Chapter 360
Chapter 361: Imperfect Things
Yu Sheng could tell now that places with outstanding people and strong Earth Spirit did not exist only in the Borderland. Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain clearly had plenty of talent too.
On the bright side, Immortal Qian Ji’s personality was easy to get along with, which made Yu Sheng relax. Immortal Yuan Ling had said the head elders of the other big sects were “old guys who only cared about cultivation.” Yu Sheng had thought they would all be rigid types. Seeing Immortal Qian Ji now, he felt that while Qian Ji was indeed focused on research and cultivation, he was not rigid at all.
Of course, talking to the First Elder of the Reclining Cloud Ten Halls meant the topic got sidetracked now and then, which was a tiny problem.
Thankfully, with Immortal Yuan Ling’s steady nudging, the conversation finally got back on track.
“Shocking, truly shocking,” Immortal Qian Ji said as he tilted his head back to look at the more-than-ten-meter-tall Assault Titans standing before them.
“We only removed its front and rear armor and did not touch its core,” Immortal Yuan Ling said from the side as he said: “You need to tell us what is inside.”
“No rush, no rush. Let me go up and take a look,” Immortal Qian Ji said.
Before he finished, this grand expert who fully treated an Automaton body as his own flesh lightly turned his neck. A moment later, with a few soft clicks, his entire head, along with a small section below the neck, detached and rose into the air. With a faint hum, it flew toward the Assault Titan’s Mechanism Core.
Next, a few small mechanical arms extended from below his head. One by one, fine metal joints moved as the arms climbed onto the Assault Titan’s chest assembly, examining closely among the dizzying gears and Talismanic Runes.
Seeing this, Irene almost jumped up. She grabbed Yu Sheng’s hair as she blurted out: “Mom, Progenitor of Dolls!”
“Hair,” Yu Sheng slapped away the Doll’s paw at once. He was startled by Immortal Qian Ji’s move too, but he still turned his head to ask Irene as he said: “Why are you bringing up the Progenitor of Dolls?”
Irene said with full confidence as she said: “Alice’s Doll rules. When you see someone’s head fall off, you shout ‘Progenitor of Dolls’ right away. That keeps your own head from falling off.”
Yu Sheng stared as he said: “What kind of nonsense is that.”
Just then, Immortal Qian Ji’s voice came from the chest of the body left on the ground as he said: “Yuan Ling, did you notice the various inscriptions inside this Automaton?”
“Of course,” Immortal Yuan Ling nodded as he said: “But the era name and place names written on them are unknown to anyone.”
“Unknown… indeed, I do not recognize them either. But did it not make you think of something?” Immortal Qian Ji said. His head slowly descended from midair, clicked back into place, and reconnected to the body.
“Tianyuan Year 127. ‘Tianyuan’…” he said as he went on: “The Grand Void Spiritual Axis now uses the Holy Calendar for year-counting, the same as Terra and the Borderland. Along with the Holy Calendar, we also use our own Grand Void Calendar. Do you remember the major revisions of the Grand Void Calendar recorded in the books?”
“Of course,” Immortal Yuan Ling nodded as he said: “Since the day history was restarted, the Grand Void Calendar has been in use. In the first hundred years, for many reasons, lots of errors appeared. We had three major revisions and four minor ones. After repeated adjustments it finally became usable as the official calendar on Youth Form to guide the seasons and farming, and it has been used to this day.”
“For many reasons… do you remember the main one?” Immortal Qian Ji asked.
Hearing this question, Immortal Yuan Ling’s expression turned solemn.
“It did not match the stars, it did not fit the Heavenly Dao cycle, and most important of all, the calendar had gaps,” he said.
“Yes. The stars did not match, the Dao cycles did not fit, and the calendar had gaps,” Immortal Qian Ji said slowly, the Mechanism Core in his chest ticking like it was calculating fast as he said: “If you speak plainly, the cause was the new and old worlds.”
Immortal Yuan Ling did not speak. He quietly raised his head to look at the mechanical Giants on the platform.
Immortal Qian Ji’s low, vibrating voice sounded beside him as he said: “When the heavens changed, the old ways to read the stars stopped working. When inheritance was cut off, many things handed down by the ancestors lost their roots. The Ancient Holy Spirit were mighty, but they still could not save everything. What could not be saved became holes in old books and breaks in the line of inheritance. It became ‘the calendar has gaps.’ The calendar was like this, and so was the method of naming years.”
Foxy blinked. She loved to learn and ask questions, and she tried hard to keep up, but now she realized she really could not understand. She could only poke Yu Sheng’s arm with her tail as she asked: “Benefactor, what are they talking about?”
Yu Sheng had also been confused at first, but he had learned many “secrets” of this world from Bai Li Qing. Now, linking those to the talk, he guessed the main point as he said: “You mean the inscriptions on these Assault Titans are recording information from the old world.”
“That is my guess,” Immortal Qian Ji turned his head. Although his face was made of metal and stone, it now carried a heavy and complicated look as he said: “Since you are an expert from the Borderland, you should know that all the heavens and worlds once faced a great calamity named ‘Annihilation.’ After the Annihilation, the worlds fell silent and died. The Ancient Holy Spirit fought with all they had and remade the cosmos from the ashes. Only then did people speak of the new world and the old world.”
He went on as he said: “But that was still a disaster where all the heavens and worlds perished. Even when remaking the cosmos, many things could not be saved. Today those things are the parts that do not match up and the missing blanks in the history, technology, and inheritance of many civilizations. Our Grand Void Spiritual Axis is one of the most complete in terms of inheritance, second only to the Academy on Terra, yet even so we still have many things about the old world that we cannot figure out.”
“The era name ‘Tianyuan’ has never appeared in the ancient books that survived,” he said as he continued: “In fact, we do not even know what kind of calendar Youth Form used in the old world. Even the calendar we use to guide farming was cobbled together after history was restarted and the cosmos reopened. Now this mechanical Giant’s inscription mentions the era name ‘Tianyuan.’ By common reasoning, I believe it was a calendar used on Youth Form in the old world, at least one node in that calendar.”
“By that logic,” he added as he said: “The ‘Supreme Radiance Valley Goldforge Pavilion’ recorded on that inscription should also be a place that existed only in the old world, and the artisan Song Xing Zhi is probably an ancestor from the old world.”
Yu Sheng did not speak for a while.
He did not even know what to feel at this moment as he thought: [Do I marvel at the grand feat of remaking the world, or at the Grand Void Spiritual Axis’s recorded history and the lost old world, or should I think hard about why these Assault Titans that seem to carry old-world information appeared in an Otherworld in the desert on Nethermoon.]
While Yu Sheng sank into thought, Immortal Yuan Ling suddenly broke the silence as he said: “There should be other grounds for this, right?”
He looked at Immortal Qian Ji as he said: “I sent you the Mechanism Core images of the Assault Titan yesterday. You rushed over right away. Did you already notice something from those images?”
“I won’t hide it,” Immortal Qian Ji nodded, then raised his hand. No one knew where he took it from, but he produced a Wooden Box. He opened it to reveal several refined Jade Chips, each smaller than half a palm.
He placed the Jade Chips in his hand. Soft glows rose from his palm, and with a few clear chimes the chips floated up and circled him. Light spilled from the Jade Chips and traced huge shapes in the air.
They were dazzling projections of many different “Assault Titans,” all in various sizes and models.
“These are large mechanical puppets forged by our Reclining Cloud Ten Halls. I have arranged them by model and use. The ones that fit into the ‘Assault Titans’ class are these,” he said.
As Immortal Qian Ji spoke, the projections shifted position and size in midair. Some images split apart to show certain details.
These clearly were not secrets from the core techniques. They were only basic demonstrations, yet from Immortal Yuan Ling’s serious expression, Yu Sheng judged these materials were enough to prove a lot.
Immortal Qian Ji’s voice continued as he said: “This is the Iron Garrison class of Assault Titans. Its Mechanism Core comes from the same lineage as the Tiger Wolf class. You should be able to see that this kind of Mechanism Core is not like the cores of other Assault Titans, but it does look somewhat similar to the thing inside the Assault Titan you dug up from the Otherworld.”
“For a long time, the original design of this core has been a mystery,” he said: “Of course, I know how to build it. I even understand its principles and all the technical details very well. Yuan Ling, you know my skill. There is no mechanism I cannot unravel. But understanding principles and techniques is one thing. Tracing its source is another.”
“It is like how our Grand Void Calendar had ‘gaps,’” he said as he went on: “The mechanism arts of the Reclining Cloud Ten Halls have always had a small ‘gap’ too. My master, my ancestor, and I, three generations, filled that gap. But what we filled was the part that is the ‘art.’ What we could not fill was the art’s ‘source,’ and the people who stood at that source.”
Immortal Qian Ji slowly turned, raised his head, and looked past the floating projections at the ancient Assault Titan.
“Supreme Radiance Valley Goldforge Pavilion, Song Xing Zhi,” he said softly as he added: “At last, we have the first name to fill in.”