The Filial Son Sword
"My son, the day you were born, the very forests of Lordaeron whispered your name..."
An aged, wise voice murmured slowly.
A frigid wind howled over a vast expanse of snow. Amid the endless white, a black figure, like a nightmare from an endless prison of ice, walked alone, treading a path of death and destruction.
That was the scene playing on the laptop.
This was Earth.
Kang De sat on the ground beside the road outside the residential complex.
Behind him stood a shopping cart piled high with bags and packages.
After going with A Xing to find Second Senior Brother and borrowing his cave dwelling, Kang De had used his ability to return to Earth and immediately begun preparing for battle. Transporting supplies straight from the valley was impractical. For one thing, the valley lacked some of what he needed; for another, carrying them by boat risked discovery by the elves.
So he had to get them directly from Earth instead.
He needed to get everything he needed in one trip.
There was a huge shopping center with a complete and abundant variety of supplies inside. The first floor alone had clothing stores for all sorts of brands, as well as a Sephora. Huh, that store's name had quite the connection to the knight's.
Kang De first took a complete set of cosmetics and tools, even grabbing some hair removal cream. Then he took a few large-size Western-style dresses and the like. After some thought, he also took complete sets of underwear and stockings from a lingerie store. He laughed as he picked them out. This was just too omoshiroi.
Of course, he had not made a special trip back to Earth just to get those things.
Dressing the knight as a woman to impersonate the princess and lure the elven scouting party in was only a relatively minor part of the plan. The most crucial step was to fabricate the site of a supposed ancient ruin and make the elves believe that the Goths had beaten them to it and were about to obtain the power inherited from the ruins.
Only then could he lure in those pointy-ears who bore a deep grudge against the Goths, perhaps even make them come out in full force and focus all their attention on the island.
Only by doing that would there be room to carry out the rest of the plan.
So how to fake those "ancient ruins" was undoubtedly the most important question of all.
Kang De already had a plan for that.
Ancient ruins, huh? Ancient races were always incredibly badass, so they were bound to have all sorts of awesome, impressive artifacts and the like... He had to make them convincing enough to fool the elves.
Things like that did exist on Earth.
Technology advanced with each passing day. Many ordinary products would have seemed like miracles to people in ancient times, and they would probably work for scaring elves from another world, too.
The cultural industry was especially well developed, producing spectacular scenes in one CG or movie after another. Take the CG of Boss Sargeras stabbing Azeroth to pieces with a single sword strike. Show that in another world, and it would surely scare the natives shitless. How could they tell whether it was real? They did not even have a concept of CG production.
Things like that.
But to truly overawe the elves... he needed something substantial.
Something substantial from a Western fantasy world of swords and magic.
That was what Kang De was doing now.
He sat cross-legged, the Wrath of the Lich King CG trailer playing on the laptop beside him. Back in the day, this CG had shaken the gaming world and firmly established Blizzard Film Studio's standing in the industry. Even by today's standards, its visuals were still superbly crafted and its scenes spectacular.
A sword lay across his knees.
Its name was Frostmourne.
The Taobao version.
It was made entirely of metal, weighed five kilograms, and was 1.2 meters long. It bore a carved demon's head and engraved curse runes. It was a remarkably faithful replica, with an evil, eerie beauty.
The Filial Son Sword, the Filial Son Sword.
He pressed both hands against the sword and watched the Wrath of the Lich King CG, muttering, "Frostmourne, Frostmourne, Frostmourne, Frostmourne..."
He activated his enchanting ability.
The mysterious mixture of elements from the white fog inside him poured into the sword.
The enchanting ability Kang De had awakened could be divided into two main categories.
The first was to extract elements from all things and use them to enchant items anew. It followed certain logic and rules, shared principles with the enchanting techniques of the other world, and could be imitated and learned.
The second was what he called random enchanting. He poured the mixed elements obtained from Earth's white fog into an object all at once, then randomly generated a product based on the "fantasies" of Earth's humans. It depended heavily on luck and followed more obscure rules, but it could produce extremely useful items.
Kang De had pondered the matter before bed last night. He felt that even the second kind of random enchanting, the mass crafting, had to follow its own underlying rules, just like the superstitions surrounding gacha pulls.
Without large-scale testing, he could not determine the rules, but he could still analyze and think about them. If the products of enchantment were based on human "fantasies," then the enchanted object's appearance and the final product were most likely directly related as well.
For example.
An ordinary two-handed sword was turned into the Lich King's Frostmourne through fantasy enchanting.
A highly accurate, all-metal Frostmourne longsword made for cosplay was turned into the peerless demonic weapon wielded by the Lich King through fantasy enchanting.
Which of the two enchantments had a higher chance of success?
Generally speaking, it had to be the latter.
Kang De had made that conjecture, and now he was testing it.
His collection, the collections of other shut-ins in the complex, all the edgy items he could gather-most of them were already laid out here.
A vast quantity of mixed elements flowed into the evil longsword.
Slowly, the sword began to vibrate. The runes on its blade lit up one by one, and a bone-chilling, sinister cold gradually spread. Kang De felt the sword growing heavier and heavier. Its very nature was changing rapidly, gradually drawing closer to that legendary, peerless demonic artifact from an ordinary decorative piece.
But soon, "Frostmourne" gave a low hum. A tiny crack appeared in the sword and quickly spread, and most of the blade shattered with a crash.
The enchantment had failed.
It had only been an ordinary decorative piece to begin with. How could it bear the terrifying power of the sword of death?
A faint smile appeared on Kang De's lips.
He raised the remnant of Frostmourne. The blade had shattered, but the hilt and a short section of the blade remained intact and had undergone a transformation to a certain extent. They now radiated an evil aura that made his heart tremble.
It had worked.
The enchantment's failure was only to be expected.
If he could casually enchant a decorative sword worth a few hundred yuan into the Lich King's peerless weapon, he would not fucking need to worry about how to deal with the elves. He could just have the bar-headed goose carry him high into the sky and copy Goldie by throwing weapons down, chucking fucking Curry Sticks, Filial Son Swords and Infinity Gauntlets at them. Forget the elven ships; he could probably smash an entire island under the sea.
He had never expected to succeed in the first place.
As long as he succeeded halfway and got a fragment, that would do.
It was like his first enchanting experiment, when he had enchanted more than twenty watches one by one. One watch had turned into the watch face of a fake [beep] Rider, but it had been a failure that had succeeded halfway. Although the enchantment had ultimately failed, it had retained more than half the watch face's appearance, and it was extremely realistic.
Those fragments were exactly what Kang De wanted.
With their cool appearances, lingering auras, and even the CG footage from Earth, these "fragments of divine artifacts" could thoroughly bamboozle those elven country bumpkins who had never seen the world.
"Now then, next..."
Kang De set the fragment of Frostmourne aside and took another weapon from the shopping cart. "I choose you, Yamato! Come to think of it, if I had a chance to extract elements from the real Yamato, could I extract something like 'hair styling'?"
He infused it with elements.
"The real Yamato..."
He said softly, "If I had sufficiently tough materials from the other world, a more realistic replica, and greater personal power, would I have a chance of enchanting these real fantasy weapons into existence?"
"I'm kind of looking forward to it..."
He continued his work.
Until he had prepared all the "fragments of divine artifacts."
"All done." Kang De stood up and checked the shopping cart. "Let's see, projector, video camera, and... mm-hmm, I basically haven't forgotten anything."
He slowly breathed out, packed everything up, and shouldered it. Then he activated his ability, left Earth, and returned to the other world.
It was time to start plotting against those elves.
And.
He could hardly wait to see... Miss Fulan.
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P.S. 1: The title of the previous chapter meant "Why didn't Joker use schemes and tricks to force Batman to dress as a woman?" You filthy lot, don't put the breaks in wherever you please, got it?