Chapter 167: Splitting This Heaven with Thought
"Oh ho. Are you actually angry, Immortal Yu?" Wuzhiqi's smile turned strange. "What exactly is your relationship with this Emperor Rowe?"
Consort Yu's eyes narrowed.
Before today, even having someone stand close to her would have been an absurd rumor. Her reclusiveness was famous even among Divine Spirits. Even when the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors spoke to her, she offered nothing more than a passing nod.
And yet here she was, stepping in front of someone for Rowe.
"Such a nuisance," Consort Yu snapped. "What my relationship with him is, what does it have to do with you?"
"It truly has nothing to do with me," Wuzhiqi said sweetly, blinking. "I am just curious."
Her gaze slid over Consort Yu's face, delighted by every crack in her composure.
"And you are not denying it. That means it is unusual, does it not?"
"Wuzhiqi," someone beside her warned, unable to endure the nonsense. "Business."
Wuzhiqi swept a pale strand away from her brow, revealing the other eye that her hair usually hid. The heterochromia flashed, playful and dangerous.
"Hm. Yes. Business."
She backed off without argument.
Consort Yu turned her head with the unmistakable expression of someone who believed she had won, then retreated behind Rowe as if that position belonged to her by default.
The movement was so natural that Wuzhiqi nearly laughed out loud.
Rowe felt it too.
Consort Yu's hand, still hooked into his sleeve, tightened.
Meeting old acquaintances had dragged the past up from wherever she kept it buried.
A past of being alone.
A past where most people did not accept her, and she learned to pretend she did not care.
For a while at Rowe's side, she had tasted something else. Not being lonely. Not having to stand apart from everything by default. Once you learn that feeling, you learn fear with it. Fear of being rejected. Fear of returning to that silent distance.
So she held on a little harder.
Rowe glanced at her. He did not comment. He simply shifted his posture a fraction, enough that she could lean without looking like she was begging for support.
Then he looked forward.
He had brought her out from beneath the Fusang Tree. Abandoning her would be indefensible, even by his standards. And during their travel through the Six States, she had helped more than she admitted.
An Immortal Lord could observe Heaven and Earth with a thought. A Divine Spirit could draw on the land itself for strength. Yet the human world was not a map you could solve by staring at it.
Human order in this era was peculiar.
Burning it could produce power that reached beyond the scale of stars, and yet the Sea of Stars remained unmoved by many things that looked like stellar force. Not because the planet was weak, but because humanity existed inside it.
Humans carried possibility in a way gods never did.
Rowe had never underestimated that. He was human, still in a human body, yet he had reached a height that did not bow to most divinities. The world had proven its point to him enough times.
Now the Hundred Schools were gathered in one place.
This bounded field domain was all clear water and green mountains. There was no sun overhead, but a gentle, stable light washed across everything. Waterfalls fell in the distance like white threads sewn into the landscape. Everyone sat on the grass and stone, and for a moment it looked like a meeting from an older age. A scene that belonged in myths, not in an era where the Age of Gods was retreating.
Huang Shigong sat cross legged on a broad rock, stroking his beard with the satisfaction of a man watching history happen in front of him.
"Everyone is finally here. A gathering of the Hundred Schools is rare indeed."
The Mohist leader, the Juzi, nodded and cut straight to the point.
"Regardless, today we must decide how we proceed."
The old man of the Agricultural school chuckled.
"With the Immortal Lord here, and with Wuzhiqi the Great Sage, we have an opportunity that will not come twice."
Rowe listened.
He understood the shape of this process. Long ago he had helped Solomon build a Western Foundation, a structure that allowed mystery to persist after the Age of Gods began to collapse. But the East and the West were not the same.
So he did not speak first. He let the room unfold.
He sat on the grass and raised a jade cup formed from condensed vapor. The wine inside was sharp at the lips, then bloomed into warmth and fragrance that filled the body in a single breath.
"Good wine," Rowe said honestly.
It was far more refined than the mead of Mesopotamia, and more layered than the wine of Greece.
Consort Yu lifted her own cup, eyes half lidded. The atmosphere was calm enough that she allowed herself to drink.
Jing Ke, on the other hand, was already lost to it.
"Good wine, good wine," she mumbled, swaying. "This alone is worth the trip."
Wuzhiqi did not drink much. She watched Rowe instead, as if waiting for the moment he would finally show his hand.
Huang Shigong spoke first, voice turning solemn.
"My view is this. Dao gives birth to One. One gives birth to Two. Two gives birth to Three. Three gives birth to all things."
He looked around the gathering.
"If we are to preserve the legacy of Yan Huang and integrate the Hundred Schools into one stable whole, we need a single root. A foundation that can stand independently."
A Confucian successor, neat and orderly in both appearance and speech, answered immediately.
"You want Daoism to be the foundation?"
Huang Shigong did not pretend otherwise.
"This is for Country's continuation, but it is also a struggle of orthodoxies. We must speak honestly. Offer your own proposals. As for what is chosen, the Monarch and the Great Sage will decide."
The Juzi frowned.
"Elder Huang's suggestion has merit, but it will breed disputes. If we remain divided, the Foundation cannot stabilize."
A Legalist successor spoke with cool certainty.
"Then make law the foundation. Not rule by people, but rule by law."
Proposals collided. Not maliciously, but inevitably.
Every person carried bias. Every school carried its own pride. Yet that selfishness was also why the world moved. If humans were truly selfless, the Hundred Schools would never have blossomed into conflict and brilliance for centuries.
Human nature was complicated.
It was also fuel.
Then a voice slipped into Rowe's ear, soft and pointed.
"Monarch," Wuzhiqi said, eyes bright. "What do you think?"
The gathering quieted.
Dozens of gazes turned toward Rowe at once.
Rowe did not answer immediately.
Behind him, Consort Yu exhaled, cheeks flushed. The wine had caught up to her.
"My head is dizzy," she murmured, voice smaller than usual. "Let me lean on you a moment."
Rowe set his cup down and shifted an arm to steady her. She rested against his side, breathing slow and quiet, pretending she was merely tired.
Mist curled through the trees.
Rowe considered the proposals, then spoke.
"Each school has strengths and weaknesses. Choosing any single one creates blind spots. Choosing none leaves the Foundation without an anchor."
This was the core of their problem.
In this world, mystery had come from the gods. Even ancient gods, who were both holders of Authority and beings aligned to the land itself, could only transmit the secrets they controlled.
Now the Age of Gods was broken. The immortals and gods had departed. Mystery inevitably thinned.
The heirs of the Hundred Schools could not refill the entire world. So they wanted a container outside the world, a stable source of mystery that could survive the erosion of the era. A cornerstone that did not depend on the world remaining ancient.
Solomon's Foundation had been inscribed between Heaven and Earth. It gathered what remained and distributed it, allowing magecraft to persist, weakening but not dying.
This was different.
Not in raw power.
In intention.
Solomon had been a king and a saint. He would not violate the planet's laws.
The Hundred Schools of Shenzhou revered Heaven's mandate, and still fought it.
They were human. That was the point.
"All things differ," Rowe continued. "But all things have a source."
"China began with Yan Huang. It has passed three thousand years, but no matter how time changes, the root remains. The Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors."
He looked across the gathering.
"The Three Sovereigns spoke of change. The Classic of Changes. That is the source line of Huaxia."
The Classic of Changes was not merely a text. It was a framework. A way to name how Heaven and Earth moved, and how humans moved with them.
Rowe's voice sharpened with certainty.
"So my proposal is this."
"Use Change as the source of the Foundation."
Wuzhiqi laughed, delighted.
"As expected of the Monarch. Interesting."
Then she tilted her head.
"But Change is philosophy. Not mystery."
Rowe smiled.
"And that is why it is better."
His words carried a weight that made the air feel tighter, as if the bounded field itself listened.
"What exists in form is weaker than what exists above form."
"And what exists above form is weaker than the formless source."
Silence held.
Then the meaning landed.
Huang Shigong whispered, as if someone had opened a door in his mind.
"The formless source…"
The Juzi's eyes brightened.
"A continuous flow," he breathed.
The Confucian successor laughed, suddenly exhilarated.
"To carry the past and open the future."
The heirs of the Hundred Schools were not fools. They did not need Rowe to spell it out line by line.
East and West were different.
Rowe had spent too long thinking with Western habits. Here, on Shenzhou soil, those habits started to peel away.
If they were going to change, then change completely.
Rowe would use Change as the root, gather the legacies of the Hundred Schools, and form a Foundation.
Not a Western Foundation.
A Shenzhou Foundation.
It would exist outside Heaven and Earth, and still be rooted in the hearts of the people. Its fuel would be cognition, thought, the accumulated traces of humanity itself.
Not gods.
Not immortals.
This land, and its countless people.
Rowe's gaze turned distant, as if he saw beyond the bounded field, beyond the era.
"The Age of Gods is only a membrane covering the true face of the stars."
"If gods can change the world, humans can too."
The heirs listened, breath held.
"It is not that humans lack strength. It is that single humans are too fragile to do it alone."
"But the multitude always changes the world."
"If thousands gather."
"If their thought, their cognition, and the record of their existence continues across ages."
"Then it becomes a force that can twist the world's rules."
Human order.
The unique, immeasurable human order of this world.
The Foundation Rowe described would link to it directly.
"Call it thought based magecraft if you like," Rowe said. "Call it human order magecraft."
He extended a hand and traced a straight line across the ground with a wet fingertip, leaving a faint scent of wine.
Past.
Present.
Future.
"The old rule of mystery is secrecy," Rowe continued. "It preserves itself by hiding."
"That creates survival, but it also creates stagnation."
"If thought is the source, then understanding is fuel."
"The more people who grasp the principles, the more thought gathers."
"The stronger the link to human order becomes."
"The stronger this Foundation becomes."
The conclusion was simple, and violent in its implication.
"So spread ideas," Rowe said. "Teach wisdom. Share knowledge."
"Let the source become inexhaustible."
For a moment, no one spoke.
Then Wuzhiqi burst into laughter, loud and wild.
"Too interesting."
"I thought this would be a human farce. Instead you speak of tearing open a new sky."
Her gaze burned with genuine admiration now.
"No. I should call you the one who opens a new Heaven."
"The master of this path."
Huang Shigong rose and bowed deeply.
"Grand Ancestor."
The Juzi followed.
"Grand Ancestor."
One after another, the heirs bowed.
"Grand Ancestor."
Rowe did not stand.
He simply smiled, calm to the point of coldness.
"You do not need to thank me."
"I am doing this for myself."
He said it without shame.
Because it was true.
He wanted a world where thought was not strangled.
He wanted a Huaxia that did not rot into silence and isolation.
This world was not his original world.
This dream might only be a shadow of the real one.
But even a shadow was worth chasing, if it pointed toward a better direction.
Rowe looked at the bowed crowd.
With a thought, he had split open a new Heaven.
Now he would walk that path.
Not alone.
Not above.
Together, with the people.
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