The Emperor's private study was the still, silent heart of the Forbidden City, a sanctuary of lacquered wood and ancient silk scrolls where the fate of four hundred million souls was decided. Here, Qin Shi Huang was not merely the Guangxu Emperor, a young man in dragon robes; he was the First Emperor reborn, a timeless will inhabiting a new vessel. The air itself seemed different in his presence, heavier and charged with a potent sense of history and absolute authority.
He sat behind a vast desk of dark, polished zitan wood, the surface bare save for two documents. The first was a translated summary of foreign news reports regarding the "Appalachian Fire." The second, far more significant, was the preliminary intelligence brief from his Spymaster, Shen Ke. It was a slender report, but its weight was immense.
The Emperor read the news from America first, his expression one of pure, intellectual contempt. The overwrought descriptions of panic, the frantic pronouncements from local politicians, the wild speculation blaming anarchists and disgruntled laborers—it was all so predictable. So… Western. He saw it not as a successful covert attack orchestrated by one of his own subjects, but as a clear and damning symptom of the terminal disease afflicting the Occidental world.
He gestured for his chief eunuch, Li Lianying, to approach. "Look at this, Li," the Emperor said, his voice calm, analytical, and utterly dismissive. He tapped a finger on the translated headline. "The barbarians set their own nation ablaze, and they have no idea why. Their society is so consumed by its chaotic obsession with 'liberty' that it devours itself from within. Every man is a king, and so there is no king. Every voice shouts, and so there is no authority. Roosevelt presides over a collapsing house of cards, and he is too busy playing the frontiersman to notice the foundation is rotten."
He tossed the summary aside. In his grand strategic calculus, the event was a triviality, a footnote. His mind, accustomed to moving empires and redrawing maps, could not be bothered with the fleeting panic of foreign peasants. It was a miscalculation of staggering proportions, born not of ignorance, but of an arrogance so profound it rendered him blind. He could not conceive that a fire in a distant, barbarian land could be a direct consequence of his own actions—of the humiliation he had inflicted upon Yuan Shikai. He saw only the weakness of his enemy, not the cunning of his servant.
Then, he picked up Shen Ke's report.
As he read, the air in the study grew cold. The academic contempt vanished, replaced by something far more dangerous: a still, focused, and absolute fury. This was a threat he understood. This was a narrative as old as empire itself. Betrayal. A serpent coiled within his own court.
The report was concise. It detailed the discovery of a black market operation selling imperial-grade coking coal and refined steel. It traced the profits to a secret, untraceable fund. And it laid the control of that fund at the feet of an aide in the direct employ of the Minister of Industry, Yuan Shikai.
"So," the Emperor murmured, his voice dropping to a near whisper that was more terrifying than any roar. "The jackal has been stealing from the dragon's hoard."
The crime was not the theft of materials; it was the audacity. It was a challenge to his absolute ownership of the realm. Every lump of coal, every bar of steel, was his. Yuan Shikai, the man he had elevated, the man whose ruthless ambition he had cultivated as a useful tool, had dared to carve out his own secret treasury from the very bones of the Emperor's new dynasty. It was an unforgivable sin.
He placed the report down, his movements precise and deliberate. He closed his eyes. Li Lianying and the court physician, Dr. Gao, who stood silently by the wall, watched him, accustomed to these moments of intense, motionless concentration. They believed he was merely thinking, plotting his response. They were wrong.
The Emperor was acting.
He extended his senses, his unique and terrible power. Not outward across the provinces to mend a wire or shore up a dam, but inward, into the very heart of his own palace. He focused his "qi vision" on the Forbidden City itself, a subtle, sweeping probe. He was not looking for a person; he was looking for a stain. He sought to feel the resonance of treachery, to sense which of his courtiers and ministers were tainted by Yuan's corruption, their loyalty compromised, their qi muddied by deceit.
But as he used his power, his mind was not the placid, deep ocean of will it usually was. It was a maelstrom of cold, boiling rage. His contempt for the Americans was intellectual. His fury at Yuan was personal. And this rage, this potent human emotion, bled into the supernatural fabric of his power.
For a split second, control wavered.
The effect was subtle, yet deeply unsettling. The steady, soft glow of the oil lamps in the study flared violently, their flames jumping a foot high, casting wild, elongated shadows that danced across the walls like frantic spirits. A priceless porcelain teacup from the Song dynasty, sitting on a small table beside the Emperor's desk, began to vibrate, emitting a high-pitched, harmonic hum. The air grew heavy, thick with the scent of ozone and the feeling of immense, unstable pressure.
Then, as quickly as it began, it was over. The lamp flames settled, though they seemed to flicker with a newfound nervousness. The humming from the teacup stopped, but a faint, hairline crack, finer than a spider's thread, now marred its perfect celadon glaze.
Dr. Gao, a man of science and keen observation, had seen it all. His eyes widened, a flicker of fear crossing his scholarly features. He had seen the lamps flare. He had heard the cup sing its strange, strained note. His gaze darted to the Emperor, who now had a single, thin trickle of dark blood running from one nostril. It was a familiar sight, the known cost of the Emperor's "exertions," but the phenomena that had accompanied it were new. And terrifying.
"Your Majesty," Dr. Gao began, his voice strained, taking an involuntary step forward. "Are you well? The… the lamps, the cup…"
The Emperor's eyes snapped open. He had felt it. The flicker. The stutter. A momentary loss of the perfect, smooth, effortless control he had always wielded. For an instant, his power had not felt like an extension of his will, but like a wild horse straining against the reins. The sensation was profoundly unsettling, a violation of the fundamental nature of his being. But his pride, the ancient, unassailable core of Qin Shi Huang, would never allow him to admit such a weakness.
He calmly wiped the trace of blood from his lip with the back of his hand. "A draft," he said, his voice cold and dismissive, cutting off any further inquiry. "The wind from the gardens is restless tonight." He fixed Dr. Gao with a look that forbade argument. "Spymaster Shen's report is… vexing. It has disturbed my concentration. Nothing more."
Dr. Gao bowed his head low, retreating back to the shadows of the wall, his mind racing with what he had just witnessed. It was not a draft. It was something else.
The Emperor dismissed them both with a wave of his hand. Left alone in the vast, silent study, he rose and walked to the small table. He stared down at the priceless teacup, a treasure that had survived a thousand years of history. He gently traced the new, hairline crack with the tip of his finger. It was an infinitesimal flaw in a work of perfection. An imperfection.
He had always believed his power was absolute, a tool as reliable and obedient as his own hand. Now, for the first time, he was forced to consider a possibility he had never entertained. That his rage, his own human emotions, could warp the very power that made him a god. That it might not be a tool, but a beast leashed to his soul. And that the leash might be starting to fray.