Chapter 193: Journey to the West and Rome
"Have you heard about the miracles lately?"
"They say a great mountain fell from the sky at the edge of the Divine Land. Beneath it, a divine monkey is pinned down. Only her head is exposed, yet she can still talk. They also say her body cannot be destroyed."
"And what of that? I heard Liu Xiu of the Green Forest Army received guidance in a dream from the Goddess of Mount Li. Then at Kunyang, with nine thousand men, he crushed Wang Mang's army of hundreds of thousands. Even if the Hegemon King of Western Chu were still alive, he might not have managed more."
"Was that not simply the meteor?"
"Then tell me, sir. Why did the meteor fall? Why not here, or at another time? Why did it fall precisely when Liu Xiu launched a night raid?"
"…"
The inn was loud enough to rattle the cups. Travelers came and went, all of them chewing on the same rumors. The Han had stood for two hundred years, and the world had seen more than its share of upheaval. Yet this year felt different. Not merely because Wang Mang had seized the throne, but because the divine signs were too blatant to dismiss.
Inside a private room, thin gauze curtains hung on all sides, softening the lamplight and blurring the world beyond.
"So Liu Xiu has been searching for you," a voice said. "Are you truly not going to meet him?"
The speaker sat with palms pressed together. A red robe draped across half his body, exposing one side of his chest. The contours were sharp, almost skeletal. His hair was an unnatural green, gathered into a knot like twin lotus blooms. His face was hollow, as if he had spent an eternity learning what suffering tastes like, then deciding it was unremarkable.
And yet his gaze was calm. Too calm. The kind of serenity that did not come from innocence, but from having already watched the world burn and cool, again and again.
Across from him, another man answered without haste.
"That was an accident."
"Can accidents exist for someone who carries the qualifications of a Heavenly Emperor?" The gaunt man lifted his eyes.
The other man replied, "As the Awakened One, having stepped outside the world, you do not know everything either."
"Indeed."
Silence settled for a breath.
Then the man in red spoke again, his tone almost light. "Still, I should thank you for subduing that monkey. If you had not, the Heavenly Realm might have been turned inside out."
The man opposite him let out a quiet laugh.
He was tall, straight backed, wearing wide robes that fell cleanly, without theatrics. A crown bound his dark hair. His features were refined, his expression composed in the way only the truly dangerous could afford.
Rowe.
He had returned from the Imaginary Number Space. Not once, but many times. By now, the traces he left behind could serve as anchors, letting him land where he intended with unnerving precision.
This land, the Divine Land, had become his home in a way no philosophy could fully explain.
Yet this return had still produced an inconvenience.
He had entered the world as a meteor, and instead of falling somewhere quiet, he had struck Kunyang at the exact moment Liu Xiu moved to break Wang Mang's encirclement. The result was a miracle the bards would not stop singing.
Nine thousand against four hundred thousand.
A human feat so excessive it bordered on myth, which meant it would attract every kind of attention. The ambitious. The faithful. The starving. The dangerous.
It was also why Liu Xiu later climbed a mountain to worship Taiyi.
He had seen something. He had interpreted it as protection.
Rowe had no intention of correcting him.
What Rowe did intend was to avoid Liu Xiu entirely. The young woman behind that name had learned Arcane Arts from Ereshkigal in a dream, concealed her gender through magecraft, and carried an enthusiasm that felt less like admiration and more like a siege.
Rowe already had enough people in his orbit who treated "personal boundaries" as a folk tale.
Still, this return had brought good news as well.
After Qin, there was Han. Han had inherited Qin's institutions. Qin had perished, yet its spirit remained. The world continued along the track Rowe and the First Emperor had carved with their own hands.
Even if Consort Yu deciding to become "Xiang Yu" had left Rowe with a headache that refused to respect divine status.
And there was the man seated before him.
"Though it was chance," the Awakened One said, "it was also what I intended when I entered this worldline. There is nothing to thank."
His tone was flat. Not cold, simply distant, as if emotion were a language he understood but rarely chose to speak.
Rowe had seen many powerful beings, including Scathach, the Queen of the Land of Shadows, who had stepped beyond life and death. Yet the presence before him felt more complete, more absolute. Like an axis outside the world, around which the world was permitted to turn.
The Awakened One had manifested into this worldline not long ago.
When Sun Wukong battered her way through the Heavenly Court, the stronger ancestral gods had hesitated out of respect for Rowe's position. The weaker immortals had been crushed outright. Nezha himself had been driven back.
Then the Awakened One had descended, and with Chakravartin, a power that could be likened to a star in motion, pressed the Great Sage beneath the Five Finger Mountain.
"To call it a single strike is an exaggeration," the Awakened One said, expression unchanged. "It hurt quite a bit."
Rowe raised an eyebrow. "Like being stung by a bee?"
The Awakened One considered. "No. More like the sensation of countless plankton passing across my palm."
Rowe laughed. "So no sensation at all. That is a surprisingly high EQ metaphor."
He leaned back slightly, amusement softening his eyes.
"Let that monkey stay pinned for a while. If you do not correct her for three days, she will tear down the roof. She went straight for the Lingxiao Palace."
Rowe's expression turned measured again.
"You did not come here to discuss discipline. You came for something."
"Naturally." The Awakened One's hands remained together. "I wish to request a decree from the Great Heavenly Lord."
Rowe's gaze sharpened. "State your purpose."
"I often sit beyond the heavens, observing the Nine Heavens and Ten Earths, the countless Sumeru worlds, as clearly as text upon my palm. This place is the most unusual. I wish to spread the benefit of awakening here, as in other worlds."
"Buddhism," Rowe said.
He disliked what later generations would do with it. That distaste did not belong to the man before him, the origin point of the doctrine, whose pursuit had been closer to an intellectual school than a faith economy.
Rowe's answer was practical.
"If you enter my Divine Land, you follow its Heavenly Rules. Any teaching you establish must not grant special privilege. It must not warp thought. It must not interfere in mortal governance. Your followers remain citizens of it before they are anything else."
"I have reviewed the Heavenly Rules of this world," the Awakened One said. "There were none of those provisions."
Rowe rose.
"There were not. Now there are."
He looked down at the man who had stepped outside the world, and his voice held no ornament.
"I am the Heavenly Emperor. My words are the Heavenly Rules."
Then he turned and left.
Behind the gauze curtains, the Awakened One sat unmoving for a long time. At last, he bowed, slow and precise.
The decree, once spoken, embedded itself into the world like a seal pressed into wet clay.
I permit Buddhism to take root in the Divine Land. The Heavenly Rules established today cannot be overturned.
Five hundred years from now, there will be a Journey to the West to complete your cause.
The Awakened One clasped his hands and offered a quiet reverence.
"Great Heavenly Lord Taiyi."
Allowing the doctrine to spread was not indulgence. It was cultivation of a different kind. New thought, properly restrained, could become a stimulant rather than a poison.
A single color does not make spring. A garden needs conflict, contrast, argument. If thought is never challenged, it calcifies.
Rowe wanted progress, not an elegant stagnation disguised as peace.
And there was another layer.
By accepting the Awakened One's presence under rules, Rowe was also integrating that concept into Pan, tightening the weave, making the foundation more stable.
The Awakened One did not resist.
Stepping out of the inn, Rowe lifted his gaze to the sky.
"It is time to find them."
Reunions were usually dangerous.
Which, in Rowe's experience, made them strangely pleasant.
At the foot of the Five Finger Mountain, at the edge of the Divine Land, the Stone Monkey screamed curses into the wind. Only her head remained above the crushing weight. Her orange red hair was a tangled mess.
"You insolent monkey," a voice said.
A fingertip tapped her forehead.
Sun Wukong yelped, then froze.
Mist had gathered, thin at first, then thick enough to look like a curtain. From within it, a familiar figure stepped forward.
Wukong stared, blinking hard, as if the world itself had become untrustworthy.
"Master…?"
Rowe reached out and gently smoothed her hair, careful, unhurried.
"It is me."
Wukong's breath caught.
"You have grown stronger," Rowe said. "But your heart ape is still undisciplined. You will stay here for five hundred years. After that, someone will come for you. You will travel west with them."
He paused, then added the part that mattered to him.
"Help me gather information from within Buddhism."
Wukong stared at him for a long moment, and the anger on her face broke into something that looked dangerously like relief. Her eyes glistened, then she grinned as if she had never been frightened in her life.
"Heh. Leave it to me, Master."
Rowe turned away.
His next stop was Mount Li.
Beneath it, in the underworld of the Divine Land, Ereshkigal sat in the deepest palace, surrounded by piled stone like the old days of Mesopotamia. After becoming Houtu, her Authority had leapt. She was nearing the scale of planetary specifications. Houtu governed the Divine Land, and through it, she could touch the world.
Yet she still lived alone, deep underground, as she always had.
Not lonely.
Waiting.
A voice drifted down from the world above, familiar enough to hurt.
"Ereshkigal. It has been a while."
Her eyes snapped open.
She looked toward the hall entrance, and there he was, walking in as if time had never dared to separate them.
For a moment she could only stare.
Then she smiled, slow and trembling at the edges.
"Welcome back, Rowe."
She stepped forward and embraced him.
"My beloved."
The Heavenly Realm remained his domain. As Pan stabilized and time passed, the structure of the heavens also settled into its assigned order.
The highest Thirty Six Heavens stayed empty because they were tied to Rowe's core.
Everything below had residents.
The Three Pure Ones dwelled high, in the heavens that governed Great Luo. Below them, countless immortals held their stations, each performing their duties in place.
Rowe passed through the Heavenly Gate.
He saw the Four Heavenly Kings standing guard. He saw the Pagoda Bearing Heavenly King within Lingxiao Palace. He saw Nezha patrolling below, swift and bright as a blade.
He climbed and descended, measuring the shape of his world with his eyes, until he returned again to the highest level.
Lingxiao Palace.
Immortals stood in orderly ranks. The Heavenly Emperor's seat was empty.
Then a bell rang, vast enough to make thought tremble.
The sound came from the Thirty Six Heavens.
Chaos and Taiyi returned to the world.
All immortals bowed.
"Welcome back, Great Heavenly Lord."
Rowe stood within the highest heaven, watching a figure race upward from below.
A girl in flowing black robes, hair like black silk, eyes sharp with complaint.
Consort Yu.
White Emperor of the West, Queen Mother of the West, Heavenly Empress.
She stopped in front of him, lips pressed tight in practiced irritation.
"You are finally back," she said. "You are too slow."
Her mouth complained. Her eyes did not.
Rowe answered with a smile and drew her into an embrace.
Above the Thirty Six Heavens, chaos spread like breath.
The Heavenly Emperor returned.
He carried sun and moon, yin and yang.
He was Azure Heaven, Imperial Heaven, Heavenly Emperor, Taiyi, even Pan.
On that day, Rowe reforged the Thirty Six Heavens. No longer as a crude extension of his chaotic core, but as the manifestation of the Highest Heaven that hung beyond the world, qualified now to serve as a residence and a watchtower.
A place to observe.
A place to hunt for the kind of danger that could make him stronger.
The Highest Heaven was ready.
Because someone else had awakened.
"Aaaaa."
Mother Goddess Tiamat opened her eyes.
Her hair fell like seawater. She looked at Rowe, who had been waiting, and made a sound that was neither word nor animal cry. It was something older, closer to the beginning.
"Long time no see, Rowe."
"Long time no see," Rowe replied.
Around them, lava hardened. Water vapor condensed. Life stirred at the edge of possibility. Her sleep had been an ascent, and her awakening dragged the world upward with her.
Tiamat had stepped half a pace beyond ordinary Primordials.
Still a Primordial.
Still not beyond the planetary boundary.
Yet no longer merely the environment's ancient will. She now carried the power to create an environment of that level.
A creation authority.
A god of creation.
Rowe looked at her, and in his voice was something close to resignation.
"You surpassed me again."
"Aaaaa."
It is fine.
I will help you.
As you help me.
Tiamat, small enough to reach Rowe's chest, smiled. Rowe stared, then returned the smile.
That night, the Divine Land lay beneath pure moonlight.
A single ray of it slid westward like a blade.
Energy unfolded.
The Moon Cell opened.
Far away, in a great western nation whose capital inherited the bones of Greek culture, a voice spoke within a palace.
"Ah. What a beautiful moon."
Ink colored hair. A laugh that sounded like sanity turning itself inside out.
Caligula.
The Mad Emperor of Rome, driven beyond reason by the moon's favor.
In his eyes, a brilliant cube began to form, slowly, inexorably, like a verdict.
….
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