The Yata Mirror

Faced with their repeated doubts, Su Chen spoke with certainty.

"I hadn't considered that possibility before either, because this bronze mirror felt familiar from the moment I first saw it."

"At first, I thought it was an ancient Huaxia water mirror, so I kept trying to remember which ancestor it was connected to."

"But I went through every Huaxia ancestor I could think of, and none of them would have used a water mirror to house a remnant soul as their symbol."

"Only just now did I suddenly realize why I couldn't figure it out. I'd been looking in the wrong direction from the start!"

"The reason this bronze mirror felt familiar wasn't that it looked like a water mirror."

"It was because..."

"I'd seen this thing before!"

What?!

Zhu Yuanzheng and Li Shuhua were stunned once again.

Ancestor symbols appeared out of thin air. They had never existed before.

And this bronze mirror was nothing like a statue.

Where could Su Chen possibly have seen it before?

But then another thought occurred to them.

Wasn't Su Chen's knowledge of so much lost Huaxia history all thanks to ancestors visiting his dreams?

Perhaps he had seen this bronze mirror in a dream too.

At that thought, understanding dawned on them, and they immediately found his claim half believable.

Zhu Yuanzheng rubbed the stubble on his chin and asked again.

"Su, since you've seen this bronze mirror before, do you know what it's called and who it belongs to?"

Su Chen bent down and picked up a sheet of paper from the floor.

On it was his reconstruction of the complete bronze mirror, drawn from the fragments.

Besides the elaborate patterns, there was a distinct sun emblem at the mirror's center.

Su Chen held the paper up before them and spoke, emphasizing every word.

"Although this thing originated from Huaxia's water mirrors, it doesn't belong to Huaxia!"

"It's called the Yata Mirror."

"It's one of Sakura Country's supreme Three Sacred Treasures!"

In Su Chen's previous world, the Yata Mirror had been a real object, enshrined at the Ise Grand Shrine.

Along with the Kusanagi Sword and the Yasakani Jewel, it had been revered by Sakura as one of its supreme Three Sacred Treasures.

He had seen pictures of the Yata Mirror in illustrated magazines and online.

That was why the bronze mirror fragments had given him a sense of déjà vu.

The Yata Mirror?

Sakura Country!

Zhu Yuanzheng's expression changed instantly.

"How did Sakura Country's symbol end up in Huaxia?!"

"Then what about our symbol? Where is it now?"

By now, they fully believed Su Chen.

But if what he said was true, things had just become complicated!

"Investigate! Investigate this immediately!"

"I don't care how you do it! Find out exactly what happened!"

Following Zhu Yuanzheng's order, every detail of the previous night's events was quickly gathered.

Once the information had been sorted, one video soon caught Su Chen's attention.

It was footage of the night sky shot outdoors by an astronomy enthusiast.

One segment happened to capture the moment the symbols appeared.

As Su Chen and the others watched,

a streak of light had barely appeared above Huaxia when another came hurtling in from outside the frame, instantly colliding with it.

Under the violent impact, the incoming streak shattered outright, breaking into dozens of points of light that fell from the sky.

The other was knocked far away, tracing a long arc through the sky before plunging into the ocean to the east.

After watching this, all their earlier questions were answered.

The incoming streak of light had undoubtedly been the Yata Mirror.

The one knocked away had been Huaxia's true symbol!

Once they understood this, Zhu Yuanzheng and Li Shuhua both let out long breaths of relief.

They still did not understand why the two symbols had collided.

But judging by the footage, Huaxia's symbol did not seem to have shattered.

As long as they located the waters where it had fallen, recovering it should not be much trouble.

Yet after only a little checking, all three of their hearts sank again.

That morning, Sakura had already announced the discovery of its second ancestor symbol.

And the location was precisely the stretch of sea where Huaxia's symbol had fallen!

"A conspiracy! This was all a conspiracy!"

At the news, Zhu Yuanzheng flew into a rage, while Li Shuhua trembled with anger.

If there was anyone in the world who wanted Huaxia destroyed most,

it was certainly not Eagle Sauce, but Sakura!

Eagle Sauce bullied the weak and feared the strong. From top to bottom, most of its people were calculating, self-serving opportunists.

When Huaxia was weak, they would keep suppressing it for their own benefit.

But once Huaxia truly rose and became impossible to challenge, Eagle Sauce might well be the first to cozy up to it!

But Sakura?

Sakura was entirely different!

Its political system had long been controlled by hereditary elite clans!

It could be said that Sakura's entire upper class was tied to the invasion of Huaxia all those years ago!

Their fathers and grandfathers had all participated, directly or indirectly, in that utterly inhuman war!

Take the man who had recently been blasted in the back with a gun and sent straight to the afterlife.

His grandfather had been called the Demon of Manchuria and had founded the infamous 731 Unit!

The ridiculous thing was,

some people in Huaxia had actually shed tears for him afterward and protested on his behalf.

They were practically thinking with their asses, their heads stuffed with shit!

Why were generations of Sakura leaders so determined to visit that shrine to filth?

Because the ones enshrined there were their fathers! Their grandfathers!

Even after the ancestor symbols descended, the ancestor Sakura Country awakened was an emperor.

Its inheritor and Awakened alike still came from Sakura's upper-class hereditary clans!

With such a bloody feud between them,

if anyone in this world feared Huaxia's rise most,

these people would unquestionably top the list!

The appearance of a second symbol held extraordinary significance for Huaxia!

Yet the Yata Mirror had not appeared within Sakura's borders. Instead, it had swept through the skies above Huaxia.

And it had struck Huaxia's symbol dead-on.

After being knocked away, Huaxia's symbol had just so happened to fall into Sakura's waters, where they recovered it.

Not even a ghost would believe all that was coincidence!

"Those Foot-Basin Chickens really are ruthless!"

"To hold Huaxia back, they'd even sacrifice their own symbol!"

"They're fucking hurting others without gaining anything themselves!"

Veins bulged on Zhu Yuanzheng's forehead as he ground his teeth in fury.

But after pondering for a long time, Su Chen slowly shook his head.

"This couldn't have been done by the Foot-Basin Chickens."

"No matter how powerful their inheritor is, he couldn't control a symbol that hasn't been activated yet, could he?"

"Besides, ancestor symbols appear in completely random locations."

"But in the footage, the Yata Mirror slammed into Huaxia's symbol the moment it appeared."

"As though it knew beforehand where Huaxia's symbol would manifest."

"If the Foot-Basin Chickens could really predict the future, would they need to resort to tricks like this?"

Hearing this, Zhu Yuanzheng froze for quite a while before slowly calming down.

Su Chen was right. This was far beyond anything the Foot-Basin Chickens could do.

Su Chen could control the Nine Provinces Cauldron because he possessed Dayu's absolute inheritance.

But the Yata Mirror was an unactivated symbol. No human could possibly control it.

And the Foot-Basin Chickens were not gods. How could they know in advance where Huaxia's symbol would appear?

If they truly had the power to foresee the future,

they would never have allowed Su Chen to emerge in the first place.

Huaxia would never have had the chance to activate the Nine Provinces Cauldron either.

Why wait until now to pull these stunts?

Yet no matter how they looked at it, the incident seemed to have been deliberately orchestrated.

If it wasn't the Foot-Basin Chickens, who could it have been?