Omnibus Anime: Apocalyptic Start - Playing as the Hero King

"Soul not detected."

This was the feedback she received once more.

What was going on? Had they been annihilated after entering the portal?

She then tried others.

"Soul not detected."

"Soul not detected."

"Soul not detected."

"Soul not detected."

"Soul not detected."

"Were they all silenced?"

After checking five people in a row and receiving the same response, Brunhilde's heart sank.

The next second, she directly performed a large-scale facial recognition on the remaining hundreds of people who had just entered the portal and summoned them in bulk.

The result was—

"Soul not detected..." "Soul not detected..."

The dense pop-up windows filled with this information made cold sweat trickle down her face.

Had the souls of hundreds of her subordinates been completely destroyed? Was the Western Chu Hegemon King, Xiang Yu, truly that brutal?

If he was indeed that brutal, then the historical records might actually be true.

According to those records, when Xiang Yu led his troops to conquer cities, he often committed incredibly heinous acts, such as—massacring the entire population.

A thought struck her, and Brunhilde summoned a group of people: black soldiers clad in full armor.

After identification, she summoned them again.

"Soul not detected."

The result was still the same. Had those black soldiers also been dealt with?

"Sister, could it be that once they entered that portal, they were shielded?"

Brunhilde's silent sister, Lantigreese, proposed this theory.

"How could that be shielded? This is a call from the Akasha System of the world. As long as they exist in this world, in this universe, no matter how hidden they are, they cannot avoid being summoned. The only outcome where there's no response is if their souls have been completely shattered, to the point where resurrection is impossible."

Brunhilde's voice was a bit loud and agitated, as if she found her sister's foolish hypothesis laughable.

However, in reality, she shared the same thought as Lantigreese but refused to believe it, and indeed, couldn't believe it.

Because it was an impossible fact, as Akasha recorded everything in the universe.

Anything that existed in this universe would be recorded in the Akashic Records.

And these people before her had records of their activities in history, meaning they had indeed existed in this world.

Since they existed in this world, as long as their souls weren't completely shattered due to some circumstance after death, they could definitely be summoned through the Akashic Records.

If they couldn't be summoned, it meant their souls were shattered, turning into cosmic dust, which was why their souls couldn't be detected.

What? Could the souls of these people somehow escape the universe recorded by Akasha?

That was even more impossible!

An absolutely impossible scenario!

This result could only mean that a large-scale, brutal act of soul annihilation had been carried out to conceal something beyond imagination.

Looking at it this way, the number of souls erased likely far exceeded Brunhilde's imagination.

Taking a deep breath, Brunhilde brought up a complex interface and began tapping on it with her hands.

At this moment, she looked like a hacker.

Finally, as she slammed down on a button, more windows popped up, and a large amount of data overflowed onto the screen.

Simultaneously, Brunhilde's pupils darted rapidly.

"Soul not detected."

"Soul detected."

"Soul not detected."

"Soul detected..."

The more information that was revealed, the more terrified Brunhilde felt. There were truly so many, so many that her scalp tingled.

Currently, she was filtering by a specific time period, from 259 BC to 202 BC. Both these dates were significant.

The former marked the birth of the First Emperor, while the latter was the recorded death of the Western Chu Hegemon King.

Her sixth sense told her that these two individuals had an unknown connection, which was why she had chosen this time frame for her search. The results of the search indeed sent a chill down her spine.

She conducted a comprehensive survey of people from that Eastern country within this period. The result was that a large number of souls could not be detected, not just soldiers, but also a vast number of ordinary civilians.

During those times, the periods where large-scale searches failed to find souls almost always coincided with major wars during the late Warring States period.

Huh? There were also times outside the Warring States period, specifically during the Qin Dynasty's establishment. One period saw the most terrifying disappearance of souls—a sudden vanishing of over a million souls.

This period, it seemed, was precisely when the First Emperor ordered the construction of the Great Wall.

At this moment, Brunhilde's scalp tingled.

She thought of something: the First Emperor was also pursuing immortality and godhood. Could he have strayed down some wicked path?

And if this wicked path required the consumption of vast numbers of souls, then were so many people's souls completely lost because they were sacrificed?

Since such large-scale soul erasure was possible, it proved the First Emperor possessed power beyond human comprehension.

If that were the case, how could the Qin Dynasty have collapsed so suddenly? And Xiang Yu was the main force that overthrew it.

If the two were truly connected, then the collapse of the Qin Dynasty might have been intentional, a way to cover something up and lie in wait in the shadows.

Adjusting the historical time-space node to enter—the period of the Great Wall's construction—Brunhilde decided to go and see.

Confirmed!

However, an anomaly occurred again.

Chapter 038: An Industrial Revolution Two Thousand Years Early?

She was supposed to travel to the historical time node Brunhilde desired after confirmation.

At that moment, her vision would have been filled with incredible radiance, as if seeing a mysterious, colorful world through a soap bubble.

However, though this scene did appear the instant she confirmed the jump, it vanished just as quickly, like a popped soap bubble.

Simultaneously, Brunhilde felt a subtle tremor.

How to describe it? It was as if she had just started her car and was speeding forward, when suddenly a force grabbed her car and yanked her back to her original position.

Then, after the incredible radiance disappeared, the place reflected in her eyes was still the banks of the Wujiang River. In other words, she hadn't left her original time point?

No, she had left; she had moved slightly forward.

Now, the scene before her, which should have been the King of Han's army in a panic due to Xiang Yu's physical body suddenly collapsing, did not show the King of Han's army.

The scene showed the portal still present, soldiers in black armor, and the Western Chu Hegemon King, Xiang Yu.

In other words, she had gone back in time by over ten minutes?

Wait, that's not right. Brunhilde's pupils constricted; she noticed something incongruous.

First, where did Xiang Yu go?

Wait, isn't he right there in her vision now? Why would she say that?

It's because there should have been two Xiang Yus: one an android, and the other his true physical body. Now, there was only one figure, and that figure seemed to be the android. Where was the physical body?

Looking around, she couldn't see the physical body anywhere.

Also, where was the box? She couldn't see the box that had been carrying the android's body.

Could it be that the image hadn't rewound, but rather that some time had fast-forwarded, and then the portal had reopened here, and their group had emerged?

Yes, that was probably it.

"Sis, Sister!"

Lantigreese's voice trembled with disbelief, her eyes wide as she looked in one direction, as if she had discovered something incredible.

What could it be?

Looking over, Brunhilde finally truly realized what those tiny black objects she had glimpsed out of the corner of her eye were: they were ships!

But what was so shocking about a ship?

If it were an ordinary ship, there would be nothing remarkable about it. The problem was that this was a ship that didn't belong to this era.

It was a steamship powered by steam, a product that would only be born after the First Industrial Revolution.

Furthermore, there wasn't just one ship docked by the riverbank; there were several transport ships moving upstream with cargo.

"Wooooooo—!"

It wasn't the sound of the ships, but from the land. Following the direction of the sound, she looked.

The scene that met Brunhilde's eyes made her gasp in astonishment again: it was a steam train, chugging along and emitting steam as it headed towards a bridge spanning the river.

"Sister, isn't the current year 202 AD? Not the eighteenth century?"

Lantigreese's voice was once again dazed.

The history unfolding before them was too abnormal. The Industrial Revolution, which should have begun in the eighteenth century, was now starting in the years before Christ?

This was two thousand years ahead of schedule!

Where had something gone wrong?

Such obviously abnormal history couldn't possibly be hidden, yet they had never heard of such a thing.

It was utterly bizarre, making Lantigreese feel uneasy.

Now, Lantigreese could perhaps understand a little of her younger sister Goll's inexplicable fright.

So, while feeling uneasy, Lantigreese also wondered what Goll had seen with her sister on the previous two occasions.

"Sister?"

Lantigreese then noticed Brunhilde's face showing panic, and she seemed utterly flustered and at a loss.

Her sister was more frightened than she was?

Could it be that her sister had discovered something more terrifying through the Akashic Records?

"S-Sister!"

Her face had turned pale, as if she had suffered an unimaginable blow, and she seemed completely dazed.

"What's wrong? Sister?"

"—The Akasha System is unreachable!"

A trembling voice laced with fear came from Brunhilde, which was the reason for her bewildered expression.

As Lantigreese tried to confirm the time, she was horrified to discover that she couldn't summon the Akasha System. No matter how she called out, there was no response, and she couldn't sense it either.

This situation was akin to playing a virtual game and suddenly finding one's consciousness trapped within it, unable to summon the system. If that happened, one couldn't log out and would be forever trapped in the virtual game.

"Sister, they can see us!"

At this moment, Lantigreese also discovered something even stranger. The black soldiers were all casting sharp gazes at them.

As if they had suddenly spotted assassins, they drew their weapons and charged, effectively semi-surrounding the two of them.

And the weapons in their hands weren't swords or blades, but muskets?

Of course, these muskets would only pose a threat to ordinary humans. They, however, were Valkyries. While not true gods, they were demigods, and such weapons couldn't harm them.

Therefore, normally, there would be no need to worry. However, they couldn't withstand the strangeness of their current predicament. Especially since they were facing the Western Chu Hegemon King, Xiang Yu, who was an android, they felt a threat from his power.

"Stand down!"