ITVCFITB CHAPTER 117

 Chapter 117 — Ascension

The system weighed Luo Shuyu’s three questions.

It ranked them by importance:
(1) Where did it come from?
(2) Why was it destroying the original story world?
(3) What was in the original?

The first two were about itself; answer those and the third would follow. In all its missions, it had never been captured by a “native” of a book world. It must be the first. What had it done wrong? It had scanned years of Shen Mingyun’s memories and speech, no leaks. The terrifying part was: how did Luo Shuyu know, and how had he dug it out of Shen Mingyun’s scalp with surgical precision?

Terrifying, indeed.

The system still couldn’t figure out why it had lost to him. Luo Shuyu didn’t act like a transmigrator. Nothing he’d done violated the era’s logic. Even Li Mingjin’s military reforms and Gucheng’s growth, while advanced, remained within plausible bounds. By comparison, everything Shen Mingyun produced via the system was blatantly out of place. Set side by side, Luo and Li looked “reasonable”; Shen was the anomaly.

It began parsing the reasons it had failed to support the Fourth Prince.

When it stayed silent too long, Li Mingjin prodded the heat-scorched casing with a needle. “Do those questions really take that much thinking?”

The system, already feeling like meat on a cutting board, flinched. “I’m here. I’m thinking. Your questions are… foundational.”

“There’s nothing ‘foundational’ about it,” Luo Shuyu said evenly. “It’s your kind’s starting point.”

“Fine. From the top, then,” the system said. “At this point I can’t contact superiors. If a mission fails and I’m exposed, I’m a discarded piece. Both already happened. I’ve no reason to hide anything.”

“Talk,” Luo said. He suspected it couldn’t run because it had lost connection and failed its mission, meaning the Fourth Prince no longer had any path to the throne. That thought eased the tight coil in his chest. Without the system, Shen Mingyun and the Fourth Prince were declawed. Still, Luo and Li had never relied on external crutches. Insights were insights; strength must be one’s own.

“Your world,” the system began, “was originally a book.”

“A book?” Li Mingjin had been curious from the start what this thing was. The word hooked him.

“In your terms: you live inside a ‘story pamphlet’, a court-intrigue novel. Li Mingjin is the protagonist. He survives trials and… ultimately becomes emperor.” It didn’t elaborate on what hadn’t yet happened.

“And Shuyu?” Li asked.

“In that original, Luo Shuyu didn’t exist.”

The book Luo had seen after his death, then, wasn’t this “original.” Did that mean he belonged to another book?

Two books. Why two?

“What does that mean?” Li Mingjin pressed.

“In our time,” the system said, “there’s something called ‘derivative fiction.’ The original author grants permission; others write new stories with the same cast and setting. We villain-systems exploit those worlds, importing souls to achieve our objective.”

“What do you gain by helping a villain succeed?” Luo asked.

“Each system gets missions from Headquarters. We select a soul, insert them into an original or derivative world. Success earns us points and new assignments. Failure costs points. Without points, no upgrades. We get only three promotions in a lifetime. I’m telling you plainly because I can’t advance anymore. Most likely, Headquarters will delete me.”

Two civilizations, utterly different. Li Mingjin didn’t know how such a thing could be “deleted,” but water and fire clearly hadn’t worked.

“How do they destroy you?” Luo asked.

“We’re machines, robots. You won’t quite grasp it, but it doesn’t matter. We can traverse time-world nodes. Your ‘book world’ is one of many. The specifics lie far beyond your era. The short of it: my mission failed. I can’t threaten you now.”

Luo had read Shen Mingyun’s book; he understood enough to follow. Much else, he accepted he couldn’t. Decades, centuries, who knew how far apart their knowledge really was?

Still, some conclusions were clear:

— With no system, the Fourth Prince and Shen Mingyun couldn’t menace them again.
— Even with the system, they’d lost; now both were prisoners.
— The system’s words might be half-true at best; it wouldn’t be released.

“As long as you exist, you’re a risk,” Luo said at last. “We can’t destroy you. That’s problem enough.”

They moved on. Three immediate decisions loomed.

First: the Fourth Prince, designated villain and relentless rival couldn’t be allowed to live.

Second: Shen Mingyun, addicted to outside power and all too easy to puppeteer, couldn’t live either.

Third: the two children in Shen Mingyun’s household. The boy was already old enough to remember. If loyalists sought him out later, unrest would follow.

One more question nagged Luo, so he asked it: “As a male consort, Shen Mingyun shouldn’t have been able to carry children. Yet after one miscarriage he bore the second, then a third, like a woman. Why?”

“I can explain,” the system said.

“So it is related to you?”

“In the script from our world, the first child should have survived. Somehow it didn’t. As for the second, politics forced our hand. To secure imperial favor for the Fourth Prince, I… intervened.”

“What kind of intervention?”

“The two children were tools I slipped to Shen Mingyun, reclaimable items. If I’m deleted by Headquarters, they will disappear with me.”

“When will they take you?” Luo asked.

“I don’t know. The failure report needs to cross multiple time nodes. From your perspective, not even a day has passed.”

So it couldn’t “phone home” in real time, useful to know. Luo suddenly felt a pang for the children. Their arrivals had always been curiously convenient: the first born alongside the Crown Prince’s heir; the second just as Shen Mingyun fled toward Guiyan. All plotted by the system.

In other words, to complete its mission it would do anything, down to manufacturing lives as props. If Headquarters retrieved the system, the children would vanish on their own. One problem he wouldn’t have to solve by hand.

“Anything else?” Luo asked.

“That’s all, unless there’s something you want to know,” the system said. It clearly didn’t realize Luo Shuyu had relived a life; anything that hadn’t existed the first time likely belonged to the system’s handiwork.

They sealed the device in a rammed-tight copper jar. Then Luo and Li returned to the living world’s duties.

First, the late emperor’s funeral. For all his occasional feigned blindness, he had kept Great Xia steady. The rites had to be done and done well. This would be Li Mingjin’s first act before the throne.

Second, the accession. The court had just been shaken to its core. Some officials dead, some jailed; even the chancellor was in prison. The country could not be leaderless. He had to ascend quickly and steady the realm.

Li Mingjin simplified everything, down to the imperial robe being rushed overnight. No needless pomp. When the Minister of Rites tried to object about ancient ceremony, Mingjin cut him off. “Rituals can be weighty,” he said, “but not wasteful. If we cling to every old form, Great Xia will never change.”

Once the dust settled, the day came.

On the morning of the enthronement, Luo Shuyu fitted the coronet on Li Mingjin. Before he could step back, Mingjin pulled him in, holding him tight.

“Yuer,” he said, voice low, “I am emperor, so you are empress. Without you, there is no me. I’ve nothing else worthy to give, only this: from this day, we stand together. What’s mine is yours and Zhongzhong’s. We will always be a family.”

Luo laughed softly. “Why so sentimental all of a sudden? Of course we stay together.”

A maid entered, bearing an ornate set of imperial consort robes designed for a ger.

Luo blinked. “These are…”

Mingjin took his hand. “Come. Let’s stand in that place together.”

The enthronement and the investiture of the empress took place the same day, an unprecedented moment in Great Xia.

 PREVIOUS           TOC           NEXT