The man sat quietly, holding his wine cup, his gaze fixed in the direction where Chu Lian lay unconscious, making no other movement.
"Still the same as before—once you're happy, you lose yourself easily, doing things you normally would not. To see your unchanged face today eases my heart. If not for the trap I set back then, making you lose to that boy in white, how could your Xiang clan have been forced to change its name and wander to this day?" He raised the wine to his lips but did not drink, only smiled faintly in bitter remembrance of that era.
"Now the histories say you were Xiang Yu, the Overlord of Western Chu, with the might to lift mountains and unmatched dominance, holding aloft the Nine Cauldrons to secure the realm. Yet who truly knew that you were but a peerless beauty clad in red like fire? Tsk, tsk… back then, when that whelp Liu Bang at the Wu River failed to force you into surrender and marriage, and you instead perished together with Lady Yu, he truly missed the one person he should never have missed."
"Haha, had you truly married into the Liu household, it would have been Liu Bang's fortune earned over a hundred lifetimes. But whether he could have borne your power is another matter. Perhaps within a few years, the world would know only the name Xiang Yu and not Liu Bang. With his obsession for you, perhaps he might have dared. But alas, fate denied him that blessing."
He knew well that once Chu Lian was drunk, she would not awaken unless her life was in danger. So he spoke without reservation, unconcerned whether she could hear. Even if she did, he feared no consequences from her knowing. To act as he pleased, to speak as he wished—that was him, Ying Zheng, the First Emperor, called the Eternal Sovereign. Still alive in this world, an immortal—and the very reason the state dared not touch the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor. With him here, even alone, none could afford to treat him lightly, for to do so meant becoming just another stepping stone beneath his throne.
"Liu Bang, Liu Bang… you schemed endlessly, and at the end nearly shattered my plan, but still failed in the final moment. I wonder, were you ever truly content? Xiang Yu, Xiang Yu… ah, what a name, what a homophone. By shaping her into a man in the histories, was it proof that in your heart you feared her strength, and so relied on cunning to defeat her?"
"To possess her was never within your fate. Xiang Yu sought only one who could defeat her in open combat, not one who skulked in shadows, forever calculating against her. Were it not that she had already seen through that no man in the world could be her match, why else would she have chosen to join her life with Lady Yu's?" Ying Zheng's lips curled with a trace of mocking laughter. Though his words were soft, it seemed almost as if he were speaking to someone else.
"This life of hers has already cut free of the past. What I see now is only a delicate young maiden. In the world outside, such youthful beauties are even given a name—loli, they call it. An amusing title, most apt indeed."
Rising, he stepped toward Chu Lian. Extending his hand, he sought to brush her cheek.
Yet midway, his hand halted, lingering in the air. After a long pause, he sighed. "Forget it, forget it. If I truly touched you, when you woke you might mark me as an eternal enemy. I can feel the ruins within your heart, the fear and revulsion at men drawing close, at their attempts to pursue you. Perhaps there are pasts you do not wish to recall, do not wish to speak of, yet they remain inviolable taboos."
"I already owe you too much, debts impossible to repay. If I were to earn your hatred now, I fear I would never again have the chance to see you in this life." He stood there a long while, gazing at Chu Lian's still form.
At last, with a silent wave of his hand, her unconscious body slowly rose into the air. Ying Zheng guided her gently, setting her upon a bench behind a beaded curtain, before returning to his seat and sipping his wine.
Perhaps an hour passed, perhaps two, before the drunken Chu Lian finally stirred, her eyes opening slowly. Vision hazy, she stared until the blurred figures before her fused into one, and she gradually realized where she was.
She pulled her clothes tighter, ran her hands quickly across her body, and finding nothing amiss, finally breathed a sigh of relief. "Seems nothing happened."
"Am I truly so contemptible in your eyes?" Ying Zheng's voice came softly from beyond the curtain, for he had already sensed that Chu Lian had awakened.
"Hmph, who knows what kind of man you really are. If you ask me, Qin Shi Huang must be one of the biggest lechers in all of Chinese history. If I didn't guard against you, I'd probably have already been devoured clean, made just another of your concubines." Chu Lian spoke bluntly, not giving him the slightest face.
"Haha, if I truly were such a man, you would already be my newest consort, not still untouched and unblemished." Ying Zheng wasn't angered. He had already come to understand Chu Lian's temperament—she would bend to softness, but never to force. To win her over, one had to lower themselves; if she didn't reject you, that alone was victory.
Had it been anyone else, Ying Zheng would never have bothered, perhaps even executed them outright. But the one treating him this way was Chu Lian—the one to whom he owed the most.
Indeed, if he had not once held feelings of admiration for Xiang Yu, and carried that admiration to this day, transforming it into a form of protection toward Chu Lian, he would never have lowered himself so much.
All of it was fate—entanglements of karma, bonds formed and broken—until now, knotted into ties that could not be undone.
"Who knows if you're just playing a long game, casting a line with a slow hook? Let me make this clear: I like women, not men. Don't even think about touching me. Even if you are the Eternal Sovereign, even if you are Qin Shi Huang, I will never feel any affection for you." Chu Lian's tone was lofty, but Ying Zheng clearly caught the hidden meaning in her words. He said nothing, only smiled faintly, poured another cup of wine, and drank slowly.
With her small, bare feet upon the warm floor, she wandered and gazed at her surroundings. For a moment, it felt as though she had traveled across a thousand years, returning to the Qin Dynasty itself. The place where she stood was Qin Shi Huang's study. There, he drank wine and pondered the affairs of the realm, while she looked on at bamboo slips. Outside, the sound of rain whispered, while inside, the fragrance of books lingered. It was an intoxicating scene.
"Hey, why are you still alive to this day? Is there something you haven't yet finished?" Slowly walking to the seat where she had sat before collapsing drunk, she looked at Ying Zheng, who was still drinking, unable to contain her curiosity.
"Nothing more than keeping a band of clowns suppressed here." Ying Zheng seemed in good spirits that she would speak to him of her own accord, and slowly revealed what she wished to know.
"That year—227 BC, as the histories record—on Mount Li, a mysterious power opened a cavern ten zhang wide. That cavern became the gate for invaders from another world. Their forms were strange and grotesque, more bizarre than the phantoms and specters of forests and mountains. Their kinds were many, their powers formidable. At first they appeared only in small numbers, but then came in groups, until finally they merged into an army tens of thousands strong to attack my cities."
"At that critical moment, I resolved to personally lead the campaign, to meet these inexplicable enemies myself." His gaze turned distant, as if the memory of that time was still vivid. "The first battle ended in great victory for my invincible Qin army. But the triumph was short-lived. More and more of these strange humans appeared, stronger and stronger. Later, some of them, indistinguishable from humans, were equal in power to the grandmasters worshiped by Qin. If not for their lack of order, and their tendency to fight separately, perhaps Qin would already have been destroyed."
"The war dragged on endlessly. In the end, I mobilized the entire nation to fight. Seven years passed—that same year history records my death—the war finally reached its climax. Their numbers dwindled, but their strength only grew."
"At the end, I myself had to take to the battlefield. I still recall, at that time, a woman appeared—one whom even I could not claim I could defeat…" As he said this, Ying Zheng cast a brief glance at Chu Lian, finding her listening intently, seemingly oblivious to the look.
So he continued: "I do not know why, but she appeared only once. After crossing blades with me, wounding me, and then vanishing like the wind, she never returned. Without their strongest, the enemy ranks collapsed. Some escaped back into the cavern world, some fled into the wider world, while others were captured by my army. Most of the weak were either slaughtered or retreated to where they had come from."
"This war of seven years ended with Qin's victory. Yet though millions of the enemy fell, Qin itself was gravely wounded—nearly seven hundred thousand dead. They were my most elite soldiers. I had planned to lead them westward, to conquer the continent the world, but instead they perished here. It remains my deepest regret."
"By then, I already knew these enemies hailed from the Otherside. That cavern was the gateway they had torn open. Unless it was sealed forever, this calamity would never end."
"I was weary. Watching the land broken after years of war, I chose to set aside the empire."
"In the end—whether you know it or not—I made a pact. I gained immortality and great power. In return, I was bound forever with my invincible army to guard that gate, unable to leave within a hundred li of Mount Li. Thus, the finest of Qin's warriors vanished from the world's eyes, standing watch here with me, to prevent the invaders of the Otherside from returning."
"No one could have imagined how many contingencies I left scattered across the realm. For decades after, the tides of history never escaped my grasp. That way, I could secure the fragile beginnings of the seal, and buy precious time."
Hearing this, Chu Lian asked: "So those Terracotta Warriors are your army? Why have they all turned to clay?"
"I am eternal, but they are not immortal. To remain with me, they willingly gave up their lives, letting their souls sink into lifeless earthen bodies. At my command, they will awaken from slumber, unleashing their fiercest charge wherever my blade points. They are the invincible army, forever one with me."
Ying Zheng's voice brimmed with pride, as though he did not consider it cruel at all. Perhaps, in his eyes, the world had once belonged entirely to him—so for even his finest generals and soldiers to give their lives for him was only natural.
Chu Lian only furrowed her delicate brows lightly. After a moment of silence, she asked: "Then who am I?" She did not remember what Qin Shi Huang had said before she fell drunk—otherwise she would not have needed to ask.
"You are the heir of the Overlord of Western Chu." Ying Zheng's tone was firm, as though he had long expected this question.
"The heir of the Overlord of Western Chu…" she murmured. She could not tell whether this referred to herself—or to Chu Lian.