Chapter 162: Seeking Subscriptions Ignite Oneself to Become the Only Light
Wind and rain wrapped the Valley of Tang.
Rowe stepped through shallow floodwater and broken stone, moving with a deliberate calm that did not match the violence of the sky. Ruined walls rose ahead, their old grandeur still visible beneath moss and cracks. At the center of it all sat a silent shadow on a divine throne, and beside it stood a woman who was only half real.
The Nine Tailed Fox looked at him.
Her earlier confession had not been a courtesy. It was a warning disguised as conversation.
The Immortals and Gods still existed.
And they were still terrifying.
You and I might both be pieces on their board.
She wanted to test the god she was wrestling for Authority. But tests were never only about strength. They were about intent. About ideology. About where someone would bend, and where they would break.
Rowe listened.
Then, after a brief silence, he answered.
"To you, they are frightening. To me, they are simply people with convictions."
The Fox's eyes narrowed.
Rowe continued, voice even.
"They drove out ancient outer gods and used that conflict as a step toward the star filled void. Even now, they are likely still fighting beings that covet this world."
He had learned this only moments ago, from her mouth.
Yet the shape of it fit too neatly.
Under the Fusang Tree, when Consort Yu mentioned the fall of Xia, an outer god had glanced sideways at him. Rowe had assumed it was contempt, the casual dismissal of an existence not yet worth noticing.
Now he suspected a different truth.
It was not disdain.
It was distance.
Their attention was occupied. Their sight could not fully pierce the Divine Land's boundary. If they watched at all, they did it through proxies, through anomalies like the girl named Abigail who had been favored by an outer god.
Because those who had left the planet still looked back.
Because they were still fighting.
Rowe tilted his head slightly.
"What do you say, Nine Tails?"
The Fox smiled, tails swaying like golden banners in the rain.
"Oh my. You know me?"
Her tone was playful. Her eyes were not.
"A god with roots in another realm, and you know my name too?"
"Another realm?" Rowe gave a faint laugh. "I am not foreign to this world."
He did not dress it up as patriotism. He did not romanticize it. He stated it as a principle.
"This land recognizes legitimacy. Authority here does not answer to brute force alone. It answers to alignment, to belonging, to the willingness to be bound by the same rules that bind it."
If he had treated this place as a stage to conquer, he would not have been able to anchor himself as the Lord of the East. He would not have been able to command sunrise and moonset, or bind the waters into an obedient cycle.
The Fox's eyes narrowed further.
"That is true," she admitted. "But I did not expect someone from the Divine Land to reach a Primordial rank outside it."
Rowe's gaze sharpened.
"And I did not expect you to be the one behind all of this."
He spoke names like counting evidence.
"Meixi. Su Daji. Bao Si. The Indian consort Huayang."
Then he looked straight at her.
"And you. The true Nine Tails. Tamamo no Mae."
For a heartbeat the rain seemed to pause.
Tamamo no Mae.
A name that did not belong to this era, and yet it existed in her.
She had pulled it from her own future, threading herself across time to seize a form of Primordial status that was not about age, but about inevitability.
The Primordial of the Future.
The Fox's smile remained.
But her eyes became dangerous.
"You know even that?"
Her voice turned sweet enough to be poisonous.
"You surprise me. Investigating so thoroughly, you would not happen to like me, would you?"
She walked closer. Even as a projection, she carried weight. At her level, the border between illusion and reality had already lost most of its meaning.
Orange red hair spilled across her shoulders. Fox ears twitched under the rain. Her robes clung and flowed at once, framing curves that were not merely sensual, but conceptual.
Fantasy.
Desire.
A divine beast and a demonic beast, ancient enough to be mistaken for a law of nature.
She leaned in, making the space between them intimate.
"Even with an Emperor title, you are unusual," she murmured. "You still carry a clean human vessel."
Her hand settled on his shoulder. Another slid forward.
Then she pressed her body against him, voice whispering directly into the part of the mind that wanted to be weak.
"So. Would you like to try resisting them with me?"
She was charming him.
Not with perfume or skin, but with a concept. She had felt the dormant human desire inside Rowe the moment he arrived and she tried to stir it like a spark in dry grass.
Boom.
Thunder split the sky.
A bolt grazed Rowe and tore through Tamamo no Mae's projection, shredding her into smoke.
Rowe exhaled once, unimpressed.
"What a strong fox stench."
Tamamo no Mae reformed at a distance, expression blank with surprise.
Rowe frowned as if offended on principle.
"How long has it been since you last bathed?"
The Fox froze.
Bathing?
"If you do not believe me, smell yourself," Rowe said, still disgusted. "How do you charm anyone like this? Do all your targets have strange tastes?"
For a terrifying moment, Tamamo no Mae actually hesitated, as if his seriousness had infected her confidence.
Then another flash.
Steel sang.
Rowe drew.
The sword light carved her projection apart again, crushing it. She reformed instantly, but thinner this time, her presence visibly weakened.
Tamamo no Mae's smile cracked.
"Are you mocking me?"
Rowe's tone stayed mild.
"Yes. And no."
He lifted the blade slightly, not toward her, but toward the sky.
"Did you notice?"
The rain hit harder.
Tamamo no Mae looked up.
Dark clouds gathered into a vortex, dense and heavy, compressing over the Valley of Tang. Water vapor layered the air. Rain fell, pooled, formed streams, rose again, condensed again.
A closed loop.
A cycle.
The water cycle of heaven, earth, and humanity had formed here without her noticing.
The thing on the throne moved.
The shadow seated in silence, the discarded ghost left behind by Taiyi, finally responded.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
A rhythm like an invisible drumbeat vibrating through bone and thought.
It opened its eyes.
Pure black.
And within the black were countless eyes nested inside eyes, endless, layered, multiplying.
One glance was enough to unravel reason.
It opened its mouth.
Its tongue extended, then split into more tongues, branching like rot.
A long howl tore free.
The air twisted around the sound as if reality itself wanted to retreat.
A chaotic form that should not have been allowed to wear shape.
The word ghost fit.
Tamamo no Mae snapped her gaze back to Rowe, alarm flaring.
"Are you insane? You released my restraints on it!"
Rowe laughed.
"If I do not, how do we fight seriously?"
He had shattered her projection twice to weaken her influence. And the cycle he had forced into place was not only to flood the valley with water vapor.
It was to peel away the bindings she had layered on this old ghost.
To let it fully express itself.
To let it bring everything it had.
Rowe lifted the sword and rose into the sky.
The ghost howled and the wind and rain exploded outward.
"Do not disappoint me," Rowe said.
Try to kill me.
Above them, the black sun expanded, swallowing cloud layers and pushing down toward the valley like a descending lid.
Tamamo no Mae retreated, projection only, lips curving again.
She thought Rowe was a madman, but this was still within her expectations.
If the ghost killed him, she would save effort.
If it did not, she would learn his limits.
Either way, she won information.
"Lord of the East," she murmured, amused. "Water Official Great Monarch."
"I am looking forward to your performance."
Fire and water collided in the sky.
Sword light ignited like a sun. Water vapor surged in spirals. Opposite, the black sun pulsed with writhing darkness.
Rowe could not measure how far the Immortals and Gods had gone after leaving the planet, but the power before him was comparable to his own, perhaps slightly lower.
Still.
It had enough bite to break his defenses.
Enough bite to kill him.
Thunder rolled across Chu.
The East Sea's water vapor bled into the thousand li expanse. The Valley of Tang remained drowned in mist.
Tamamo no Mae climbed onto the broken dome and rested her chin on her hand, watching two suns collide.
Desire flickered behind her eyes.
She wanted mutual destruction.
And she was not the only one watching.
The moment the struggle in the sky intensified, it rippled through the entire Jingchu region.
Along the great river, villages became slaughterhouses. Bones piled. Beasts roamed. Evil thoughts boiled into violence.
An old man cowered in a corner, watching neighbors who had laughed together moments before tear at each other like enemies.
A young swordsman knocked villagers unconscious with the hilt of his blade, face hard with disbelief.
A hunter stared at a mountain of carcasses, beasts that had ripped each other apart without reason.
The Six Heavens old ghost was the severed chaotic aspect of Taiyi.
Its existence was a symbol of disorder.
It could pull the chaotic side out of human hearts.
And it could feed on it.
Chu fell deeper into conflict as its rulers failed to contain it.
Rowe swung his sword and looked down.
He saw enough.
His brows tightened for a moment.
Then, the next second, they relaxed.
This calamity was not his doing, but his presence was now entangled with it. He had come here seeking death.
So.
"It is natural," he said quietly, "to spend power here to save people."
He stopped the blade in midair.
Across from him, the old ghost had merged with the black sun. Inside the darkness were tentacles and eyes and tongues, a twisting choir of wrongness.
Its power swallowed daylight over Chu's thousand li.
Hearts were dragged under a layer of night.
Those Rowe had brought back from the sea were protected by the water vapor he left around them, but even they felt dust settle on their minds.
Some jolted awake.
Some wailed.
Some surrendered.
Within the royal palace of Chu's capital, panic became sound.
"Your Majesty, retreat, retreat first!"
"I am the King of Chu!" the old king roared, gasping for breath. "If I retreat, who will protect my people? What kind of monster is that?"
"It is," Xiang Yan said, voice grim, "Taiyi."
Not the Taiyi they worshipped.
Taiyi inverted.
Taiyi mad.
The supreme god of Chu turned into a sun of darkness.
The King of Chu went still.
Hope drained from his face.
Is there any hope left for Chu?
That question spread like sickness through the land.
If Chu did not fall to foreign blades, but to its own heart tearing itself apart, what would that make their history?
Sorrow rose.
And in that instant, people across Chu began to cry without knowing why.
Some wept openly.
They were unwilling to die like this.
Unwilling to rot in civil war.
Their throats turned hoarse as prayers formed in broken fragments.
Who will save us.
Who will.
Who.
Then the voices died.
Dong.
A sound rang out across the wilderness, heavy and resonant, like a bell struck inside the ribs of the world.
A second sound answered, a sharp ringing hum.
And a ray of light pierced the dark sky.
A sword line cut through night, carrying heat, carrying brightness.
A figure stood high above, directing water vapor like a rule, guiding mist like an order.
Everyone saw.
And without anyone explaining, everyone knew who it was.
"Monarch," people whispered.
"Fusang Great Emperor."
"Water Official Great Emperor."
The one who governed sunrise and moonset and the cycle of waters through the Three Realms.
The mad Taiyi still flailed.
But the light tore open the darkness.
A god.
Bearing the weight of an Emperor title.
In a human body.
Standing in the sky, willing to spend himself to push warmth back into the land.
That year, the waters of the East Sea poured into Jingchu. Extreme night and nightmares descended. The People were in panic. A great bell rang like fire and heavenly light shook the land.
In the vast long night, there was only one light.
History of Chu
Rowe ignited himself.
For the sake of The People.
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