Chapter 159: The Chaos of Taiyi, Nurturing a Sword That Can Kill Himself
Even with an ocean between them, Rowe could perceive Xun Kuang clearly.
More precisely, it was not perception in the mortal sense.
It was the instinctive feedback of a god to soone who had spoken his na with sincerity.
Rowe saw Xun Kuang bow toward the East Sea, and he returned it.
It was natural, and yet the feeling behind it was tangled.
Rowe’s existence here spanned an age that made kingdoms look brief. Yet the man on the shore belonged to a human lineage whose ideas had survived long enough to beco sothing like a second myth.
Not his blood.
Not his nation.
But a mory of how people once tried to stand upright in the face of the world.
So Rowe adjusted his posture, straightened the line of his clothing, and bowed.
Reverence, yes.
But also calibration.
A deliberate act of choosing restraint, choosing order, choosing a shape that could be understood.
In an unfamiliar world, after enough detours to strip a person down to bare function, small rituals like this had weight.
Not because they proved where you ca from, but because they proved you could still choose what you were.
On the shore, Xun Kuang froze. Then he burst into laughter.
“Strange. Strange!”
The old master stood barefoot in the sea breeze, stroking his beard as if he had just witnessed sothing that made the world worth enduring.
“I have lived for decades, and I have never heard of a divine being bowing to a human like this.”
“Master…”
“It is nothing.” Xun Kuang waved it off, still laughing. “It is simply a surge of feeling. A spontaneous mont.”
He turned.
“Let us go back.”
“This journey is enough. I will return and await the arrival of destiny.”
He laughed again, as if talking about his own death was a pleasant conclusion rather than a tragedy.
“This old man will return to the yellow earth. But a thousand years from now, though I die, I will live on like the Master.”
“Enough, enough.” He cut off any attempt at solemnity with a light gesture. “Do not make it sound heavy.”
Confucianism sought the Human Way. Not the endless body. Not eternity as a principle.
The Heavenly Way had no beginning and no end.
The Human Way rose and fell.
It did not chase immortality. It chased clarity.
To cultivate oneself, to govern the state, to bring peace to the world. To polish the spirit until it could shine, even if the flesh returned to dust.
To die was not failure.
To die was completion.
So even though Xun Kuang’s attainnt had brushed a boundary that could be mistaken for the threshold of immortals, he would still die like a mortal after decades.
The Hundred Schools all wanted different things.
“Yes, Master.” The person accompanying him answered respectfully.
That disciple looked out at the sea and felt sothing grand wash over him, clean and vast.
But when he blinked, the sea looked normal again.
He could not understand Xun Kuang’s laughter.
He could not grasp the ecstasy in his words.
They took two steps.
Then Xun Kuang halted.
The tide moved beneath his feet, yet the surface rippled with sothing that did not belong to water. He raised his head sharply and looked south.
The direction of Chu.
His brows tightened.
Fear entered his eyes.
Sothing was changing there.
He could feel it, but he could not see it.
It was the terror of an ant staring at the sky and realizing the sky was falling. Seeing nothing, understanding nothing, and yet being certain that it was real.
That fluctuation was too violent.
Then, elsewhere, under a scorching sun, in a deep valley sealed by dense vegetation, a temple stood forgotten.
Moss covered it. Dust layered its steps.
But the do still hinted at what it had once been, a structure shaped like mountains reaching toward heaven. No human feet had walked here for a very long ti.
At this mont, the dust stirred and dispersed as if pushed away by a gentle breath.
Nine golden tails unfurled, soft and brilliant under sunlight.
The Nine Tailed Fox, divided into different selves, the sa one who had already clashed with Rowe in intention and appetite, had followed the ripple of the na Monarch and tracked it to this place.
[I'm changing Donghua to Monarch starting now]
“Finally,” she said, voice light with satisfaction. “Found it.”
Her pale hand slipped out from the sleeve of her dark robe.
“Valley of Tang,” she murmured. “Another place of sunrise in the old stories.”
One of her tails spoke, voice layered with a different personality.
“Is this the residence of Taiyi, the supre god of Chu?”
Her main body let her tails sway as if she were brushing away the question.
“It is a pity. The old gods changed. Taiyi handed over his Authority, and this is no longer a true site of sunrise and sunset.”
“But there is still residue here.”
“It was not a wasted hunt.”
Another tail spoke, impatient.
“Then start quickly.”
“Exactly, exactly.” A different tail laughed. “This concubine cannot wait.”
“What is the rush?” Another voice cut in. “Let this concubine prepare first.”
Talking to herself had beco instinct.
Her orange red hair fell like fla across her shoulders as she faced the abandoned temple. She lifted her hand, and invisible talismans stamped themselves into the air.
Layers upon layers.
A gigantic wall took shape, encircling the site like a bounded field.
The wind scread through the valley.
This land had once belonged to myth, and it rembered.
Sothing gathered.
Not from the sky, but from the space itself. Residual solar power, the remnants of Taiyi’s forr Authority as an eastern solar sovereign of Chu.
Under the guidance of the talismans, the power condensed.
But it did not beco a bright sun.
It beca a blinding blackness.
The Nine Tailed Fox inverted the concept of the original sun. She reversed its aning at the root, turning it inside out.
Opposite of sunlight, a dark, chaotic black sun.
A feminine sun.
A sun of evil.
“Absorb the endless malice of the world,” she whispered, amused. “Then let it et Monarch in battle.”
This was her preference.
She did not intend to step onto the stage first.
She preferred the shadows.
Better to create puppets and throw them forward. Better to test the god’s depth, test the god’s limits, while she remained hidden.
“Go.”
Her nine tails swept.
The black sun shot into the sky.
It devoured light. It drew in every thread of wickedness it could reach.
It expanded. It grew. It beca a moving wound across the heavens.
Back at the East Sea, the tide continued as if nothing had happened.
Rowe straightened.
Consort Yu tilted her head, stepping close to his side. She looked around, then frowned when she found nothing.
“You were bowing to soone?” she asked. “I do not see anything.”
Rowe withdrew his gaze from the distance and looked at her.
“Are you afraid?”
Consort Yu denied it instantly.
“How could I be!”
“Really not?”
“So annoying. I said no, so it is no.” She was already bristling under his increasingly playful expression.
Rowe laughed.
“Do not worry. It is nothing.”
Then, because he could not resist, he added:
“Fear is nothing to be ashad of. Even primordial gods have things they fear.”
Consort Yu blinked, eyes widening.
“Really?”
“Of course it is fake.”
Consort Yu stared at him, expression blank.
For a mont, she looked like she was calculating whether it was worth attacking him, and whether she could survive the consequences.
Rowe raised his hand.
The Pure Yang Sword, suspended near the crown of the Fusang Tree, fell into his palm.
He held it behind his back. A dark red scabbard ford around the blade as if responding to intent and heat.
The sea breeze tugged at his robe. He stood with the sword settled and his posture composed. The sheer weight of his Mystery made him look unreal.
Then he spoke, and the mundane air returned as if a door had opened.
“Being afraid is not shaful,” he said. “Fear is how you understand where you are incomplete.”
Consort Yu’s eyes widened again, as if she had missed a step.
Do you an you are perfect?
Rowe did not answer that silent thought.
He only asked, casually, “I am going to take a look across the sea. What about you?”
Consort Yu almost replied automatically that the sea was nothing special.
Then she rembered the scene of spirits gathering like an army, rembered the shimring scales, the order imposed on living things that should not have been orderly at all.
She hesitated.
Her gaze shifted to the colossal Fusang Tree swaying behind them.
“Should I… really go out and take a walk?” she murmured, as if speaking to herself.
“You should ask yourself,” Rowe said. “Not .”
After a pause, he added, “If you want to see the land, I can take you.”
“I do not need to… never mind. Then I will trouble you.” Consort Yu forced a fierce expression onto her face. “But do not misunderstand. I am not going with you because I want to be with you.”
“You are just my tool.”
“Yes, yes,” Rowe said, smiling as if he had heard the most intimidating threat in the world.
He did not reject the conversation.
Consort Yu was a native Divine Spirit. The secrets she carried mattered, and her existence was useful to him in ways beyond power.
And in truth, Rowe did not dislike this.
To arrive here and take on the na Monarch ant he had to carry the looseness and clarity that the myths demanded. Speak as the heart felt. Move as the will decided.
Rowe lifted the sword slightly.
The Pure Yang Sword humd. Light ignited along its length.
It rose into the air, turning into a streak of fire, like a second sun suspended above the shore. Pure yang fla rolled outward, not burning the world, only claiming space.
Rowe reached out his hand to Consort Yu.
“Let us go.”
Consort Yu froze for a beat, then pursed her lips.
“I will reluctantly accept your invitation.”
She lifted her chin.
“But you must not move around!”
Rowe replied without hesitation, tone serious in a way that made it worse.
“Do not worry. I definitely will not let you move around.”
“I will not move around…” Consort Yu muttered, and a faint blush crept up as she rembered what she had done earlier.
Her palm settled into his.
Her fingers closed gently.
Rowe laughed and kept his distance, not drawing her closer.
Then the wind rose.
The Pure Yang Sword’s light expanded and wrapped them.
They did not stand on a blade.
They rode the light the blade emitted.
Consort Yu’s vision tilted.
Her feet left the ground, and suddenly the sea rushed toward them as if the world had flipped.
She reached instinctively for Rowe’s arm.
An invisible current blocked her.
“You said it,” Rowe said lazily. “To prevent moving around.”
He turned his head slightly, laughter bright in the wind.
“As you wish.”
Consort Yu’s first instinct was to be furious.
Then she forced herself to breathe.
She was a Stellar Spirit. Even if she was not a combat specialist, she had seen enough of the world to regain control quickly.
The airflow that blocked her also protected her, holding her steady and keeping her from being thrown.
Her coat and fur trimd shawl fluttered violently. Light flowed around her, and yet from within it she could see everything.
Sea.
Sky.
Deep blue distance.
Birds wheeling above.
Fish cutting below.
A kun from the northern sea cried sharply. A great peng from the southern sea spread its wings like a curtain drawn across heaven.
A flash of light passed, and starlight seed hazy in the corner of sight.
Behind them, the spirits that had already been summoned followed, drawn by Authority and by na.
Moisture gathered.
Cloud, rain, river, lake, sea.
Vast water vapor swelled around the sword light like a robe made of mist.
Consort Yu lifted a hand, curious, touching the faintly glowing shapes drifting on either side.
Plants?
No.
Not plants.
The sword light plunged.
They pierced the surface and entered the sea.
For a brief instant, Consort Yu saw the deep. Saw the seabed world that mortals never witnessed. Saw light and shadow refract into alien colors.
Then the sword light surged upward again, bursting out of the sea as if the ocean had been split and resealed in one breath.
Consort Yu only realized after the fact that they had truly gone under.
The scenery on both sides blurred into streaks, rushing past in light and shadow.
In that world turning rush, she tightened her grip on Rowe’s hand.
A serene smile, unseen by anyone, appeared on her face.
She found herself thinking that this was not bad.
This sense of speed.
This feeling of being behind him.
The light and shadow were things she had never seen in her life.
“This ti,” she said, tapping her toes lightly in the air as if she were adjusting to the rhythm, “I will reluctantly not be angry with you.”
She opened her free hand and let the wind brush across her palm.
As if she wanted to hold the brilliance.
And perhaps, without admitting it, as if she wanted to hold the person in front of her.
It was warm.
Warm enough that she did not want to leave it.
For the first ti, Consort Yu felt sothing like belonging.
A natural Stellar Spirit should not have worn a physical body in this era. She had always felt like an anomaly, sothing that should not exist in this shape.
And everyone who approached her had always wanted sothing.
The Mystery of nature inside her.
The secret of eternity.
An advantage. A shortcut. A theft.
She rejected them all. She was annoyed by them all.
And in the long solitude, a weariness had piled up so deep it beca a part of her.
Now, inexplicably, that weariness loosened.
The one before her was her kind.
A congenital existence also born from the stars.
Believing that made her relax.
She closed her eyes and let her mind empty.
Rowe smiled.
This was not a simple tour.
As they crossed the sea, he used the sea’s circulation to draw out the brutal residue that had accumulated in the depths. Rage. Greed. Slaughter. Fury. Malice that could not be cleansed all at once.
He took it into himself.
Chaos circulated within his heart, growing more vigorous with every pulse.
Like mist without origin.
Vast.
Naless.
During the process, the sword light around them gathered moisture and beca clearer, purer, more translucent. The pure yang glow began to show a strange transparency, like fla distilled into glass.
It was absorbing pure water vapor.
Water belonged to yin.
The Pure Yang Sword belonged to pure yang.
When yin and yang overlapped, when sun and moon turned, the operation itself beca a repeated polishing.
Rowe was purifying the East Sea at a deeper level.
Absorbing malice to nurture the chaos within him.
And at the sa ti, forging the sword.
A blade that carried the interplay of yin and yang, the cycle of life and death.
A sword that might, if fate aligned, gain the right to kill him.
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