PGVCW 85

Playing God in Various Catastrophic Worlds

Chapter 85: The Ancestral Recognition

When the black bear began to weep, Xia Wang'an felt entirely in her element.

Strangers weeping in her presence constituted a script with which she was profoundly familiar.

Under most circumstances, it involved her gripping her blade while a crowd wept opposite her; immediately following a minor skirmish, a crowd wept opposite her; or during her archaeological excavations of ancient tombs, a crowd wept opposite her.

Therefore, confronted with the black bear's tears, she executed a practiced maneuver, drawing her blade and executing a single sweeping arc toward the space behind the beast.

To state it without exaggeration, the Yunxing personnel distinctly witnessed the manifestation of true sword qi.

When Yunxing military armaments fired, they naturally generated luminous signatures—such as the long-range anti-shield cannonades and plasma torpedoes mounted upon starships, whose launch plumes invariably flashed brilliant illumination to warn adversaries that death was inbound.

Yet, how could an archaic, primitive cold weapon project visible luminosity?

Every dispatched soldier possessed extensive battlefield credentials, qualifying them as seasoned combat veterans; yet facing this solitary slash of sword qi, they confronted an abyss of terrifying might, causing the fur across their entire bodies to instantly stand on end.

That represented the instinctive biological reflex when confronted with mortal peril.

In that fleeting fraction of a second, the sword qi bypassed the assembled assembly entirely, striking a colossal meteorite hovering in the distance.

That meteorite—dwarfing any military starship by a factor of over a hundred—shattered into countless fragments. Immediately afterward, as if an inner catalytic force erupted throughout its core, within a mere dozen seconds, the entire mass disintegrated into fine cosmic dust.

The military personnel: [...]

Granted, they possessed the technological firepower to shatter that meteorite; however, doing so required a coordinated barrage, necessitating at least three starships locking coordinates simultaneously to concentrate cross-fire.

Yet Xia Wang'an had achieved the feat with a casual flick of her wrist, utilizing a cold weapon discarded ages ago.

Why did she attack the meteorite? Was it because a stellar beast had materialized upon it?

The assembled Yunxing personnel engaged in frantic internal speculation; however, because the meteorite had been reduced to ash, extracting any diagnostic clues was manifestly impossible.

Xia Wang'an, conversely, felt profoundly satisfied—the black bear had promptly ceased its weeping.

Ah, marvelous; this technique remains as unfailingly effective as ever.

Whenever strangers burst into tears in her presence, merely brandishing her blade invariably terminated their waterworks.

Seizing the window of cognitive disorientation, she inverted the dynamic to seize the initiative:

"You claim I share your bloodline—what empirical proof do you possess?"

The Ancient Scroll

The collective assembly of Yunxing operatives choked on their breath.

The serpent-form morph reacted with greatest celerity, lifting an illustrative scroll: "Our transmitted historical records document your likeness—observe, this portrait exhibits striking alignment with your visage."

In truth, Yunxing possessed zero empirical verification regarding the authenticity of the ancient manuscript's contents; they had merely noted that the robed maiden depicted within bore a marked resemblance to Xia Wang'an's attire, prompting them to duplicate the folio and dispatch it to the sacrificial fleet with orders to locate the individual by visual match.

At this juncture, verifying the historical veracity of the scroll was entirely secondary; securing this "Primeval Ancestor" took absolute precedence.

While stalling for time with deliberate craftiness, the serpent-form operative inquired: "Regrettably, the ancient folio suffered severe fragmentation, failing to preserve extensive textual commentary; only this portrait survived, omitting even your sacred personal honorific."

Evidently having prepared her talking points prior to deployment, she deliberately emulated the speech patterns of antiquity by substituting the standard term for "name" with the venerated honorific.

Xia Wang'an drifted downward with ethereal grace, landing gracefully before the ring of Yunxing personnel who held their collective breath in intense suspense, and extended a hand to receive the illustrated scroll.

The serpent-form operative maintained a posture of profound reverence, bowing her head slightly; yet as her peripheral vision swept across Xia Wang'an's exposed hand, she experienced an involuntary surge of internal awe.

Such flawless dermal tissue—it appears utterly devoid of the slightest imperfection.

Subjected to the historical mutations of animal genetics, Yunxing citizens retained coarse, weathered dermal layers even when assuming human baseline forms—an immutable genetic legacy beyond the remediation of modern medical technology.

Precisely for this reason, Xia Wang'an—whose skin possessed porcelain perfection forged through the refinement of immortal cultivation—appeared to the Yunxing onlookers as if sculpted from translucent celestial jade.

Merely resting one's gaze upon her evoked an irresistible impulse of primordial reverence.

The Honorific

Xia Wang'an remained entirely oblivious to these aesthetic impressions; she possessed minimal sensitivity toward human facial structures, let alone dermal textures.

Having spent the past two days navigating Yunxing, her attention had been exclusively monopolized by the plush, furry beast-forms of the local populace.

She lowered her gaze to inspect the scroll.

To be candid, asserting that the celestial maiden portrayed within shared any facial resemblance to Xia Wang'an required an extraordinary exercise in deliberate mendacity.

The illustrated immortal maiden displayed no facial features whatsoever, captured mid-ascension against a backdrop of swirling mist and distant towering peaks, with a faint suggestion of a sunset lingering in the lower register.

The garments, admittedly, bore a strong structural parallel, evoking the ethereal aesthetic of Dunhuang flying immortal murals from Blue Star.

Clutching the scroll without confirming or denying whether the depicted figure represented her person, she raised her gaze to address the assembly:

"My name is Wang'an."

The serpent-form operative immediately executed a sweeping prostration: "We express boundless gratitude to our Ancestor for bestowing her sacred honorific upon her unworthy descendants."

Through her encrypted communications link, frantic instructions from her superior commanders echoed audibly:

"Quickly! Order the specialists to synthesize a hundred—no, a thousand copies of the [Ancient Archives], inscribing Wang'an's honorific across the texts to permanently cement her status as our primordial matriarch!"

The Gentle Caress

With another effortless pirouette, Xia Wang'an drifted to a halt beside the serpent-form operative. Having mastered flight, her momentum in the zero-gravity environment of outer space appeared increasingly effortless.

The maiden's brows curved in a gentle smile, her complexion glowing like luminous jade.

She extended a slender hand, lightly brushing the tip of the serpent-form operative's tail.

Her voice carried an infectious, lighthearted warmth:

"Good child."

The serpent-form operative, who had previously maintained rigorous analytical composure, felt the persistent, turbulent raging within her bloodline quiet down instantaneously under Xia Wang'an's physical proximity and soothing affirmation.

She could distinctly perceive that following the sovereign's approach, the frenzied genetic imperative embedded in her DNA...

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