Chapter 35: Yukari's Slip of the Tongue
Kaguya Shinomiya was thoroughly Japanese, but she wasn't ignorant of the vast neighboring country. As the young lady of the Shinomiya Zaibatsu, she'd picked up a reasonable amount of knowledge about it—or at least had grown up hearing stories.
So when she saw Ying Zheng referring to himself with "We" and "Us"—
It clicked. Weren't those the self-referential pronouns used by Chinese emperors?
Was this newcomer actually an emperor?
And judging by that archaic manner of speech—
An ancient one, at that.
Kaguya-sama: This newcomer is definitely an emperor from Chinese history!
Kaguya-sama: I just don't know which one.
Kaguya-sama: Ying Zheng… It sounds familiar somehow!
We, Ying Zheng: Why do you all dare address Us by name?! We unified the Six Kingdoms! The Great Qin Empire swept all before it! We are an emperor whose achievements rival the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors! This is a capital offense!
We, Ying Zheng: The mere act of speaking Our name aloud is a crime punishable by beheading! Are you remnants of the Six Kingdoms? Have you hired sorcerers from beyond the borders to move against Us?
RawrSoFierce: @We, Ying Zheng — I'd suggest you read the Group Announcement, newcomer.
RawrSoFierce: It's the little red dot in the top-right corner. Tap it and read. Once you're done, you'll understand what kind of place you've entered.
RawrSoFierce: @Green Grasslands Wolf King — you should read it too.
Ryū felt it was absolutely necessary to steer this apparent First Emperor toward the Group Announcement before things escalated.
Even if the newcomer was an emperor, talking like that in the Dimensional Chat Group was a fast track to offending the heavy hitters.
For instance: offending the Admin.
He—the mighty Admin of the Dimensional Chat Group—had never once used that kind of imperious tone.
And now a brand-new member was out-flexing him in sheer verbal gravitas?
Was that tolerable?
Absolutely not. Immediate suppression required.
* * *
Inside the faintly sinister Wolf Castle on the Green Grasslands, the self-proclaimed Wolf King—Wolffy—wore an expression of uneasy bewilderment on his scarred, narrow face. A flicker of disbelief passed through his lupine eyes.
This "technology" that could infiltrate his consciousness without any side effects whatsoever—
It had this wolf—who was a genius at everything except catching sheep—genuinely shaken.
Wolffy was, by any measure, one of the premier scientists in his world.
Yet he couldn't even begin to reverse-engineer this "Dimensional Chat Group" in his head. And there appeared to be other people inside it, none of whom sounded anything like those little lambs.
"This isn't one of that old goat's inventions? Then who on earth made it?!"
As he muttered to himself, a chime sounded in his mind.
Someone called "RawrSoFierce" was telling him to check something called a Group Announcement.
In the top-right corner's little red dot?
Wolffy dove deeper into the chat group in his mind.
Sure enough—a little red notification dot in the top-right corner.
After a moment's hesitation, he tentatively tapped it.
If whoever was behind this had wanted to mess with him, they'd have done it already.
So it was probably safe. Probably.
"Communicates across dimensional planes? Dimensional Chat Group? Cross-world travel? Fantasy worlds? Group Quests? Files? What is all this?! Don't tell me the great Wolf King hasn't been pranked at all—I've actually joined some kind of cross-dimensional chat group? That's absurd!"
After reading through the nearly thousand-word Group Announcement, Wolffy's face was frozen in shock.
As one of the world's most accomplished scientists, he understood perfectly well that "technology" capable of bridging separate worlds was something he could never develop in a lifetime.
Because the more he learned, the more he realized how little he actually knew.
And now, a group that could communicate across dimensional planes had simply… appeared in front of him.
Unbelievable. Literally unbelievable.
If it all didn't feel so viscerally real, Wolffy would have assumed he was hallucinating from years of failing to catch a single sheep.
* * *
The person sharing Wolffy's bewilderment was the one who'd joined mere seconds after him: Ying Zheng.
At this moment, the man hailed as the greatest emperor in Chinese history was experiencing emotions so complex they defied description.
Shock still lingered on his face.
His world had sorcerers. It had warriors of terrifying martial prowess.
But communicating across dimensional planes?
That didn't sound like something mortals could achieve.
Ying Zheng's thinking might have been somewhat antiquated—he wasn't exactly wired for leaps of imagination. But as Emperor of Qin, he could tell something was profoundly off. The Group Announcement was written in language so plain that anyone with a functioning brain could understand it.
After reading it, Ying Zheng fell silent.
His mind churned, trying to digest this staggering revelation.
The shock on his face, however, was impossible to conceal.
"Have We… entered some gathering place of immortals? No—not all of them can be immortals. But surely there must be at least one among them. Or something akin to an immortal."
A twinge of regret surfaced.
Because he had, admittedly, run his mouth a bit just now.
If he'd accidentally offended an immortal—
That would be a very serious problem.
Before long, though, Ying Zheng exhaled in relief. Gazing around his empty bedchamber, he murmured, "Fortunately, someone told Us to read that… announcement… in time. Otherwise, had We offended an immortal, We do not know whether the entirety of Great Qin could withstand a single immortal's wrath."
"That 'RawrSoFierce' has the characters for 'Admin' beside his name, and this thing is called the 'Dimensional Chat Group.' Could he be the master of this group? If so, there is a strong possibility he is an immortal!"
Both newcomers—Ying Zheng and Wolffy—had fallen into contemplative silence.
They needed a moment to process.
Because the Dimensional Chat Group was simply too world-shattering a concept.
Wolffy had it slightly easier—he was a scientist, and his world was at least modern. His capacity to accept the impossible was a notch higher.
But Ying Zheng, who hailed from the Qin Dynasty?
He was the group's sole "ancient."
Kaguya-sama: Huh… The two newcomers suddenly went quiet?
Crazy Diamond: Probably still in shock?
Edward Newgate: Gurararara! Entirely possible. This old man was stunned for quite a while when he first entered the group.
Edward Newgate: The Dimensional Chat Group's very existence is world-shattering, after all!
The Eternally Seventeen-Year-Old Maiden: Ah! Now this one remembers. Ying Zheng—wasn't he that human from over two thousand years ago? Before this one came to Japan, I heard tell of a ruler by that name in the mortal world.
The Eternally Seventeen-Year-Old Maiden: Or rather… Japan didn't even exist as a country back then.
RawrSoFierce: You know, I think you just gave away your age…
The Eternally Seventeen-Year-Old Maiden: Ki… Kisama!!
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