Ming Dynasty, New Rome, and Infinite Divine Machine

"No, no, no. We have also worked with the King of Rome. He is a very talented man, and his talent matches his gifts. Otherwise, we wouldn't be communicating in Aurora here and not avoiding him."

It was a bit awkward for these people to communicate in Aurora, the language of research, instead of their native language. After all, Shangluo was the only one who didn't understand Latin.

"Don't worry about me." Shangluo replied, "I have a translator here too."

Although he doesn't know how to do it, he has Tianyi Guiren, but he has never used it. After all, he just distracted himself to translate. Apollonia lacks everything now, but not mind.

"Your Excellency, I believe this is necessary etiquette. This is the proper courtesy to a monarch - even if the monarch is a foreigner."

Shangluo almost forgot about this. To them, Shangluo, as the King of Rome, was also a monarch. Perhaps to the majority of Romans, Shangluo's identity was unknown. But these frontline internal guards knew that after the Golden Branch incident, Shangluo had become a monarch with legitimacy that could directly compete with Apollonia.

The two were the "Sons of Heaven" of Rome and Greece respectively, representing the sacrificial rights of the two Roman main ethnic groups. On the contrary, Victoria's power came from the secular government and governance tradition of Rome, and was no longer related to the traditional sacrificial rights.

This is also because the "universal church" has declined within Rome. Unlike the technological barbarians who regard the universal church as the spokesperson of God, the essence of the universal church is just a reorganization of the original Roman Church in accordance with the "Orthodox liturgy" by Emperor Theodosius I in 380 AD, which was selected from a series of religions such as Mithraism and authorized by the winning sect at the Council of Nicaea.

In other words, for Rome, the "universal church" was a title attached to the empire, a political tool established to unify thoughts, and a continuation of the Pantheon. The Romans' general understanding of this foreign religion was similar to "Buddhism in the Tang Dynasty." It was important, but not that important.

Now that the universal church is unable to provide Cypernia's ultimate salvation, theocracy has returned to ancient traditions. The Roman and Greek kings, the most legitimate rulers of their respective nations, are a kind of priest-king—objectively, they could also be called witch-kings, as this is rooted in witchcraft.

"Oh right." At this point, Shangluo suddenly remembered something: "Since I'm the King of Rome, can I get the prophecy Apollonia made when she was three years old? I want to see what it is all about."

[Eh? Do you really have to watch this? No! That happened when I was a kid. It seems really embarrassing!]

"In principle, it is possible." Titus answered according to Apollonia's cry, "But you can't see it directly. Because the record is the top secret of the Oracle, and there is no electronic file of the original text. If you want to see it, you can only go to the Oracle's archives. And..."

He hesitated.

"And there is some special reason which prevents me from looking it up?"

"Yes. As an operator of the Oracle and a warrior of Lady Apollonia, I understand the rules of the Oracle. From the perspective of confidentiality, this is a huge secret, but with your confidentiality level, there is no doubt that you can view it. However, whether you can view it specifically requires the Apollo Cult's priests to make their own judgment."

【Ah, a bunch of annoying old guys. They won't agree. 】

“Was it difficult for them to agree?”

Titus nodded. "The opinions of the priesthood tend to be conservative—there's a slippery slope that can't be mentioned."

"How to say?"

"You know, the 'Rome' in the Roman Empire actually refers to the Roman city-state in Italy. In our mythology system, the Roman legitimacy comes from Aeneas, the last descendant of Troy, and the direct ancestors are the brothers Romulus and Remus, the "Wolf Twins". Even in this mythology system, Rome is the mortal enemy of Greece and the remnant of Troy. In fact, Rome unified the entire Pan-Hellenic civilization as a conqueror. However, in the final analysis, Greece is Greece and Rome is Rome. The Apollo sect actually holds a Greek-centered ideology, because Rome does not exist in Apollo's prophecy."

"I remember hearing you mention it. I didn't expect to run into a tough guy today."

【So this is a slide that cannot be touched. In the eyes of the Oracle, there are no Romans, only Greeks. The Greeks can even be cut out. Alexander can be cut out first because he is a Macedonian mountain barbarian. Depending on the situation, Sparta can sometimes be cut out because they are clearly foreign conquerors. Even Athens can be cut out because Athens abuses citizenship. 】

"What about themselves?"

[Delphi does not grant citizenship. All the people in Delphi are clergy, strictly selected from the entire Greek world - the selection range does not include Rome. However, they are not an exception. In fact, the Senate is also dominated by Roman nobles - because it is difficult for Greek city-states that practice citizen politics to enter the Roman system. ]

"You guys are living a decent life here. But Rome is about to fall, how can we not be frank with each other? But I'm too busy now, I'll deal with them after I finish dealing with things here - and, as for your matters. Captain Lu has already told you, right?"

"He said he heard there was some nourishing beef."

Chapter 1158 Absolute Loyalty

"."

"He also said he wanted to protect this man. So are we going to the cells now?"

"It seems that he didn't actually tell me the specific details. Maybe he was afraid that you would run away."

Shangluo knew that Lu Huaiyang looked cunning, but in fact he was not honest at all. After all, he was not a good person to be able to sit in the position he is in today. In order to make the other party perform the task, he must have only picked out some things that could be said. As for the things that could not be said, most of them were not mentioned at all.

"So, what exactly is this mission?"

"It is true that we are protecting him, but we are not asking you to protect him in a cell. We are asking you to protect him in Edo Castle."

Shangluo planned to send Jingyi back, and that was the plan for the mission. After knowing that Xufu might have the intention of "luring him into a certain place step by step", Shangluo planned to get his wind first. He wanted to know what Xufu would do if he did not push forward as he had thought before, but sent someone in to find out what happened in Edo. He wanted to get more information from Edo, which was shrouded in fog.

This activity is quite dangerous, Shangluo does not intend to let the Jinyiwei go. After all, Xu Fu seems to have hidden a lot of things, some of which can only be dealt with by Fu Yuanshan himself. Ordinary Jinyiwei only have the cultivation level of Qi training period, or even less than Qi training period. After all, Xu Fu is an old monster who has lived for 2000 years. If you underestimate the 2000 years of time, you may pay a heavy price.

——However, despite the danger, there are still very useful, tough and durable Romans. Although they are all short-lived, they cannot be killed before their fate comes, just like copper peas that cannot be chewed.

Of course they had to be sent on such a dangerous mission. After all, even if they were killed, they could turn into a gust of black wind and come back to life, just like the minions of the devil who could never be killed in adventure stories.

"So Her Majesty Victoria called us here for this mission?"

Another advantage of the Roma Interior Guards is that they are extremely fast. As soon as Victoria issued the order, they arrived at the scene in less than 15 minutes, which is as fast as the fire brigade responding to the call.

"So, I'm counting on you." Victoria looked at him, "Although I know this is also a sacrifice for you, and it does put you in danger, but..."

"Your Majesty, there is no need to say more." Titus covered his face, "We. We should have died long ago."

"Huh? Why?" They were now communicating in Zhendan language, and Victoria thought she had misheard or the other party had said it wrong.

"We should have fought to the death long ago! Your Majesty. We were not going to die, but we had to witness the great Millennium Empire collapse in our generation - no one wants to be recorded in history with such a name. However, the various branches of the empire fought each other for their own interests, so that no one gave us orders that were really worth executing.

"In the Golden Bough incident, we all intended to implicate ourselves. We repeatedly stressed this to all parties, but no matter whether it was the Oracle, the Palace of Muses, or the Senate, they were all unwilling to take any risks. They were only willing to enforce the existing rules and must ask "outsiders" to solve the problem. I felt that, since it had come to this, it wouldn't matter if we broke in and pinned the Forest King to the ground. We wouldn't die anyway."

"I think it's because no one is willing to take the risk of making a decision." Victoria shook her head. "As long as everyone follows the routine, even if catastrophic consequences occur, the responsibility cannot be placed on a specific person. But as long as one person issues an order like you said, he will definitely be held responsible for it."

As she spoke, she looked at Shangluo: "What happened here has made me start to reflect on myself. Why is Zhendan willing to let Shangluo take the initiative to take action? And Shangluo actually dared to take action?"

"To be honest, it's because I have someone to hold up the sky if it falls," Shangluo replied. "Of course, my own decisiveness is involved. But everyone knows that Daozu will ultimately back me up. They all think that because Daozu thinks I'm cautious, my caution can be trusted—but in reality, because I'm cautious, I can be careless."

"You're right. Maybe I was just too careless, so I have to be more cautious." Victoria looked at the ceiling. "Now that I think about it, I wonder if I've missed a lot of things. Did I really do something wrong?"

"No, Your Majesty." Titus lowered his head. "If there is any fault, it is our fault. We should be like those righteous men in the pre-Qin period, doing things that cannot be done on behalf of the lord. We should be the Lin Xiangru who asked the King of Qin to beat the drum for the King of Zhao, and we should have crashed our heads into the Heshi Bi and died. Now that the empire has fallen to this point, it is all my fault that our loyalty is not absolute enough. We do not have the determination to disobey orders for the sake of the empire. It is this kind of disloyalty that is the real loyalty. Leave this matter to us, and we will definitely find out the information about Xu Fu."

Tenkamaru returned to the port, just as it had been when it left.

"I still can't believe it. How did you manage to repair this ship? There were clearly hundreds of steel nails hammered into it."

"Let me tell you." Titus lowered his voice, "Actually, the nails are still there. There was no repair at all. We just used magic to make the ship sailable temporarily."

Titus didn't know what a mirage was, but he saw the process of casting the spell. The battleship, which was riddled with holes, was covered with an illusion by the mirage.

"However, we don't have much time." Titus reminded, "This magic doesn't seem to be stable. We should go eat healthy beef as soon as possible."

"Healthy beef? Is this a code word?" Ii hadn't realized what was happening yet. Both sides wanted his life, and he was already numb. Anyway, as long as he didn't betray the shogunate, he would listen to whoever held the gun.

"Well, what I mean is, we need to know the location of Xu Fu."

"I understand." Ii nodded. "As long as it doesn't harm the general, I will do it. As long as you can let the general go. The general, he is still a child, he knows nothing. This is all the fault of the mastermind. Time and time again, the mastermind has made us die meaninglessly. I don't know what he is going to do."

"There's this?" Titus didn't know what happened before. "You said Xu Fu wanted you to die?"

Titus keenly entered the state of attacking the level, looking for the rules that existed around him.

"He sent us to certain death time and again, leaving us with no power to fight back and no choice but to take the beating in front of Master Wang. I don't know what he's going to do."

"Ah!" Titus slapped his head suddenly, "I know what Xu Fu is going to do. Xu Fu wants to show: absolute loyalty. He wants to show his absolute loyalty of allowing the king to whip him without fighting back. This is his way of expressing his meaning. So this is the rule!"

"He's going to use our lives to bring this message?"

"Maybe. As a scholar from the pre-Qin period, his way of thinking is different from that of people today. This is the performance art of the scholars from the pre-Qin period! I read in a book that people at that time liked to do this. Or maybe he doesn't regard you as human beings, but just as a part of his body - but since there is such a guess, I probably know that I should test Xu Fu in this way. If he is really absolutely loyal, then he would be able to hold back and not fight back no matter what happens."

Chapter 1159 The Current Situation in Edo

"That Xu Fu, actually used us as sacrifices?" Ii, who was deeply hurt and almost lost his life, was extremely angry. Although he was less than 40 years old, he was born into a cattle-raising family and was already a powerful figure in the shogunate. In the past, he could tolerate being threatened, but now someone came to "protect" him.

Although it was not real protection, but more like surveillance than protection, this minimal protection also made him feel relieved.

Titus was very sensitive to changes in his surroundings. He could sense that the guy next door had let go of his emotions, as if he had broken some rules:

"What kind of days have you been through?"

"Someone is watching me! They're controlling me!"

"How do they control you? How do they monitor you? How many people do they have?"

"Everywhere! Anyone around me with unknown origins could be a spy. Ten years! Everywhere! Everywhere! Do you know how I've been spending these ten years?!"

"I don't know, but I can kind of understand it."

Aurora is not his mother tongue, and the two sides only use Aurora as an intermediary language for communication. When expressing emotions in a language other than the mother tongue, it is usually discounted. But this strong emotion has penetrated the barrier of the mother tongue and is expressed directly.

His whole body was numb.

"Even though I'm your observer, I can understand your strong unwillingness. If you can explain it in more detail, I might be able to help you with some guidance from the perspective of an observer."

"Why would you care about that?"

"What I care about is how this mechanism works. Because you can monitor everyone at one time, or you can monitor some people all the time. But no one can monitor everyone all the time, because monitoring itself requires 'people' to carry out. So if he monitors you, there must be a reason."

"No, no, no! You may have made a mistake. Not only me, but all the warriors around me were under surveillance. As long as we disobeyed an order, our heads would be screwed off and thrown out like a scrapped screw. As far as I know, I was the only one who escaped, and that was because the adults of Zhendan were present. In Xu Fu's eyes, we are no different from spare parts and can be replaced at will. Even those peasants seem to be more important than us."

"Farmers are more important than you? Are they?"

"Yes. Xu Fu was very caring towards the peasants. He distributed the shogunate's land to the landless peasants for cultivation and arranged work for them during the slack season so that no one could rest. Everyone worked very hard, but we haven't seen anyone starve to death for a long time."

"But I see that everything around here is in a state of desolation." Titus saw it at a glance - after docking at Edo Port, the place looked like it had been hit by a meteorite, with ruins everywhere and not even a single person in sight.

Only the empty concrete buildings on the street remained intact, but they were also charred black by the smoke and fire. As for the wooden houses behind the concrete buildings, they had already turned to ashes.

He had heard a briefing on Edo before the operation. It was said that Edo was a large city with a population of 900 million, and its appearance should be no less than any other large city in the world. It was only 50 years older than Yujing, and its scale was even larger and more prosperous than many cities in Rome.

Titus had come with the intention of visiting, thinking that maybe he could eat some nourishing beef right away - but now, let alone cows, there wasn't even a stray dog to be seen, and it was impossible for him to make his own health-preserving soup.

He also wanted to visit because Shangluo mentioned that he wanted to burn the city to ashes, and he wanted to see if he could get some souvenirs. But there was no need to burn the city at all, because there was nothing here except ashes.

"What the hell is wrong with this place?"

“There was a fire here.”

"Isn't it normal to encounter fires? Where can there be no fires? I know that the houses in Edo are made of wood, so they can be burned down. Not only fires, but also earthquakes and tsunamis can easily destroy houses. It's just a matter of rebuilding a house after it's destroyed. Why is it abandoned like this?"

"Because Xu Fu thought it was not worth it. It was not worth it - God, our history, our culture, our life, in his eyes, there were only three words 'not worth it'. Xu Fu hated merchants. He thought Edo Castle was a city built by merchants and should have been de-urbanized long ago. It was not demolished before because the cost of demolition was not worth it. Now he is destroying Edo and abolishing the city because it is not worth it." He believes that there is no need to maintain the existence of Edo Castle, and there is no need to rebuild it. Edo Castle should be de-urbanized and return to its original wasteland. "

"What about the people? What about the people who live here? Weren't there originally 900 million people here?"

"In Chiba. To the east of Edo Castle, Xu Fu established the 'Chiba Industrial City'. He believed that business was the least important of the four classes of people: scholars, farmers, merchants and artisans. Japan already had enough scholars and farmers, but lacked industry. So he took advantage of the fall of Edo Castle to reorganize the Chiba Industrial City and enclosed a square area in Chiba City with a huge city wall. He let everyone live in solid houses, so they no longer had to worry about earthquakes, tsunamis and fires."

"Isn't this great? I've been there to visit."

"No, we can't go. Xufu prohibits anyone from moving across regions. I can only stay in Edo."

"But isn't Edo gone?" Titus asked in surprise, "It was clearly him who ordered the destruction of Edo Castle."

"Edo is indeed gone. But he didn't give me the order to move, so I could only wait in Edo Castle. It's that simple - without his order, I dared not move at all. You have seen the consequences of moving. If the royal division hadn't been there, my head would have been screwed off like a screw."

"Then it seems that Qianye is Xu Fu's treasure. What is in Qianye?"

"There are his assembly lines. Xu Fu likes assembly lines. There are also his chariots, his crossbows, and the super crossbow-class battleships used to launch the crossbows. He wants to use the super crossbow-class battleships to hunt dragons. Those battleships are all in the port."

"Then why didn't Xu Fu deploy those warships?"

"Because... I don't know either. Xu Fu was preparing for a war, and I thought he was preparing for this war. It wasn't until he sent me out with the only remaining shogunate warships that I realized that it was not the war Xu Fu was preparing for. The war he was preparing for might be related to the iron tower."

"Iron Tower? You mean the red and white one in the east?"

"Yes. He said that the tower can receive information from the enemy across the ocean. He said the enemy is coming soon, and all of us must obey his orders and be prepared."

Chapter 1160 Chiba Industrial City

"The fate of not giving orders is to be obeyed."

"Head twisted off?" Titus thought for a moment, "I understand now. The rule here is that you can only do things with Xu Fu's orders, and without his orders you must stay where you are?"

"That's it," Ii agreed. "That's all I know."

"Then let me propose a hypothesis - suppose you will starve to death if you stay where you are, and you will die if you disobey orders. Both will lead to death, so what will you choose?"

"I will choose to stay where I am. Because the shadowy observer is more terrifying than death."

"Now, everything is clear. I am quite sure what your monitor is."

"What is it?"

"Is it his shadow?" Shangluo asked on the phone.

"Yes, Lord King of Rome. I am now certain that Xu Fu is using his own shadow to monitor him. Do you have such magic?"

"Do we have it?" Shangluo asked Fu Yuanshan.

"As far as I know, no - but what I know is only a small part of the magic. There are countless magic spells in the past, and it is not surprising to use shadows to cast spells. I think this may itself be a kind of nightmare technique. Xu Fu detained their souls to deal with them."