Forbidden Tomboy 2 – An Imperial Reception

John had, for a long time, wondered how it came about that all of the largest Abyssal cities appeared to be located in Europe. Driving through Beijing answered that question.

Gazing out of the window of the stretch limo, John followed the repeated flicker of prismatic light that signalled the move from one Illusion Barrier into the next. Despite this constant entering and leaving of Protected Spaces, the car continued its drive without pause. They were on a straight road that cut through dozens of individual barriers. The construction process across different dimensional layers was awe inspiring in its accuracy.

The names of the Illusion Barriers kept flashing in John’s field of vision. Sha Clan Compound, Xi Clan Compound, Ran Clan Compound, Irae Clan Compound, and so on and so on. Every so often a district name was thrown in instead.

The Abyss categorized Abyssal cities into three layers. The smallest was to have unorganized barriers all over a place of dense population. The second was to have those individual barriers form clusters that mimicked infrastructure. The third was to have the entire city in one mega-barrier, like the Hudson Barrier now was.

Such a categorization was, of course, just an observation of the common trend. Why would the capital of an empire thousands of years old care for a system that was younger than itself? The reason then that Beijing (or Shanghai or any other of the great Chinese cities) did not have its own entry in the top cities of the Abyss was plain and simple that no one knew where Beijing started or began.

The prismatic light enveloped the car one more time, then it swerved. Ever so gently, it came to a halt parallel to a great flight of stairs. “Gaia almighty,” Lee groaned, causing everyone else to look at her.

Like the other women in the car, Lee was in a decisively western dress. It was borderline Victorian, with its layered skirt and visible corset. A lack of puffy sleeves, neck ornamentations, and hoops prevented it from quite falling into the category. John had wanted his women in fashion that distinguished them from the environment. Another layer to the message of ‘co-existence, not assimilation’.

Lee looked quite stunning in her red, black-trimmed gown. That was, however, not the reason why she had groaned. “I can feel the engineering of the Protected Space… it’s so outdated… no one creates time dilation by unfolding seconds anymore. We’re all about stretching these days.”

“Is that in any way important to us?” Ehtra sneered.

“No, it’s just inefficient, is all,” Lee responded.

The doors opened from the outside. Servants bid the passengers to step outside. John pulled on the sleeves of his suit one more time, then led the way.

The masses of onlookers had gathered to the left and right of the gargantuan staircase. Thousands of Chinese people packed the space between the road and the moat that delineated the border of the Forbidden City. Behind the moat was a wall ten metres up. The only gap in the wall, as far as John could see, lay at the top of the staircase.

A great gatehouse stood proudly, its gate a magical structure of black and white swirling into each other. The prime minister clapped his hands. The sound reverberated in the structure. Magic unfurled, separating black and white to right and left, only a dot of one remaining in the other. The hands of the prime minister parted and so did the gate open.

“By decree of the Heavenly Jade Empress, entrance to the Forbidden City is granted to John Newman, President of the Federation of Fusion, and his companions. In friendship, you are invited to the heart of the Middle Empire. Look upon our Mandate of Heaven!”

As the prime minister spoke, soldiers streamed from within the palace. With mechanical precision, they formed a corridor down the staircase and up to the gate. A corridor that John followed as soon as the prime minister led the way.

They crossed through the Gate of Order and Chaos and stepped onto the Plaza of the Four Beasts. It was a massive open space, three-hundred metres wide and two hundred deep. John had been informed about the significance of this plaza. During regular activity, this was where the military drills of the Dragonspears and other elite units were held. Festivities allowed the broader public to step onto this plaza as well, but no further. Perhaps most importantly, however, this was where the Babel Phrase to activate the Cardinal Beasts was typically invoked.

Four gates, matching the respective direction as closely as possible, marked where the estates of the Cardinal Chosen would be. Each gate was a work of art, a statue of the choosing beast that wrapped around the shut doors. The Azure Dragon of the East, the Vermillion Bird of the South, the White Tiger of the West and the Black Turtle of the North all oversaw this great plaza. The floor tiles laid paths to each gate. The paths met in the middle of the plaza, where the great jade dragon Tianlong was depicted in a great mosaic. Eight drums twice as tall as John stood in a loose circle around the mosaic.

The corridor of soldiers continued across the plaza, flared out at the centre, then narrowed back down on the second half on the trajectory to the Gate of Heaven and Earth. This second gate was every bit as opulent as the one facing the outside, if not more so. Traditional Chinese architecture was present in every tile of its roof and every pattern of window frames.

John had to be careful where he placed his feet. There was a correct way to cross the plaza. Xi Pang followed it naturally and so John mimicked him and his women mimicked him in turn. A pace was to be kept, a path to be strut, and whatever they did, they could not, under no circumstances, step on the mosaic. To walk on Tianlong was the same as spitting in the face of the sovereign.

The further they advanced, the more the murmurs of the public faded. The quiet of the Forbidden City enveloped them fully. It was soon replaced with the whispers of flowing water and the plucking of instruments. Soft song filled the perfumed air. A warmth rose, replacing the cold of early November with the pleasant breeze of late Spring.

The Forbidden City transformed past the Gate of Heaven and Earth. To the left and to the right, the bulk of the Forbidden City sprawled out before them. The gate and the plaza were deliberately raised so that those who entered this realm could see it in all of its splendour. Vast complexes bordered on vast complexes, separated sometimes by walls, usually by artificial rivers. Those were the ministries of the Middle Empire, each possessing the power and wealth of a kingdom. Each complex had their own manor, their own stockpiles, their own archives, their own green areas, and whatever else.

All channels were fed from waterfalls that cascaded from the sides of the path now before them. Elevated four metres above the rest of the Forbidden City, it led from the gate all the way to the Heavenly Jade Palace. That building was the crown jewel in the magnificent heart of this old and powerful empire.

A circular wall with four towers surrounded the palace complex. Each of the four towers was once more crowned by a statue of one of the Cardinal Beasts. The walls themselves were fashioned from earth brown stone. The gate was modest compared to the two previous ones, but that really did not count for much. The buildings within were even taller than the towers around them, especially the spire of black and green jade. It was a pillar and a palace both, the Great Connection between Heaven and Earth.

The soldiers framing the path were replaced by Dragonspears, Lu Zhi’s personal guard, once they approached the walls. A smaller courtyard within the Heavenly Jade Palace was filled with the lesser nobles and eunuchs, who had to stand. A small staircase led up to the courtroom, in which the middle-ranking nobles and eunuchs sat. At the end of the courtroom, segmented by an elevation, was the Dragon Throne.

It was not just a seat; it was a structure in and of itself – a half-open chamber created from more marvels of enchantment and artifice than most nations in the world possessed within their borders. The water was truly sourced from it, cascading endlessly from two mighty fountains that drew upon the sheer endless mana of the one seated upon it.

John could not see Lu Zhi. He could sense her presence behind the great curtains of satin that hid her from the world. Backlighting created her silhouette. The music that had been swelling since the Gamer had entered the Forbidden City reached its zenith. The shadow of Lu Zhi raised a hand. At least, John assumed that she did so. All he could make out was a wide sleeve rising. Instantaneously, the music stopped.

The world was made silent by a simple gesture of the Heavenly Jade Empress.

Only the prime minister dared move, taking his position among the highest nobles and eunuchs of the land. They stood in two rows to the left and right of the Dragon Throne. Just a few handfuls of people, governing either the largest or the second largest empire in the Abyss.

“We greet you as our equal in sovereignty, President of Fusion,” the Heavenly Jade Empress spoke. Important first words, as they freed John from the traditional kowtow. “We are most pleased that you have responded to our invitation with such haste.”

“Fusion desires the good graces of the Middle Empire.” John held his arm out to his back. A simple signal, that Ehtra responded to by placing the scroll that Lu Zhi had given him in his hand. “I return this to you now, Heavenly Jade Empress, so that we may correspond once more in the future.”

Soft mumblings came from the middle ranks. A sizable segment of the Mandate of Heaven believed in their superiority over all other realms. The compounding signals of an equal relationship were bitter to them. However, only a subsection of that segment would have been foolish enough not to recognize the situation the Middle Empire found itself in.

A servant stepped out from behind one of the many thick curtains, to deliver the scroll from the Gamer’s hands to that of the sovereign. Lu Zhi, however, raised her voice. “We will receive it personally.” A snap of her fingers, and the curtain parted.

The first thing that John beheld was not the Heavenly Jade Empress.

Hung above the throne, sitting in lacquered wood, was a sword. It was a Jian, a traditional Chinese sword, double-edged, straight, and simple. It had no guard. The handle and the blade were all one piece. Usually that would have been one piece of cast bronze or forged iron, but here it was one piece of stone of a white-green colour. The sword was without decorations. It was neither unusually large nor unusually small.

It was, however, horrid to behold. Not like Nia, where her very powers were appalling to the regular mind. Not like the Lorylim, whose corruptive presence was horrid in the alterations that they could make to flesh and soul. No, this was a much simpler kind of horror – the kind of dread one experienced when standing in the presence of an armed nuclear warhead.

‘So that is the Separating Sword,’ John thought. Its proper name was ‘the Sword that Separates Heaven and Earth’, but that was a little unwieldy and did not translate well for his English brain.

Lu Zhi caught his gaze a moment later. In that, he still looked at her quicker than everyone else did, who gasped in the same moment that he suppressed a smile.

The image of a Chinese empress was one of a woman whose already pale skin was painted fully white with makeup. Black hair was tied into an elaborate figure with myriads of ornate pins and other decorations. Her dress would be impossible to move in, a carpet of fabric more a work of art than clothes to be worn.

The empress of the Mandate of Heaven was not in a large-sleeved dress. She was, in fact, not wearing a dress at all. The wide sleeve John had seen was at the end of a stick, which Lu Zhi now dropped without a care. The imperial tomboy had chosen a red shirt for the occasion, closed over one shoulder like Chinese dresses were. A set of tight pants hugged her legs, white except for the black that hugged her perfect ass. It was the Gamer Attractor she had worn when they first met. Her hair was up in her typical twin buns. She wore no makeup whatsoever, not even the lipstick that usually hid her green lips.

The inside of the Dragon Throne was a painted mural of all of China’s many landscapes. Tianlong flew within, a moving picture of shimmering green, half a metre in length. An artificial sun stood forever high above the Middle Empire’s lands, serving as the source of the strong shadow she cast. The eunuchs and high nobles grumbled over the appearance of their empress. John was falling in love all over again.

Had John’s mind not worked so rapidly, he would have been caught drooling.

“It truly is an honour,” he said instead, handing the scroll over to the empress.

“We are certain it is,” the imperial tomboy said with a wink and placed the scroll in an integrated shelf specifically made for this purpose. “We welcome you to the Forbidden City and our palace, may your stay be pleasant for you and us.”

“May my stay bring to our realms great joy and luck,” John responded with a smile, then took two steps back.

Lu Zhi followed him one, stepping out of the alcove of the Dragon Throne. She was barefoot, which may have been the greatest breach of protocol when it came to her wardrobe. The high nobles were visibly uncomfortable with the situation, but who were they to tell the embodiment of traditions what she could and could not do?

“Follow me, John, I will guide you to your chambers,” the imperial tomboy stated.

And just like that, the greeting ceremony was done.