Ming Dynasty, New Rome, and Infinite Divine Machine

Titus glanced at him and said, "You are indeed a resourceful person. It would be a pity for you to die here. My promise is still valid, and your safety will be guaranteed. The Empire never mistreats those who are loyal to it."

"Your Empire is."

"Now, there is only one empire. It is Cathay. I hope you know who you are working with and make the right choice. Now, take me to see Xu Fu's treasure, and then you will be free."

Chapter 1163 Tram

The poorly maintained tracks have become uneven and the trains running on them are shaky.

Titus sat in his seat, this was a scene he had never seen before. Everything around him looked like civilization had faded away, and the traces of human activity here were left after the fire, and even footprints could not be seen in the deep grass.

On the concrete walls where grass cannot grow, vines or moss will spread up.

Although there were no signs of human life, you could occasionally see animal trails in the grass, with rabbits and wild boars running freely in the grass. The urban landscape that originally belonged to Edo was completely replaced by wilderness.

Titus's "mobile phone" is just a mobile phone, not a spiritual device. It has no other functions except for communication, so he can't take pictures of the scene here. Otherwise, he would probably take a lot of photos along the way as a souvenir.

He thought that after the fall of Rome, many cities outside Constantinople would probably become like this. After humans left, nature would swallow everything up.

This is the foreseeable future for Rome. However, he can still submit a photo of its precursor on the other side of the earth to the magazine - he is so relaxed.

After all, as a phlogiston diver, his soul had been extracted from the mortal path. Before the end of his life, he could laugh at everything in the world, and he would not die no matter what he did.

This is why he felt miserable that he could not do more to save Rome. Because no one ordered them to do so, these fresh troops who would not die no matter how hard they fought did not play a big role.

But now, they can indeed do their part. Although it is too late to save the Roman Empire now, it is still not too late to give the Roman Empire a decent justice.

"Click." Although he didn't bring a cell phone, he did bring an ordinary camera. Facing the scenery outside the window, he pressed the shutter button -

As soon as the shutter button was pressed, the whole car suddenly braked.

"What's going on?" Titus looked up. He nearly dropped his camera.

"It seems something has happened." Ii looked forward and saw the conductor pick up the intercom and say a few words, then lowered his head and took out a sign from under his seat and hung it on the ceiling. It read:

"Personal accident, temporary suspension of train operation, etc."

"What's written there?" Titus asked, "It's all in Chinese, why can't I understand it?"

"Because the writing style is different. Although we also use Chinese characters to express our own language, our spoken language is different from Chinese. What you see is 'Houwen', a style that is a compromise between Japanese spoken language and Chinese written language. This 'Hou' is a substitute for many particles. All official documents of the shogunate are written in this Houwen. The meaning of this sentence is..."

“Wait a minute,” Titus asked. “You need to tell me how this text reads. I need to understand what you’re doing.”

"Do you want to read it? But we usually don't. Houwen is a written language and cannot be read. Even the order of the text is in Chinese. But if you want to read it, please remove the word 'Hou' and just read the rest of the text in Chinese characters."

"Let me see—the train's operation is temporarily suspended due to a personal accident? So, because of the personal accident, the train's operation will be suspended for an hour?"

"95% is close. 'Ichi-shi' doesn't mean an hour, it means temporarily, so the second half of the sentence means 'it will be suspended.' You can read all the official documents of the shogunate this way. As long as you know Chinese, you can understand 95% of them, even if you know no Japanese."

"Can I even write to you?"

"Yes." Ii replied, "I know Chinese, and we can communicate in Chinese. But even if you don't know Chinese, you can communicate directly with most people in writing. Because although not everyone can speak Chinese, most people can write Chinese characters. As long as you write the words, everyone will understand. If I understand correctly, you should be able to do the same in Korea or Ryukyu."

"Don't Koreans speak Chinese?" Titus was shocked. "I went to Songlinguan, a Korean restaurant in Beijing, and everyone there spoke Chinese."

"Has North Korea become like this? Perhaps it's just that North Koreans who go to Beijing to work are particularly good at speaking Chinese. North Koreans still have their own language, but it's just more vulgar than Chinese. I remember that North Koreans don't even have their own 'Houwen'. Their written language is completely uncompromised Chinese. The spoken and written languages ​​are completely separated."

"I see they have some horizontal and vertical symbols?"

"Yes, that's the Korean phonetic symbol. If you look at it yourself, Japanese also has a phonetic symbol called 'kana'."

"Where?" He looked at the sign.

"It's not on this piece of paper. There is usually no Houwen - or it can be seen occasionally if it is written for a long time. Under normal circumstances, we will avoid using kana in Houwen, and we will use Chinese characters wherever Chinese characters can be used."

"Perhaps this is the future of Latin." Titus found that he had gained quite a lot this time. A brief cultural exchange allowed him to see something very similar to what happened in the West.

Rome also used a language called "Academic Aurora". This language only retained the grammatical elements of Latin, and all nouns that can be written in Chinese characters were written in Chinese characters. This writing method greatly saved space, and the word formation based on Chinese characters also made scientific terms easier to remember and could be mutually intelligible with Aurora.

Although Latin currently uses Chinese characters to help express meaning, the spoken and written languages ​​are not separated. The Chinese characters added are only written as Chinese characters, but they are actually still pronounced according to the Latin pronunciation - however, this situation is currently loosening.

Based on the research results of academic Aurora, the "second generation of Aurora vocabulary" has recently been produced, that is, new scientific terms and new concepts based on Chinese characters. These concepts often have no corresponding concepts in Latin, so they can only be directly pronounced as Chinese characters.

It is conceivable that the advanced Latin vocabulary will be replaced by Chinese characters as this trend continues. By then, except for the native words in spoken language, all other words will probably give way to Chinese characters. By then, Latin will probably really die.

"But, never mind." Titus shook his head. "The empire is about to end. What's the point of speaking Latin? Let them die. We are all clean. Now that things have come to this, let's just go sightseeing."

While the car was parked, he took out his camera and prepared to go down to see the scenery.

"I want to see who was hit and why he was so unlucky."

Chapter 1164 Personal Accident

"Hmm? Good morning, Your Excellency the King of Rome. Are we going to carry out our mission?"

“???” Shangluo’s expression became strange.

"Eh? Your Excellency the King of Rome, what's wrong with you?"

"Do you remember the last thing? Do you remember what happened before you woke up?"

Titus went, but Titus never came back.

The signal about Titus disappeared completely after the tram he was riding stopped. According to the management, Phaethon redeployed Titus locally, but the result shocked them greatly:

"I have been assigned a mission to support Her Majesty Victoria and am heading to Edo."

"No, you've been there." Phaethon stood beside him, staring at him.

"I've been there? I don't have any memory of it! Wait, I have a recording device on me. Eh? Where's my body? Why is my consciousness in the space of Cyberlania? Wait! Could it be that I..."

"You think you're dead, don't you?" Phaethon pressed his forehead. "But what's happening now may be more terrible than death - your continuity is interrupted. If it was just death, it would be easy to deal with. We can just resurrect you in Cyberlania. However, your memory cannot be carried over from the moment before your death. This means that what we are activating here is the last mark you left in Cyberlania, not the complete you."

All signs indicate that Titus is in great danger in Edo. Even the newly activated backup has discovered:

"It's over! What you activated was my separated soul! It's my backup! What about my real body? Didn't it come back with me?"

This backup was what the Romans relied on to escape from the cycle of life and death - the soul essence of these phlogiston soldiers had already separated from their bodies. Because the essence was not in the body, the destruction of the body would not lead to the extinction of the soul.

When the physical body is destroyed, their true spirit will fly directly into the soul essence of Cyberlania and be reborn in cyberspace. The whole ship of people that Shangluo picked up, who died suddenly due to the huge pressure difference of phlogiston, were resurrected in this way.

In this way, the deep-rooted Romans would not die so easily. If conditions permit, they can even be resurrected on the spot. Instead of leaving from Cypernia, they can use various methods to take effect directly in the local area.

For example, the Hydra troops like him used a multi-headed approach to disperse and store the "consensus" of Titus's self-consciousness locally. When one of the individuals was annihilated, the consensus of the other individuals could directly fill it in and maintain the continuity of consciousness. The key means to make all this feasible is to "taint" the uniqueness of the soul through the blood of the Titan creation Hydra, making the soul replicable. Because this model based on complementarity requires multiple identical souls to be connected to each other.

However, this mechanism has failed for Titus. The part of his soul that he separated has lost contact and can only be connected to the archive it left in Cyberlania.

This "archive" does not have self-awareness in essence, it is just a little bit of true spirit. Just like the wisp of consciousness of Zhang Sanfeng who served as an instruction manual for Shangluo before, it is just the result of the main body being divided into spirits - as for how to divide the spirits, this is still the gift of Xudela's blood. Xudela, who has nine heads, has the ability to disperse his consciousness into nine brains, so that the self-identity of all brains remains consistent.

"Wait, which Titus is that?" Shangluo asked Phaethon next to him.

"It's the most important 'Raven', the one closest to the essence of all the clones. If this one is gone, the other Titus would probably be in extreme pain now. Wait, let me ask."

Phaethon went outside to a place with good signal and dialed the number. In a few minutes, she came back.

"Your guess is correct. The remaining Titus seem to have suffered a huge mental shock and entered a state of suspended animation, with no signs of recovery. Some of them can't even be contacted."

"We're in trouble." Vidlia's voice emerged. "Is there anyone here who can kill the Phlogiston Submersible? Is the magic ineffective?"

"I think there's a possibility." Shang Luo touched his chin, "Perhaps Xu Fu secretly used magic to suppress his soul, preventing it from returning."

"Is there still such a spell?"

"Yes." Shang Luo nodded. "Similar spells are very common in the Conferred God War - for example, the Nine-Bend Yellow River Formation can directly make his soul fly away. However, the Nine-Bend Yellow River Formation requires immortals and magic weapons. Although Xu Fu's style of doing things makes it possible for him to set up the formation, it seems difficult for him to set up such a high-level formation by himself. Or, he may have obtained the Hunyuan Golden Bowl."

"What's that?"

"It is a magic weapon of the island immortals, not the Kunlun immortals. Theoretically, Xu Fu is in the territory of the island immortals, and he may really have the Hunyuan Golden Bowl in his hand. As long as Xu Fu uses magic to cut off the three flowers on his head, his immortality magic will probably be ineffective."

"So he's really dead???" Victoria couldn't believe it. This was an elite operator of the Roman Empire, one of the few internal guards he knew well, how could he die here?

[Excuse me, I don't think we should jump to the conclusion that he's dead. We should first find a way to rescue Titus.]

"Can it be rescued?" Shangluo asked.

[We can only think so. What remains here is only a trace of consciousness, not the real body. This trace of consciousness is only used to recover souls. It is very unstable. The more you think about it, the easier it is to dissipate. If you think it is necessary, we should try to save Titus.]

"Need I say more? Of course we have to save him." Shang Luo answered without hesitation, "Let's not talk about friendship and cooperation. Just for the safety of the operation itself, we must ensure that he can come back safe and sound. Otherwise, how can we capture Xu Fu? If one person dies when we go up, then even if we put all our extraordinary powers into it, it will probably be useless. And..."

Shang Luo looked out the window and said, "This means Xu Fu has appeared. If we don't take action now, when will we take action?"

【Do you want to go in person? 】

"No, I'll just watch. But let everyone who can go go, and I'll be the reserve. Xu Fu has already revealed his whereabouts, right where the tram stopped. Let's go there now."

"Hmm?" Titus suddenly felt his body lighten. "Strange, how come I'm flying?"

The next second, he saw the dim lights of the tram he was riding in. He also saw with his own eyes that the conductor lowered his head and took out the sign.

"Why am I outside the car! Am I not sitting in the car? My butt."

"Your butt? It shouldn't hurt anymore." The old man in black robe suddenly appeared behind him. "Your butt is under the bus. This bus has been suspended due to a personal accident. And you are already dead."

"Impossible! I can only be killed on public transportation! This is my fate!"

"Your fate is under my power."

"Then you can't kill me!" Titus refused to believe that he was dead, "My soul has been divided into 9 parts!"

"Three souls and seven spirits, right? Including the archive, there are 10 in total. The three souls are Taiguang, Shuangling and Youjing. Taiguang is the one who wants to live forever, Shuangling is the one who wants to serve the country, and Youjing is the one who wants to eat dog meat noodles. Guess which one you are?"

Chapter 1165 Deploying Troops

"I'm not complete?"

"You have 10 seconds." The old man's body was already old and his movements were as slow as a tree man, but his words were unusually fluent. "In 10 seconds, your two souls will collide with each other, and then attract all three of your souls. You will be suppressed here by me. All your means of escape will be useless here."

"???!" Titus started to run. Phlogiston submariners never stay in one place for too long, they run when they have to.

However, as soon as he raised his head, he looked into the eyes of his other self who got off the bus.

"not good!!!"

They both exclaimed at the same time, and then merged together.

Before Titus could stand firm, the old man suddenly bent down and picked up a yellow flag from the ground and waved it three times in the air. Titus' name was already written in Latin on the flag. As the flag was waved, a ray of light flew from the sky and fell like a meteor into Titus' body.

"Collect." The old man said lightly, waved the flag, and took Titus in.

The flag has six tails.

"."In the carriage, there was more than just Titus' name on it.

"We are almost there," the old man looked at the direction of Edo Bay, "Shangluo, Shangluo, we are almost there. I hope I can be faithful to Daqin from beginning to end."

Fetal light, refreshing spirit, and quiet spirit

The three souls together form a complete soul. The Yuanshen Taiguang yearns for immortality, the Yangshen Shuangling yearns for glory, and the Youjing yearns for wealth and honor in the world.

Xu Fu's Yang Shen sits here. The loyalty and honor of Daqin are the tendencies of this part of his personality. Although this old body symbolizes that Xu Fu's loyalty is as fragile as a candle in the wind. But Daqin's name is still well-known to the world, so his voice is also full of vigor.

But even so, his loyalty to the Qin Dynasty was unquestionable. He had once deceived the Qin Dynasty and had to flee overseas. Now, he had to be forgiven by the Qin Dynasty in order to complete his merits. He had to understand the cause and effect.

But on the other hand, it is not only the Qin Dynasty that cannot be offended, but also the Ming Dynasty.

"Got it." Li Yinchang, the Grand Commander of Beiting, hung up Shangluo's phone call and gave an order in the bridge:

"Everyone! Prepare to land!"

The Flying Swallow Flag, symbolizing victory, was raised. This was the battle flag of the royal army.

The vanguard of the Imperial Guards' direct rapid reaction corps - the [Tianjin Force] began to enter Edo Bay on an amphibious transport ship.

As hailing from the imperial hometown and a close associate of Emperor Taizu, the troops designated "Tianjin" have always been the imperial family's most valuable trump card. While Tianjin Garrison maintains its own coastal fortress in Shuntian, this unit is stationed in Yingtian, where the current emperor resides. Stationed on the outskirts of Southern Zhili, they are intended to be deployed as a "final solution" when necessary. After all, the emperor, and indeed the Zhu family, trusts their fellow townsmen most.

But having said that, in reality, the emperor did not really need to use "hometown boys" to protect himself. Because if the emperor really needed to mobilize soldiers to go to the streets, let alone hometown soldiers, even if they were all royal relatives, it would be impossible for a lieutenant from the royal family to charge forward with a rifle.

However, the Tianjin troops are indeed very important to the royal family because they are the rapid reaction troops in the imperial army. Because only such rapid reaction troops can achieve cold start and can land directly on the ship without being heated.

This unit is usually stationary. The frequency of the Imperial Guards' deployment is not low, but it is often decided after proper calculation, so indicators such as the activation time are not important. But here, Zhu Xianxin believes that there is no time to slowly deploy troops like before, so it is very important to mobilize a quick reaction force like Tianjin Wei.

But now Shangluo accepted Zhu Xianxin's order and began to mobilize troops as the Great Marshal of Demon Subjugation. The fastest to mobilize were the Tianjin troops. As long as they were mobilized, Shangluo could finish a war of annihilation before anyone could react.

And now, the royal army, holding high the Flying Swallow flag, has begun to land.

The actions of the King's Army were silent, because they did not use spiritual power to kill the enemy, but used firepower.

The fleet began bombing Edo before the royal division's landing ships appeared on the horizon.