The Imperial Study was silent, save for the faint, frantic pounding of Meng Ao's own heart. He knelt in the center of the vast, intimidating room, his head bowed, his entire body tense. He had been summoned here alone, an unprecedented and deeply dangerous act for a mere bodyguard. He had been stripped of his sword before entering, and the doors had been closed behind him. He was prepared for punishment, for demotion, perhaps even for a quiet, unceremonious death. He had committed the cardinal sin of contradicting the Son of Heaven.
From outside the closed doors, he could hear the scandalized, protesting voice of the new head tutor, Wo Ren, complaining loudly to the eunuchs about this outrageous breach of protocol. The Emperor was meant to be studying, not holding private audiences with coarse guardsmen. The sound only amplified Meng Ao's terror.
Ying Zheng sat at his small lesson table, regarding the kneeling man with an intense, unnerving calm that did not belong on the face of a four-year-old. His mind was a whirlwind of calculations and dawning, impossible hope. The man's words in the garden had been a key, unlocking a door in his memory that he had thought sealed forever. Now, he had to be certain.
"Rise, Guard Meng," Ying Zheng said. His voice was the clear, high tone of a child, but it carried an authority that made the hairs on Meng Ao's arms stand on end.
Meng Ao rose stiffly to his feet, his muscles coiled like springs. He kept his head bowed, his eyes fixed on the floor. He could feel the boy's ancient gaze on him, a weight that was more palpable than any physical object.
"They say you were a soldier before you became a guard," Ying Zheng continued, his tone conversational. "They say you are a master of the spear." He paused, then asked a question that was jarringly out of place. "Tell me. If you are commanding a unit of heavy infantry, and you are facing a charge of barbarian cavalry from the northern steppe, what is the formation?"
It was a highly technical, military question that no child should know, let alone ask. It was a question taken directly from the standard military doctrine of the long-dead Qin army.
Meng Ao did not have to think. The knowledge was not in his mind; it was in his blood, in his bones. The answer flowed from him, bypassing conscious thought, a perfect, reflexive recitation from a life he could not remember.
"Your Majesty," he answered, his voice a low, steady rumble. "You form the hollow square. The first two ranks kneel, their shields locked, their spears angled outwards to create a wall of iron points. The ranks behind them stand, their spears braced. The crossbowmen are placed in the center of the square, to fire in disciplined volleys over the heads of the spearmen. You do not charge. You receive the charge. You let them break upon your shields like water breaking upon a rock."
The answer was perfect. It was flawless. It was the textbook Qin tactic against the Xiongnu nomads, a strategy he and his emperor had spent years perfecting.
Ying Zheng's own heart, a thing he could now control, was pounding with an unfamiliar, wild rhythm. This was it. The final test. The final confirmation.
He looked directly at the tall guardsman. And for the first time since their meeting, he let the mask of the child Zaitian fall away completely. His posture did not change, but the very atmosphere in the room shifted. His eyes, no longer wide and innocent, became ancient, cold, and filled with the absolute, soul-crushing authority of the First August Thearch. When he spoke again, his voice was still quiet, but it was no longer the voice of a boy. It was a low, resonant murmur that seemed to vibrate in Meng Ao's very soul, the voice of command he had heard in his dreams.
"And if the enemy does not break?" Ying Zheng asked. "If their numbers are too great and your men begin to fear?" He leaned forward slightly, his ancient eyes locking onto the guard's. He then spoke a single, coded phrase, a line from the unofficial motto of his old army, a phrase known only to the two of them, a phrase not recorded in any history book Sima Qian had ever written.
"What is the answer to fear, General?"
He called him General.
The word, and the impossible, forgotten phrase that followed it, struck Meng Ao like a physical blow, like a bolt of lightning to his soul. The fragments of memory, the chaotic dreams, the feelings of inexplicable loyalty, the flashes of a great wall and a man in black robes—they all crashed together in his mind in a single, explosive, clarifying moment. The two realities fused. The powerful, faceless emperor from his visions suddenly resolved, superimposing itself perfectly over the form of the small child sitting before him. The body was wrong, but the presence, the authority, the will, the eyes—they were the same.
The guard's carefully maintained military composure shattered. His breath hitched in his throat. He fell to one knee, not with the practiced fear of a Qing guardsman before his emperor, but with the reflexive, absolute, soul-deep loyalty of a general before his one true sovereign. He landed on the stone floor with a heavy, solid thud. His head was bowed, his entire body trembling with the shock of a revelation that spanned two thousand years.
His voice, when he finally found it, was choked with disbelief, with awe, and with an unwavering fealty that had survived the dissolution of time itself.
"My Lord… Majesty…" he stammered, the words torn from his throat. "The only answer to fear… is the Emperor's command."
He slowly, reverently, lifted his head, his own eyes shining with unshed tears of shock and reunion.
"My Emperor," he breathed.
Ying Zheng sat back in his chair, a slow, grim, and triumphant nod his only reply. The First Emperor and his greatest general, two impossible ghosts of an ancient, forgotten age, were reunited in a world that was not their own.
The game had just changed forever.