Chapter 287. Celestial Time Realm (3)
After hearing Taigong Wang introduce himself...
we didn’t try to talk.
"...!"
Arjuna immediately raised his bow and fired Brahmastra.
A projectile of light imbued with the power of the creator god Brahma swallowed Taigong Wang...
and a massive explosion erupted.
“HAAH!”
“YAAAAAH!”
Achilles hurled his spear with all his strength into the explosion.
At the same time, Sun Wukong leaped high into the air and brought the Ruyi Jingu Bang crashing down.
A consecutive barrage from S-rank Constellations.
Any ordinary existence would have been obliterated without leaving even bones behind.
But when the explosion faded...
Taigong Wang was still standing exactly as before.
Achilles’s spear...
and even Sun Wukong’s Ruyi Jingu Bang...
had failed to touch so much as a single hair on his body.
“Tch!”
Sun Wukong ripped out a handful of his own hair and threw it.
Hundreds of clones appeared.
Together with them, he moved in every direction and closed in on Taigong Wang...
striking hundreds of times at speeds invisible to the eye.
Arjuna and Achilles attacked alongside him.
"...!"
But the result was the same.
Taigong Wang simply stood in place.
None of the Constellations’ attacks could touch him.
“HAAAH!”
Lee Gyu, who had been waiting for an opening, secretly approached from behind and swung an axe.
It was useless.
Just like the others...
his attack stopped in empty space about one centimeter from Taigong Wang’s head.
“What the hell is this?!”
“It doesn’t even look like a barrier!”
“Is access itself being blocked...?”
Jason frowned as he observed Taigong Wang.
“This isn’t like any defensive barrier we’ve seen before.”
“It isn’t blocking attacks after they arrive.”
“It looks like anything trying to enter within one centimeter of him is being prevented from approaching at all.”
Then Jason looked at Princess Longji.
“Princess Longji, did Taigong Wang originally have an ability like this?”
“No.”
Princess Longji shook her head.
“Taigong Wang was never particularly exceptional at Taoist arts.”
“His greatest talent was military strategy.”
“Though... he did possess great potential.”
“Great potential?”
“It was believed that if he had enough time to train, he could eventually achieve greatness.”
“But after the war ended, Taigong Wang abandoned the path of immortality and remained in the human world.”
“So there should have been no further development.”
Princess Longji continued in a tense voice.
“But that assumes Taigong Wang later lived out an ordinary human lifespan and died.”
“If he survived for three thousand years like Daji and continued cultivating Taoist arts...”
“This isn’t Taoist arts, Princess Longji.”
Taigong Wang, who had remained silent until then...
finally spoke.
“I merely manipulated space-time.”
“Space-time?”
“That’s right.”
And immediately afterward...
every Constellation attacking Taigong Wang disappeared at once.
"...!"
Then, just as Daji had earlier...
they reappeared far away.
“What...?”
“What happened?!”
“That damn old man...!”
“What kind of bizarre technique is this?!”
Everyone was stunned.
They had never seen a technique that moved opponents somewhere else without so much as a finger twitch...
and without any detectable sign of activation.
“Taoist arts and magic are merely desperate methods invented by people to control the laws of the universe.”
Taigong Wang spoke calmly.
“If one can directly control the laws of the universe...”
“there is no reason to depend on such things.”
“Taigong Wang...”
Princess Longji glared at him.
“How did you obtain power like this?”
“Even three thousand years of cultivation shouldn’t make something like this possible.”
"..."
“And there are suspicions that you caused the Material Realm and Fantasy Realm to overlap...”
“and created the Constellation system.”
“What exactly were you trying to accomplish?”
“That is quite a lot of questions, Princess Longji.”
Hearing her...
Taigong Wang slowly nodded.
“You should have done this from the beginning.”
“Why attack first without even trying to speak?”
“W-What?”
Lee Gyu looked dumbfounded by Taigong Wang’s calm response.
“What are you talking about now...?”
“I revealed myself because I am willing to speak with you.”
Taigong Wang glanced toward Daji.
“Princess Longji and Daji should remember.”
“The war from three thousand years ago.”
The war from three thousand years ago.
The Shang-Zhou Revolution that destroyed Shang...
and at the same time, the Investiture War that enshrined immortals as gods.
“That war was a conflict among humans.”
“But it was also a war meant to conscript a portion of the immortals and invest them as gods for the sake of stabilizing the world.”
“Don’t romanticize it.”
Daji frowned.
“Your Chan Sect practically destroyed the Jie Sect.”
“You called it a war for the stability of the world...”
“but in reality, your faction drove out the Jie Sect and seized supremacy.”
At the time...
the immortals had been divided into two major factions.
The Chan Sect, to which Taigong Wang belonged, was composed mainly of immortals who had originally been human.
They considered themselves the orthodox path.
Meanwhile, the Jie Sect, which supported Wen Zhong, contained many immortals who originated from animals, plants, and other nonhuman beings.
The Chan Sect discriminated against them and often called them demons.
During the Investiture War...
the Chan Sect sided with Zhou.
The Jie Sect sided with Shang.
The two factions fought, and enormous numbers of immortals were invested as gods.
There were casualties among the Chan Sect too, including Princess Longji.
But because Taigong Wang, a member of the Chan Sect, directed the Investiture Plan...
it had never truly been fair.
“I won’t deny that matters developed in that direction, Daji.”
Taigong Wang replied without concern.
“The war itself was engineered by beings above us...”
“the gods of Heaven.”
“It was never an absolutely righteous war from the beginning.”
“Jiang Ziya.”
“Are you saying that war was wrong?”
“Why do you think I never returned to the immortal realm after the war ended?”
Daji looked caught off guard.
In Investiture of the Gods...
Taigong Wang had trained under Yuanshi Tianzun, leader of the Chan Sect, but had not yet become a true immortal.
He was ordered to descend into the human world and carry out the war.
Yet after the war ended...
he didn’t return to the immortal realm.
He stayed in the human world instead.
After that, he likely lived as a minister of Zhou, much like his historical counterpart in the Material Realm.
“I became disillusioned, Daji.”
“Disillusioned?”
“With the ugly side of the immortals I had respected for so long.”
“D-Don’t make me laugh!”
Daji shouted.
“You constantly came up with cowardly and underhanded schemes to steer the war exactly where you wanted!”
“And now you think you have the right to say something like that?!”
“Are you trying to excuse yourself by blaming the people above you now?!”
“Forget me!”
“If Wen Zhong heard you say that, he’d be so furious he’d probably die all over again!”
“Yes.”
“You are correct.”
Taigong Wang slowly nodded.
“That is precisely why...”
“I became disillusioned with myself too.”
“With the person who fought such a war without ever questioning it.”
“I only realized it after everything was already over.”
“Don’t give me that!”
“Then apologize to me!”
Daji raised her voice.
“Because of the curse you placed on me, I was forced to live as the wicked woman for three thousand years!”
“If you truly regret it, then apologize!”
“If you want an apology, I will apologize.”
“But... would that really mean very much?”
“What did you say...?!”
“Let us return to the subject.”
