The Martial Unity

Chapter 4280: Spreading News

News of the intervention of the Emperor of Water spread through human civilization like wildfire, despite the limited bandwidth for the flow of information between star systems. The information was simply too well-known to possibly be kept hidden. Many pathwalkers and even normal human personnel had felt the unmistakable grandeur of the Water of the Emperor.

It was the same power that they had felt thirteen years ago when he defeated the nebulars that had tried to invade Gaian Civilization and destroy all of humanity. With tens of thousands of people across many spaceships having realized his presence and his intervention, the Gaian Alliance didn’t even bother trying to stop the information from flowing.

And so it did, like water.

[I can’t believe that the Emperor of Water actually intervened and partook in a battle.]

[I can’t believe he’s real, to be honest. I kinda thought he was an urban myth. That humanity was ruled by the Gaian Alliance, which was controlled by the great powers of human civilization. But damn, he’s actually real, huh?]

[Of course he’s real! What the hell are you guys talking about?!]

[They say he drowned the entire star system in water. Again.]

[That’s so fucking insane.]

[Heh, I bet the Water Sect’s application rate is going to spike with this.]

[His Holiness’s divine display of might is just what his flock needs to invigorate the faith that they have in him!]

[All Hail Lord Virodhabhasa!]

[Oh, the religious nuts have arrived, here we go.]

The interweb was filled with a whole slew of speculation and downright fantasy. In the Era of Expansion, the existence of the Emperor of Water and his story truly felt like it was folklore from a prior era. Like it was a legend passed down from ancient times.

It didn’t help that the Emperor had secluded himself from human civilization, either.

He stopped making public appearances.

He stopped demonstrating power.

He stopped fighting publicly, not even to enforce the Void Order Regime, which no longer needed him to maintain law and order in the Martial World on Gaia Prime.

In an age of hyper-communication and hyper-information, where people’s minds were partly melded with the interweb, an absence of information was the same as an absence of existence. The minority of the population, mostly of younger folks born or brought up in the Era of Expansion who found it hard to believe that he was real, couldn’t be blamed for their skepticism.

”And, just to confirm for those who don’t believe, the Emperor of Water is indeed real, is he not?” A well-groomed lady asked with a jesting tone of voice.

On a giant virtual screen plastered upon a skyscraper in City Stormfront was an interview featuring two individuals, drawing a large crowd of people around the skyscraper. The virtual stream of the interview was formed in the minds of those who walked past the skyscraper as a part of the augmented reality system of the neural inlays, allowing every individual to see the same non-existent stream.

”Of course, the Emperor of Water is real,” the man she interviewed chuckled with a knowing tone of voice. ”He’s the most real man you’re ever going to meet, if you do have the truly unparalleled honor of ever meeting him. Not only is he real, but he is every bit as powerful as they say. And...”

He leaned forward before the woman with a pointed tone. ”...there’s no question it is he who intervened.”

”But we have not received an official statement from the Emperor’s Office confirming his intervention on the anomalous events of Planet Sarantel,” the interviewer pushed. ”Doesn’t that mean—”

”No.” The man shook his head, leaning back in his seat. ”The Emperor’s Office would never confirm that. The Emperor has no reason to confirm his intervention. I doubt he even told his own staff.”

”Then why do you suppose he even intervened at all?” She raised an eyebrow.

”Ah, now that’s the big question, isn’t it?” the professor smiled. ”If I had to guess, it has to do with family. He intervened to protect his family. Based on some leaks on the interweb, we know that the Blood Empress partook in the Amadeus III raid. Thus, he was likely to intervene to protect the family.”

The explanation seemed to make sense to the people gathered around the skyscraper, watching the virtual stream through their augmented reality systems.

”Damn, being family of the Emperor makes you invincble huh...”

”Imagine being born as a child of the Emperor, that would make you untouchable.

”I heard he does have a daughter, if I remember correctly...”

The murmurs ticked Ria off as she passed by them. Her eyebrows twitched as her grip on her travel bag tightened. Her expression crumpled with a hint of irritation as she pushed past the gossiping pedestrians, throwing a glance at the streamed AR interview feed discussing her father and his intervention.

Ever since they returned to the Arima Star System, all the media and news had been inundated with coverage of the intervention of the Emperor of Water. That was all she saw if she even remotely connected to the interweb with her neural inlay.

”Assholes,” she muttered under her breath, walking faster as she pushed past the pedestrians on the outskirts of the city.

”They don’t know better,” Runark replied, walking right beside her. ”How could they possibly know that they are somehow both right and wrong about why the Emperor intervened?”

”It’s truly surreal listening to all of this when you know the truth,” Sternon couldn’t help but remark with a taken-aback tone. Like a part of him still found it hard to believe that everything Ria had told him was the truth.

”The coverage of this event is more sensational than the actual event itself,” Siliscia couldn’t help but add with knitted eyebrows. ”Non-elves are so much worse at using this kind of information network than elves.”

”It’s just standard media slop,” Misha calmly dismissed it. ”More importantly, we’ve reached the outskirts.”