Chapter 75: Jade: Is This a Nouveau Riche or True Substance?
"Sit."
Rekka pointed the feather of his pen toward a nearby chair, not bothering to lift his head. His attention remained entirely anchored to the messy stack of papers scattered across his desk, the parchment completely covered in dense, frantic handwriting.
Long Night Moon ignored the offered seat. Instead, her quiet footsteps carried her straight to the edge of the mahogany desk. She leaned forward slightly, her calm gaze sweeping over the chaotic scrawl of text.
"Ferryman."
She read the bolded header softly, her voice cool and measured in the quiet room.
"Sailing aboard the battleship named Hyperion through the Sea of Quanta, rescuing survivors from worlds on the brink of destruction."
"Correct." Rekka finally looked up, twirling the pen between his fingers with practiced ease. "Are you here to ask me why I'm suddenly doing this?"
"No." Long Night Moon shook her head, her expression unreadable. "I'm simply here to see you."
Crafting a fabricated identity to salvage dying stars aligned perfectly with the underlying logic of the Path of Enigmata. Providing those poor, desperate souls with a non-existent sanctuary—as long as they genuinely believed it was real, that illusory World Bubble would take root in the imaginary space and grow into something tangible.
Because of this, the boundaries of this person's existence were becoming increasingly blurred.
As long as a story was sung and recorded, the creations of the Enigmata could drag physical form out of absolute nothingness. Even if they remained fundamental lies, under the right specific circumstances, a lie could become far more indestructible than the truth itself.
After a brief moment of silence, Long Night Moon shifted gears, offering professional, pragmatic advice.
"Are you entirely sure you want to keep using this format? Manually controlling that puppet every single time to physically travel to one doomed world after another? The efficiency of that method is simply too low."
Rekka paused, his pen halting its spin. He tapped his chin thoughtfully. "What do you suggest then?"
"You should completely abstract the concept of the Ferryman," she explained, her tone analytical. "No fixed appearance. No fixed voice. No fixed method of arrival. It could be a stranger stepping out of an alleyway, a sudden gust of wind, a blinding beam of light, or anything else. The physical form doesn't matter. What matters is the trigger—the sheer, overwhelming desire to escape their dying world must be the catalyst that summons you."
Rekka blinked, a slow, mischievous grin spreading across his face. "Wow, isn't that a bit devious?"
He snapped his fingers. "Oh, so like good ol' Ultraman Tiga, right? You can transform with light, you can transform without light, and you just leave giant stone statues lying around everywhere."
"Indeed," Long Night Moon replied, ignoring the specific cultural reference but grasping the core concept. "If you have to manually pilot the Hyperion across exact coordinates every time you want to save someone, even with an army of clones, you physically cannot handle every single apocalyptic event happening across the galaxy every second. When someone looks to the sky and develops a desperate wish to escape, this story should automatically generate within their world."
Rekka pushed his chair back and stood up, his eyes gleaming with inspiration.
"Then let's set the trigger as light. As long as the very last shred of obsession with survival exists in that doomed world, the Hyperion will tear its way out of the light."
"What if there is no light?" she challenged.
"Mentioning the word 'light' in their prayers counts too."
"Then you need to structure the conceptual rules like this... and adjust the imaginary anchor like this..." Long Night Moon leaned over the desk, pointing at specific paragraphs and feeding Rekka a rapid-fire stream of ideas. The two of them huddled over the papers, looking exactly like a pair of master thieves plotting a galaxy-wide heist.
"Mm, yeah, that's much better," Rekka muttered, scribbling furious corrections over his previous draft.
After a few minutes, he set the pen down with a satisfying click and looked at her. "Did you come here tonight specifically to be my conceptual consultant?"
"Didn't I already say?" Long Night Moon glanced at him sideways, her eyes softening just a fraction. "I'm simply here to see you. And... to make absolutely sure you don't accidentally create something catastrophically dangerous again and drag March 7th into the crossfire."
"And your professional conclusion?"
"It's safe. Continue weaving your web," she said, straightening her posture. "But remember this: once a lie gathers too many believers, it will inevitably grow its own flesh and blood."
Rekka smiled, a confident, knowing look in his eyes. "That is also within my calculations."
Far away, in the freezing atmosphere of Jarilo-VI, the massive aetherial crystal barrier shimmered with the heavy, golden light of Preservation.
At least for now, the Interstellar Peace Corporation representatives hadn't breathed a single word about the planet's massive historical debt since setting foot in Belobog. Instead, they were offering nothing but warm smiles, polite greetings, and deep concern for the city's welfare.
Jade, however, found herself experiencing a considerable amount of internal shock. She stared at the crude, rumbling furnaces scattered around the city, watching the people of Belobog casually use the physical manifestation of the Amber Lord's power for basic residential heating.
"Lady Supreme Guardian, I assume your faith in the Preservation must be truly indestructible," Jade remarked, her tone perfectly polished, though her eyes betrayed a flicker of disbelief.
"Naturally," Bronya nodded, her posture regal and uncompromising against the biting wind. "It is solely under the protection of the Preservation and the unwavering will of our people that Belobog has survived the crushing pressure of the Antimatter Legion and the Eternal Freeze until now."
Jade maintained her polite smile, but internally, she felt completely thrown off balance. She couldn't quite read this place at all.
If you wanted to talk about the Preservation, this frozen city was indeed steeped in it.
But was this really the Preservation?
It didn't look like the Preservation she knew.
The citizens here were literally scooping up the imaginary energy of the Path of Preservation and using it to boil their morning water.
Was it... truly this extravagant?
Generally speaking, this kind of absurd behavior only happened when uneducated scavengers mistook divine minerals blessed by the Preservation for cheap coal. Jade was absolutely certain that this specific mineral—geomarrow—was never meant to be tossed into a furnace and burned. Before Jarilo-VI lost contact with the wider galaxy centuries ago, it was famous across the cosmos specifically for its geomarrow deposits.
Once upon a time, the very first interstellar visitors had flocked to this icy rock in aggressive pursuit of that exact ore. Those crystal-clear minerals contained the potent lifeblood capable of driving massive industrial complexes, their amber reflections perfectly mirroring the divine radiance of Qlipoth.
Although geomarrow technically functioned as a high-quality fuel, seeing it shoveled into cast-iron heaters made Jade feel a deep, visceral twitch in her chest.
It felt like watching a spendthrift.
A massive, unhinged spendthrift.
Especially since, ever after Rekka had brought his hammer down upon the planet earlier, the baseline purity of Jarilo-VI's geomarrow had skyrocketed to absurd levels.
In Jade's calculating eyes, the people of Belobog were currently no different from lunatics chopping up priceless, antique mahogany furniture to use as firewood for a barbecue.
She genuinely wondered if this frozen city possessed true, hidden substance, or if they were just acting like pure, ignorant nouveau riche. The sheer cognitive dissonance made an elite IPC executive like Jade feel uncharacteristically unsure of herself.
Because just a dozen system hours ago, the literal divine form of the Preservation had personally manifested in the sky and specifically forged an impenetrable aetherial crystal barrier for this tiny planet. That event alone became the most confusing factor in Jade's calculations—this place truly believed in the Preservation, and their faith seemed terrifyingly pure, yet they treated its gifts like common dirt.
"I must say, Lady Supreme Guardian," Jade said, turning back to face Bronya, her smile tightening just a fraction. "Your specific method of using geomarrow has... well, it has certainly been an eye-opener."
"For the past several hundred years, Belobog has been trapped in the extreme Eternal Freeze caused by the Stellaron," Bronya replied smoothly, her voice carrying the weight of her city's harsh history. "We lost all contact with the outside world. To keep the citizens in this city from freezing to death in their sleep, this was a strictly necessary measure."
"Of course, of course... choices made for the sake of basic survival are certainly beyond reproach," Jade conceded, dipping her head gracefully. "But now that the Stellaron problem has been resolved and the barrier of the Preservation has risen to protect you once again, continuing this crude method is a massive waste of highly valuable resources."
Jade turned her gaze toward the bustling, snow-dusted street.
"The Interstellar Peace Corporation is more than willing to provide the most advanced technical support available in the galaxy. We can help Belobog establish a brand-new, highly efficient energy conversion system to maximize the true value of your geomarrow. Not only will it permanently solve your heating issues, but it will also allow Belobog to immediately rejoin the galactic trade network."
"Belobog is currently in a fragile state of reconstruction. Receiving advanced assistance from the IPC is naturally a good thing," Bronya said, her eyes narrowing slightly. "But according to standard IPC practice, such generous technical support usually comes with a corresponding price tag. I wonder... what exactly does the Corporation hope to obtain from Jarilo-VI in return?"
Jade chuckled softly, the sound like clinking coins.
"The price is quite reasonable, I assure you. I merely hope to obtain the exclusive mining rights for a very small portion of the deep-crust geomarrow veins, and permission to establish a permanent IPC branch office here in the city. This would be a highly lucrative win-win situation for both of us."
Bronya fell silent, the cold wind whipping at her coat as she fell into deep thought.
If this conversation had happened just a few weeks ago, faced with such an overwhelming proposal from a galactic superpower, the Supreme Guardian might have been forced to compromise out of sheer desperation and a lack of use.
But things were different now. Just a dozen system hours ago, the Amber Lord had personally appeared to build a massive, glowing wall around Belobog, leaving behind very clear, obvious instructions.
"Allow me to decline this proposal for the time being."
Bronya lifted her chin, her voice ringing out clear and absolute over the howling wind. With the literal Aeon of Preservation standing firmly behind her, she finally had the confidence to say no.
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