to strength.
Rowe raised the Pure Yang Sword.
With a clear clang, the sword light compressed into a crystalline blade of fiery red in his palm.
"Clouds."
The gathering clouds behind him converged onto the sword.
"Rain."
Raindrops braided together and fell, feeding the forming edge.
"Rivers, lakes, and sea."
The ocean boiled. River mouths connected to the East Sea rippled as if the land itself had been struck by a pulse.
Mist condensed on the blade.
Countless people riding the cloud carriers looked up.
For mortals, the god who had been only a voice became a figure.
Rowe gripped the sword. His sleeves snapped in the wind like flame.
From here, he would swing.
This blade carried clouds, rain, and water. It carried the cycle of heaven, earth, and humanity as the locals described it, but to Rowe it was a compressed Authority, a forced convergence of conceptual weight.
He answered the immeasurable with the immeasurable.
Wind and cloud roared.
At the edge of the Nine Provinces, invisible ripples shimmered, bright as glass under sunlight.
They collided.
They cracked.
They shattered.
Fractures spread in layers. The formation broke apart like ice under pressure.
Heaven and earth opened.
The weight of the sea surged forward, spilling onto land in rolling layers, vast and innumerable.
Only one figure advanced with a sword in hand.
Where wind and rain fell, it was as if a new sky had been cut open.
In the twenty fifth year of King Kaolie of Chu, records state: At that time the people were restless and the East Sea was turbulent. A god named Monarch entered the land of Chu by way of the great river. Mountains and rivers overflowed their bounds without bringing disaster. All were astonished. From that day Monarch was widely worshipped, truly becoming an orthodox deity.
Records of the Grand Historian, House of Chu
Thunder rolled.
Wind and rain poured into the Divine Land. Dark clouds churned. Lightning threatened to split the territory. Over Jingchu, the flashing streamers were swallowed by roaring thunder and violent wind that tore through the thousand li expanse.
After the barrier broke, the sea's weight dispersed.
Those who had followed fell into rivers, landing safely. Dense water vapor cushioned them, warded off harm, and pushed away the worst of the foulness.
Rowe had brought them home.
They were alive.
But their homeland was still chaos.
Chu was a great state, vast and populous even after centuries of war. Yet what Rowe saw was not prosperity.
It was disorder.
Soldiers without order.
Bandits without fear.
People without restraint.
Living beings without reason.
And deeper than all that, something wrong in the heart.
Rowe felt it at once.
His Chaos seed did not absorb anything here.
He lifted his gaze.
"Has it already been taken by something else?"
Above Jingchu, a black sun hung in the sky.
Pitch black.
Deep.
Eerie enough to make the air feel thinner.
It carried the concept of Taiyi, unmistakably so.
Yet it was not Taiyi.
Rowe could sense the Authority in it. A fragment. A partial manifestation left behind.
Not the main body.
Not close.
But it was mad. It was full of malice. And that madness made its power feel vast.
Chu's plains stretched for a thousand li. Its population was massive. The malice that could be brewed from that many hearts was equally massive.
The black sun was only the projection.
The main body was elsewhere.
"In the Valley of Tang," Consort Yu said suddenly, pointing.
Rowe closed his eyes as drizzle fell.
"Wait for me to return."
He wrapped Consort Yu in the Pure Yang Sword's light, sending her downward. She did not resist. She knew a fight between primordial beings was not something she could touch.
"You must return," she said, voice low. "Do not forget. You stole my home."
Rowe laughed.
"What you lived in was never yours."
Then, softer, he added, "I will return."
Hopefully as a corpse.
Consort Yu landed on the ground, still protected by the sword's lingering light. Rowe kept her within his perception like a tether.
Then he went alone toward the direction she indicated.
The Valley of Tang.
Another place of sunrise in old myths.
Thunder boomed.
Deep in the valley, vegetation shook as if frightened. Among the ruins of what had once been magnificent palaces, a massive distorted figure opened its eyes.
Nine golden tails swayed before it.
Beside the shadow, a phantom projection smiled.
"I will leave it to you, Your Majesty Taiyi."
Then the smile sharpened.
"No. Perhaps I should call you one of the Six Heavens' old ghosts."
The Nine Tailed Fox's tails moved as she looked at the darkness seated on the ruined divine throne.
It resembled Taiyi in concept.
But it was not the same being.
It was only the mad aspect Taiyi had stripped away.
"I originally meant to borrow Taiyi's power," she said, voice layered, as if multiple selves were speaking through one mouth. "Instead I found something far more interesting."
Her eyes narrowed with delighted terror.
"Borrowing the strength of an old evil god. Using it to merge with a planet and reach out to the embodiment of cosmic chaos. Tempering oneself and stepping beyond the limits of a planetary life form. Succeeding, and then stripping the chaos away again."
Her breath quickened.
"So that is what succeeded."
"So the so called Battle of the Gods did not merely seal threats. It sealed what they discarded."
No wonder she had never been able to match them.
No wonder those celestial beings, beings that were clearly Star Spirits, vanished after the Conferred God War.
Those immortals and gods were terrifying.
The shadow did not reply.
It did not have self. It did not have wisdom. It only sat there, mirroring the black sun in the sky, posture rigid and wrong.
The Nine Tailed Fox was not speaking to it anymore.
She was speaking to someone else.
"What do you think, Lord of the East?"
Mist and rain parted.
A figure stepped forward from within the drizzle.
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