#252
Closed Dimension (1)
A shabby fishing village near Dongting Lake.
Murmur, murmur—
It was far too early to call it a day, yet not a single villager was keeping to their usual routine.
The fishermen who had gone out on their boats with weary bodies to fill their quotas hurriedly returned to port, and as their families and all the other villagers headed toward the water’s edge, the ferry landing grew crowded with an untimely throng.
But even amid that disorderly scene, the reactions of the gaunt, skin-and-bones villagers were all the same, as though they had made a promise beforehand.
Every last one of them was staring blankly across the lake, murmuring among themselves.
“What in the world is that?”
“Huh… what sort of strange working is this…?”
“Ma! That…!”
In the direction where the water fortress of Yulong Stockade, the rulers of this area, stood, an abnormal phenomenon was occurring—one that was plainly extraordinary even at a glance.
Unlike the clear weather on this side, a thick vortex of clouds hung in the sky, as though it had sucked in every cloud in the area.
A fierce storm, strong enough to be felt even from this considerable distance, raged violently around its boundary.
Flash—
Rumble—!
On top of that, the thunder and lightning bursting from its center were so overwhelming that they stirred humanity’s most primal fear.
The villagers, gazing at the phenomenon with frightened eyes, swallowed dryly at the awe welling up from the depths of their hearts.
“It’s heavenly punishment, it is. The Dragon King of Dongting Lake has been angered by those damned bastards.”
Amid the chaos, an old man with a face full of wrinkles and a bent back coldly tossed out those words.
Now that the empire had collapsed, territorial struggles between factions had begun, and the plundering and tyranny of the bandits had reached their peak.
The old man had lost his son, daughter-in-law, and grandson to those bastards, yet had been forced to endure for the sake of the family he had left. Upon seeing that overwhelming spectacle, the resentment he had buried inside burst out before he knew it.
“Good heavens, elder, what are you saying!”
“Ah—old man, the sun hasn’t even set yet. Have you already been drinking? Hurry on home and get some sleep!”
The villagers around him paled and hurried to stop him, glancing around.
They understood the old man’s feelings, of course, but this village was, in practice, under the rule of Yulong Stockade.
If he said something unnecessary and word of it reached those bastards’ ears, he would never get away unscathed. Their reaction was only natural.
Perhaps understanding their concerns, the old man who had spoken out said no more, merely staring silently in the direction of the water fortress with his hollow eyes.
In a situation where the once-unified empire had effectively been split into dozens of city-states, those very bandits were the kings of the land they lived on.
‘I pray and pray again. O Dragon King, please bring down your bloody iron hammer upon those evil ghosts wearing human skin!’
He could only wish in his heart.
That heavenly judgment would fall upon those monsters who had committed crimes enough to enrage heaven and man alike.
***
‘There aren’t any particularly impressive ones here.’
Harris, wreathed in storm and lightning, lightly looked over the water fortress that had been turned into a mess and nodded.
There had been no need to take out his bow, let alone summon any other spirits.
Beating down bandits of this level was more than possible with just the two spirits connected to him.
And the same was true of dealing with the lord of Yulong Stockade.
Compared to the others, he certainly possessed overwhelming skill, but even then, he was only small fry who had not so much as stepped over the threshold of the pinnacle.
“Ghh… I-impossible. Even with sorcery, something like this should be impossible…! Don’t tell me you really are some legendary monster…?”
The man, scorched by Watt’s lightning, soon failed to endure and crawled across the floor like a bug, muttering to himself as if he had lost his mind.
Harris had deliberately subdued him without killing him in order to extract information, but perhaps the shock had been too great, because the man did not seem to be in good condition.
‘This won’t do. I need to make him capable of having a conversation.’
As the elders used to say, old electronics and people were things that got fixed if you hit them enough.
It might not apply to the latest products, but just from looking at that guy, wasn’t he clearly a person from the old days?
‘If he doesn’t want to die, he’ll come to his senses on his own… Hm? Wait.’
Then, suddenly, Harris felt something out of place and frowned.
He looked down quietly at his own palm and reflected on his actions and thoughts.
‘…As I thought, no matter how I look at it… I think I’ve become a lot more extreme.’
Even if it was because he had moved far from the World Tree’s domain, taking that into account, his actions were far more violent than expected.
So much so that it was impossible to imagine the leisurely, easygoing Harris from Auterica.
‘Hmm. I’ll need to look into this in detail too. But before that, for now…’
His own change did bother him inwardly, but for the moment, interrogating the captured bandit leader took priority.
After all, he would be able to obtain far better information from someone who had seized an entire region than from bandits who had merely settled down on a single mountain.
“Then, shall we have a conversation between ourselves? Peacefully?”
With that thought, Harris approached the lord of Yulong Stockade, looked down quietly at the man still writhing on the ground, and spoke gently.
He wore the softest smile he could manage.
“U-ugh… S-spare me…”
Though he could not understand why the other person’s face grew even paler upon seeing it.
***
There was something I realized after operating avatars in three dimensions at the same time.
The flow of time in the Ganghwan Realm was slightly faster than in Auterica.
A rough comparison showed that ten days in Auterica seemed to be about ten days and eight hours in the Ganghwan Realm.
‘If I’m not staying long, it’s not a huge difference. Still, having a little extra time isn’t bad.’
And one more thing.
There was an important fact I learned while interrogating the lord of Yulong Stockade.
Scroll—scroll—
I moved the mouse wheel and once again looked over the information about the Ganghwan Realm displayed on the monitor.
But no matter how much I looked, I could not find anything anywhere about what I had just learned.
Just in case, I also checked the other “closed dimensions,” but it was the same there as well.
Soon giving up on finding additional information, I crossed my arms where I sat and quietly sank into thought.
‘The reason the Ganghwan Realm became a closed dimension.’
And the cause of the war that had continued for more than ten years.
Also, the secret story behind why the once-mighty empire had no choice but to collapse.
Even a certain secret that pierced through all of it.
‘…No, it’s still too early to reach a conclusion. I need more certain information. As expected, the higher up someone is, the more they’ll know.’
If it was the Grand Stockade Lord, the head of the Dongting Eighteen Stockades—one of the three great powers of Hunan Province—and a master of the Transformation Realm, then he should be able to give me greater certainty.
I rose from my seat, looked out the window, and organized my thoughts.
‘Phew. I had guessed there would be something.’
A sigh escaped me on its own from the frustration.
This was that important a problem.
In the Ganghwan Realm, another world of the murim type where martial power was valued—
the fact that qi, which could be called its very foundation, was drying up.
***
Immediately after clearing out Yulong Stockade.
Harris completely emptied the warehouses in the bastards’ main base, storing wealth and martial arts manuals through 「Avatar Cloud」, then immediately flew back into the sky.
Of course, in the process, he did not forget to provide a small extra service by scattering supplies such as food to the nearby villages.
In any case, all the bandits were either dead or had been rendered unable to ever use martial arts again, so there was no one left to complain about it.
Of course, if the other bandit stockades learned what had happened here, they might cause some harm, but he was confident he could finish everything before that happened.
‘The only means of transmitting information here are either going there in person or using carrier pigeons.’
And such information transmission was meaningless before a high elf who could easily befriend even animals he was seeing for the first time.
With an overwhelming affinity that surpassed even trained instincts, even birds busily flying off would change direction, come over to him, and act cute.
‘More importantly… it’s finally starting to feel real. The state of this land.’
Since the area around the lake had many people living together, the sight of the ground below as he flew made him clearly feel what kind of situation this world was currently in.
And why the danger level of the Ganghwan Realm was “very high.”
‘An endless war and a great famine that’s continued for years. On top of that, exchange between regions has been cut off, plagues are rampant everywhere, and bands of thieves run wild…’
It might not be much of a problem for the strong, but for someone who had only recently crossed over into this world, it could truly be called a hellish difficulty.
Far from training to become stronger, they would be swept up in these circumstances and forced to worry about immediate survival first.
At that sight of the ground below, Harris proudly crossed the sky and shook his head.
And then—
just one day later.
That was how long it took for the diligently moving Harris to smash every bandit stockade along his route and come face-to-face with the Grand Stockade Lord of the Dongting Eighteen Stockades, Flood Dragon Tyrant Saber Chen Dewan.
“What the hell is this absurd monster!”
“G-Grand Stockade Lord! Because of that wind, our arrows can’t get through!”
“We can’t even approach, Grand Stockade Lord! At this rate… Kuaagh!”
Whoooosh—
Crackle—!
Fwoosh—!
The ensuing battle with him did not end with much difficulty either.
Around these parts, he might be an unparalleled supreme master, but with a level of skill that would at best place him among the Hundred Greatest Masters Under Heaven, opposing Harris was out of the question.
Still, since he made Harris bring out Cali, the fire spirit, to more smoothly clean up the surroundings, one could say that he and the elites of the Dongting Eighteen Stockades had at least saved some face.
“…Kgh. Just who are you, honored master? For what reason have you suddenly come here and caused such chaos?”
“Ah, I am Haerisu. There is something I would like to ask.”
“Hah! If that is all, then you could have simply…!”
“And while I was at it, I thought I’d do some cleaning too. Well, what can you do? Think of it as karma built up over all this time.”
“……!”
With introductions thus completed, a peaceful interrogation time followed.
Perhaps because of his pride, Grand Stockade Lord Chen Dewan was a little uncooperative at first.
But when Harris recalled the words of the elders and used Watt, the lightning spirit, to diligently “fix” him, he eventually changed his mind as well and responded with enthusiasm.
This must be why old sayings claim there is no harm in listening to one’s elders.
‘Haa, what a headache.’
And after confirming the state of the Ganghwan Realm through him once more, Harris let out a deep sigh.
As expected, the current situation was nothing less than the flow of the times, something that could not be changed with mere paltry martial force.
“Our survival depends on this fight! If we fail to secure Dragon Veins, we will inevitably be weeded out and devoured in the end. How could we retreat?”
The energy of the world, which had always been abundant, was slowly drying up.
The major forces of this world had already grasped that abnormal state of affairs and immediately sought a way to survive.
That was to secure Dragon Veins—the central points of the energy flowing through the world and vents from which “qi” steadily gushed forth.
Even if, in the process, they had to wage war against other factions.
“Qi is indispensable in everything, from raising the realms of existing martial artists to nurturing new ones, creating spiritual medicines, or treating internal injuries. It is not as if we wage war because we enjoy it!”
That energy was not unlimited either, so neither concession nor compromise was possible.
To put it simply, it was no different from various tribes in a desert fighting for survival over the few oases available.
That was the reason war did not cease in this world.
It was a chain of tragedies made all the more desperate because everyone was fighting with their lives on the line.
“…Ah! I see. You were an otherworlder? I thought they had all disappeared after the Heavenly Slaughter Demon Emperor.”
Chen Dewan, who had been venting his anger for a while, suddenly nodded as though he had realized something.
Considering the lord of Yulong Stockade had not even managed to guess his identity, it did not seem to be information widely known, but perhaps due to his position, Chen Dewan appeared to know quite a bit about otherworlders.
‘Well, until the dimension closed, the Ganghwan Realm was a dimension where Awakened had been active for quite a long time.’
The reason he had not immediately made the connection was likely because Harris’s power was so alien even by otherworlder standards.
Ordinary Awakened would have possessed only one not particularly powerful ability and, based on their growth potential, quickly learned martial arts to distinguish themselves. Cases of someone using only power from another world to this extent would have been unheard of and unseen—
“Hmm, now that I think about it, I feel like I heard of a similar case before. I thought it was utterly absurd nonsense, but perhaps that was true?”
—yet an interesting subject emerged from his muttering.
At that, Harris’s sharpened intuition rang an alarm bell.
It told him he absolutely must not let that story pass lightly.
And when he gave Chen Dewan, who seemed to be growing stubborn again as the effect wore off, a more delicate fixing, the man shuddered and hurriedly continued what he had stopped saying.
“Kgh! I don’t know the details either! I only happened to hear it by chance…!”
Unfortunately, however, he did not know very much.
It had been more than twenty years since he had come across that information, and he had not been interested, so he had simply let it pass.
However, for some reason—
“It was roughly about this country collapsing and splitting apart all because of that man… Ahem. Now that I think about it, the time when the world’s qi began to decline was also more or less around then.”
Harris felt as though he knew who that man was.