After uncovering the secrets hidden within Busalet’s history and jurisprudence, Dorothy began devoting time to a more in-depth and meticulous study of the laws and principles underlying them.

She initiated various preliminary experiments to test the pseudo-historical worlds of Busalet, aiming to summarize their nature and governing rules.

The first thing Dorothy confirmed was that, for now, the only way to create and enter a pseudo-historical world was by writing fabricated histories that extended the timelines of once-extinct Busalet dynasties into the present day. As long as a dynasty’s history was extended to the current real-world date, anyone who came into contact with the corresponding manuscript could enter its matching pseudo-historical world.

During the process of compiling these fabricated histories, Revelation spirituality was consumed. The longer the false history, the more spirituality was required—but overall, the rate of consumption was not high.

Dorothy reasoned that such a vast pseudo-historical world couldn’t have been constructed using just her meager supply of spirituality. The primary force behind its creation had to be the sliver of divine power residing in Busalet. Her own contribution of spirituality merely served to guide that divine force into action.

After writing a pseudo-history of the Santo Dynasty, she tried compiling one for an even earlier dynasty. Once again, upon reaching the present-day date in her fabricated narrative, she was transported into a corresponding pseudo-historical world. In other words, Dorothy could create multiple pseudo-historical worlds by extending the timelines of various historical dynasties.

These worlds were generated according to Dorothy’s basic settings, and then automatically filled out in detail. Theoretically, with that divine power’s assistance, she could create pseudo-histories with different events and settings—but only within constraints.

The fabricated histories must conform to basic historical logic and to Busalet’s geopolitical context. If her narrative diverged too wildly from historical plausibility, the pseudo-world would simply fail to manifest.

For example, Dorothy once drafted a highly exaggerated developmental arc for a fabricated dynasty. She claimed that in just 150 years of stable governance, it had undergone wave after wave of technological revolution, leading to an explosive era of progress. By the year 1361, this fictional state had supposedly become a hyper-advanced civilization capable of spaceflight and interstellar colonization with FTL ships.

But by the laws of historical development, no civilization could leap from tribal unification to spacefaring society in just over a century. As expected, this pseudo-historical world failed to appear—nothing happened when she reached 1361 in the timeline.

Besides this, Dorothy tried several other radical settings.

A sudden viral outbreak transforming all of Busalet’s people into mutants with superpowers, who then founded a new civilization.

Aliens descending to bestow advanced knowledge on local tribes, triggering a technological renaissance.

A kingdom unearthing ruins from an ancient dwarf civilization and acquiring their advanced tech.

A dynasty fully embracing the Radiance Church, leading to a bishop from Holy Mount arriving with sacred scriptures to settle there...

All of these were attempts at “mechanical theurgy”—forcing divine or mystical interventions to override historical norms. But they all failed. Through repeated trial and error, Dorothy grasped another rule: even if her fabricated history stayed within historical plausibility, the pseudo-historical worlds she created could only draw resources and influence from within Busalet’s own borders.

She could not have a pseudo-kingdom extract ores or resources that didn’t exist in real-world Busalet. She couldn’t introduce powers foreign to real history, nor could she allow outside factions to influence the world on a large scale. All the pseudo-histories she created were inherently enclosed systems.

Dorothy could construct multiple pseudo-historical worlds simultaneously, but each one had to originate from a short-lived dynasty that had already appeared in real history. She couldn’t fabricate an entirely new dynasty out of thin air. Each short-lived dynasty could anchor a pseudo-historical world, and while only one per dynasty was allowed, she could edit or update these worlds at will simply by modifying the associated manuscripts.

Objects from pseudo-historical worlds could not be brought back into the real world—but real-world objects could be left in the pseudo-worlds. For instance, Dorothy had once deliberately left one of her corpse marionettes behind. After returning to reality and rewriting the year 1361 to re-enter that pseudo-Santo world, she found the marionette again—now reduced to a weathered skeleton.

After multiple tests, Dorothy understood why: when she struck out a specific date from a pseudo-history manuscript, that date was erased from the timeline. But any real-world items left in that era did not vanish—they were instead displaced upward or downward to the next closest date still recorded in the pseudo-history. If there was no future date, they were moved backward instead.

Previously, she’d left a marionette in the year 1361 of the pseudo-Santo world. When she struck out the 1361 entry and returned to reality, that marionette had been pushed back to the next most recent recorded year, 1357. When she later rewrote the 1361 entry and returned, she found the marionette still there—but now as a skeleton, having “lived” through four full years without her spiritual thread to sustain it.

Besides this, Dorothy also clarified why real-world entities were imperceptible to inhabitants of the pseudo-worlds: to the latter, anything from real history was seen as an outsider. In order for pseudo-world residents to perceive a visitor from reality, that person needed to be assigned a legitimate identity within the pseudo-history.

Once a proper persona was written into the manuscript, someone from the real world could “play” that identity to interact with the pseudo-world naturally.

During such tests, Dorothy assigned herself the role of a foreign merchant’s daughter from outside Busalet and wrote her marionette as her merchant father. As a result, both of them were able to move freely in the pseudo-Santo world—talking with locals, trading, even finding accommodations.

After several days of study, Dorothy had finally mapped out the basic properties of the pseudo-historical worlds. Now, the question she had to consider was how to use those properties to find Heopolis.

“Since Busalet’s divine power can cause long-dead dynasties to reappear within pseudo-historical worlds… then perhaps the very first human dynasty—the First Dynasty—can also be recreated this way. If I’m right, then Heopolis, the heart of that First Dynasty, was once located within Busalet, even if it has since vanished across the millennia.”

“What I need to do now is write a pseudo-history for the First Dynasty—just as I did for those short-lived Fourth Epoch kingdoms. If I can stretch that dynasty’s timeline forward to the present day, I’ll be able to see Heopolis inside the pseudo-world and perhaps uncover information related to advancing to the Gold rank. After all, while physical objects can’t be brought back—information can.”

Sitting on the grassy banks of a clear oasis outside Bastis, Dorothy stared into the distance at the crumbling city walls, deep in thought. By now, she had almost fully grasped the meaning behind the phrase “Heopolis exists only within history.” And it made her just a little curious about Shadi.

“To think that Shadi’s intel was actually accurate… I wonder how he came to know such a secret. His claim that it came from some elder of his treasure-hunting society… that sounds dubious at best.”

Dorothy reflected silently. Shadi had claimed his information came from an old member of a long-defunct treasure-hunting guild—a claim she hadn’t trusted at the time. Now, after uncovering the depth of the secret hidden in that one sentence, she believed it even less.

“There’s some mysterious power supporting Shadi—this much isn’t a secret. But now, it seems that the force backing him has a profound connection to the First Dynasty. At some point, I’ll need to make contact… no, if I can manage to uncover Heopolis this time, maybe I won’t need to reach out—they might just come looking for me themselves…”

Sitting on the grass, Dorothy mused to herself, then refocused on how she might go about finding Heopolis.

“To make Heopolis reappear in a pseudo-historical world, I must compile a fabricated history for the First Dynasty. But the issue is… this kind of pseudo-history can’t be pure invention. The latter parts can be made up entirely, but the beginning—the foundation—must be built on real historical evidence.”

“The branches and leaves of pseudo-history must grow from the trunk of real history. Without that, it’s nothing more than a rootless tree. I can’t just fabricate the First Dynasty’s pseudo-history from thin air—I need at least a kernel of real history as a base…”

Frowning slightly, Dorothy thought this over. Every pseudo-history she had written so far was grounded in actual historical inference from available records. Only after determining the rough shape of real events could she extend and rewrite them into fiction. She had already tried inventing a pseudo-history without any historical basis before—and it had failed to generate a pseudo-historical world.

Thus, if she wanted to create a pseudo-world for the First Dynasty, she would have to understand at least a basic outline of its real history. Even if she didn’t need extensive details, a general framework was essential. Only then could her pseudo-history continue from a credible starting point.

Furthermore, unlike those short-lived Fourth Epoch dynasties, the First Dynasty had arisen and fallen during the Second Epoch—several thousand years ago. To bring it forward to the present, Dorothy would need to write several millennia of fabricated history. Even with an abundance of Revelation spirituality, such a drain might be too much to bear.

"So now… I need to uncover the real history of the First Dynasty. That won’t be easy. Where could I even go to find something like that? There’s practically no surviving documentation at all..."

Wearing a serious expression, Dorothy pondered her dilemma. But just then, a loud voice from the distance interrupted her thoughts.

“Food distribution is starting!”

“In the name of the Lord, no pushing! Line up in order—don’t panic, don’t rush. Everyone will get their share! Anyone caught scrambling for extra will be thrown out and get nothing!”

Hearing the commotion, Dorothy looked toward the other side of the oasis’s grassy field. There, a large crowd of ragged, haggard-looking locals from Busalet were gathered. Under the direction of over a dozen diplomatic guards clad in protective suits, they had formed orderly lines to receive pieces of flatbread from a small supply cart—an unmistakable relief operation.

There were hundreds—nearly a thousand—people in line, the queue stretching beyond sight. Most looked frail and lethargic, clearly suffering from the Withering Plague.

“Now that I think about it, there really are a lot of refugees here... This many in just a few days? Looks like most of Busalet hasn’t fallen under the control of the Longevity Church after all. Plenty of people are still seeking out Vania’s help…”

Gazing at the scene, Dorothy thought quietly. During the past few days she had devoted to studying the pseudo-historical world, the situation on Vania’s side had continued to evolve.

Though the Longevity Church controlled Bastis, they hadn’t extended their grasp to all the surrounding tribal settlements. After news of Vania’s arrival in Bastis spread, many from those tribes—bringing their families with them—hurried to the city for relief while their conditions were still treatable.

The Withering Plague had devastated Busalet’s already fragile productivity and trade, plunging many tribes into famine. Some were already near death from hunger even before the illness took them. Desperate, they came to Bastis to beg for Vania’s aid.

In just a few days, Bastis’s outskirts had become densely populated. Vania, who had previously been at a loss over her inability to enter the city, now had work to do. She quickly organized the diplomatic mission’s resources to aid the incoming refugees—an act that brought real hope to many.

“Finally, Vania’s relief supplies are being put to use… That’s a good thing. But... isn’t it strange how the Longevity Church hasn’t done anything about it?”

Dorothy frowned. Despite the flood of refugees, the cultists within Bastis had done nothing to block them—only watching silently from atop the city walls. That puzzled Dorothy. Weren’t they supposed to oppose Vania’s growing influence? Why allow this influx of support without resistance?

For days now, Dorothy’s smaller corpse marionettes had been surveilling the Longevity Church inside the city. They hadn’t shown any suspicious behavior, but even so, Dorothy couldn’t relax.

From the perspective of the eagle marionettes still circling high in the sky, Dorothy spotted more groups of refugees in the distance—struggling across the desert toward Bastis.

“More arriving again today... At this rate, the total’s going to surpass three thousand… But Vania hasn’t even been in Bastis for long. And Busalet’s communications are basically paralyzed. So how has news of her spread this far...?”