The Vanished Zinc Factory

"The massive hammer in Zhou Nan's hand was called Emperor's Hammer. It was an imperial token that only the emperors of the Kingdom of Zhou through the generations could possess, representing the Kingdom of Zhou's legitimacy and the emperor's authority. It was also a divine artifact, embodying the Kingdom of Zhou's essence, energy, and spirit. Having been wielded and empowered by successive emperors, it grew stronger with every generation of inheritance, ensuring that each new emperor would generally surpass the previous one in personal combat strength."

My Wife Is the Empress of Zhou, by Ma Shilong

The Zinc Factory was one of City A's old Eight Factories, established in the city's earliest days. It held a special place in City A's industrial history and remained in the memories of the older generation. Built in the 1930s, it was the earliest and best-preserved industrial relic in City A.

The Zinc Factory had brought an end to more than a thousand years of traditional zinc smelting. It could be said to hold a certain commemorative significance in the history of industrial modernization across the entire country.

Since production had ceased, the entire plant had fallen into disrepair. It had always been far from the city center, and apart from photographers interested in industrial-punk aesthetics, cosplayers in need of a setting, or people from media and film crews, it had become nearly deserted.

Qin Luming had come here as a child and still remembered it somewhat. Even then, the Zinc Factory had been hidden among towering trees and overgrown weeds, a quiet paradise where wild plants flourished and even small animals roamed about.

After dropping Qin Luming off, the rideshare car rattled away along the newly paved asphalt road. Qin Luming entered through a narrow alley, where the abandoned old houses awaiting demolition on both sides were covered in ivy. He walked all the way to the end, arriving at the spot from which the Zinc Factory's gate should have been visible.

"This must be one of Emperor's Hammer's abilities... What was it called again?" Qin Luming gasped at the sight before him.

A factory complex roughly the size of Qin Luming's main school campus had vanished from where it stood, leaving behind only foundation pits where the buildings and their bases had once been.

Mounds of earth, high and low, still roughly marked the dimensions of the buildings that had stood there. Bottomless hollows held nothing but stagnant water in deathly silence, while the concrete or red-brick walls of wells had vanished without a trace.

Even the once-iconic smokestack and water tower were nowhere to be found.

Everywhere lay trees and vines that had been snapped or torn away. Only the original Zinc Factory itself had disappeared into thin air, while every plant that had grown on this land afterward remained completely unharmed... along with a great deal of garbage, including glass bottles, cans, document folders, cigarette packs, lunch boxes, used condoms, and more, all still lying where they had been.

It was as if someone had pulled up a stalk of rice, shaken the mud from its roots, shaken off the insects, dust, and cobwebs clinging to it, and taken away only that single stalk.

This entire Zinc Factory... every structure that made it up, including the workshops, warehouses, water tower, smokestack, residential area, wastewater and waste-treatment wells, and production-line equipment, had been stripped from this land and taken away.

Qin Luming took out his phone and opened Ma Shilong's unfinished novel, My Wife Is the Empress of Zhou, finding the passage that described the ability of Zhou Nan's Emperor's Hammer.

"Great Dao Third: Stripping, a divine art that can be imbued with the Power of Order. It allows the wielder of Emperor's Hammer to directly strip an object existing in the present world of its existence, causing it to physically disappear and storing it within Emperor's Hammer's space. The Power of Order then repairs the series of disruptions that its disappearance may cause in the current world."

"The Power of Order cannot make the disappearance of a stripped object entirely free of variables, but it will not cause ripple effects on a broad social level or disrupt the balance and order of the current world. It is a compulsory power that cannot be corrected or destroyed by anyone whose level of power is lower than that of the caster."

Ma Shilong's book had been banned for many years, leaving only a bunch of messy reposts behind. If it could still be found on the app of the site where it had first been published, Qin Luming would definitely have left a chapter comment here: Why did you come up with such an overpowered ability?

Some readers accustomed to instruction-manual-style novels probably would not understand this passage. Then there were those readers who claimed that reading novels did not require a brain, flaunted their supposed superiority by skimming ten lines at a glance, yet loved picking faults. When a related situation arose, they would surely start shouting, "Plot hole! The logic is inconsistent!" And so on.

Qin Luming understood it, though. In other words, Zhou Nan had used the divine art called Great Dao Third: Stripping to take away the Zinc Factory. Yet because of the Power of Order's interference, it would not draw widespread attention in this world, nor would it trigger investigations or scrutiny from social forces. It would be covered up... However, it still would not completely prevent someone like Qin Luming from noticing the anomaly of an entire Zinc Factory disappearing, nor would it alter his will and forcibly make him believe it was an ordinary occurrence.

At the same time, if Qin Luming tried to publicize the Zinc Factory's disappearance and make the entire world pay attention to this abnormal event, the Power of Order would correct it and render his efforts ineffective.

Qin Luming could not possibly fully understand such a divine art, but not understanding it was what made it seem so amazing!

It seemed that regarding Ma Shilong being struck by Emperor's Hammer, even if plenty of cameras had recorded Qin Luming going to his home and appearing near it... even if Qin Luming had not changed his appearance afterward, he would not be implicated.

The question now was, why had Zhou Nan taken away the Zinc Factory?

Could some unknown secret have been hidden in this factory?

Was there some peerless treasure inside it?

Had the Zinc Factory developed a will of its own, with resentment born from its decline after prosperity, and attacked Zhou Nan?

Had the many events that had occurred here, and the special eras it had passed through, formed some kind of interfering magnetic field that gave it research or collectible value?

Forget it. You could never truly know what was in another person's heart... It was difficult enough to guess the thoughts of ordinary people, let alone an emperor from another world, whose culture, morals, laws, worldview, and system of common sense were completely different.

Standing on the Zinc Factory's former site and looking at the expanse of empty foundations before him, Qin Luming decided that he would find time to visit Ma Shilong's home again and see whether, as he suspected, the aftermath of Ma Shilong's attack by Zhou Nan had also been affected by the Power of Order.

He also needed to take a closer look at My Wife Is the Empress of Zhou when he had time. Perhaps details he had overlooked before could offer some help and allow him to understand Zhou Nan better... He did not want to come into contact with Zhou Nan, but he had to prepare himself to face her. Many things were like that: the more you did not want them to happen, the more certain they were to happen.

Qin Luming circled the Zinc Factory's foundations and was about to leave when a small black square caught his attention at what should have been the base of the perimeter wall.

Qin Luming walked over and picked it up. It was a phone... not one of those brick phones from the last century, but the latest Rolls-Royce-designed phone, with a folding full screen, under-display camera, under-display fingerprint scanner, one-hundred-megapixel front and rear quad cameras, and certifications from Zeiss and Leica that must have cost a fortune.

The phone was already out of battery... Did it belong to some unrelated passerby, or had it been left behind by a witness who had been here?