The Emperor's study was a chamber of glacial silence. Qin Shi Huang sat enthroned behind his zitan desk, the very air around him seeming to crackle with a cold, contained power. Before him stood his Spymaster, Shen Ke, a man who lived and breathed in a world of shadows, yet now found himself exposed under the full, unblinking glare of his master.
In the Emperor's hand was Shen Ke's report. It felt as heavy as a slab of lead.
"You are certain of this, Spymaster?" the Emperor's voice was deceptively soft, a silken cord that could snap a man's neck. It was not a question so much as a demand for a final, irrevocable oath. "You are willing to stake your life, and the lives of every man in your ministry, on the contents of this report?"
Shen Ke did not flinch. He had verified every source, cross-referenced every transaction. This was the truth, hard-won from the darkness. "I am, Your Majesty," he replied, his voice steady. "The evidence is undeniable. Minister Yuan has built a private treasury by stealing from the state. His corruption is a cancer on the Ministry of Industry."
The Emperor's gaze was intense, analytical. He needed to be sure. Not just of the facts, but of the man presenting them. He closed his eyes, preparing to use his most private and potent tool. He would reach out with his senses, his qi vision, and use it as the ultimate lie detector. He would feel the resonance of Shen Ke's loyalty, the purity of his intent, and know in an instant if there was any deception.
But as he drew upon his power, he found it was not the cool, clear wellspring he was accustomed to. His mind was still tainted by the cold, seething rage he felt toward Yuan Shikai. The fury was a poison, a distortion field. The moment he focused his will, he felt that familiar, terrifying stutter in his power. It was stronger this time.
The vision, when it came, was not the clean, intuitive sense of truth he expected. It was a grotesque nightmare.
His mind was ripped from the quiet study and plunged into a hellish, symbolic landscape. He didn't just sense Yuan's betrayal; he saw it, twisted and personified by his own rage. He saw Yuan Shikai not as a man in minister's robes, but as a monstrous colossus of brass gears and smoking iron pistons, its heart a roaring furnace fueled by imperial-grade coal. Its metallic limbs, dripping with black grease, clawed at mountains of silver coins, shoveling them into its furnace-mouth. The creature devoured the wealth of the empire and excreted nothing but thick, choking clouds of rust and ash that blotted out the sun.
The vision was a psychic scream, visceral and deeply disturbing. It was not a clean reading of another man's soul. It was a cancerous growth on his own perception, his power feeding his rage and his rage corrupting his power in a vicious, escalating cycle.
Qin Shi Huang's eyes snapped open with a silent gasp. The study swam back into focus. He was aware of a warm trickle of blood from his nose, thicker than before. He was also aware, for the first time, that he was not the only one who had noticed.
Shen Ke, ever observant, had seen it. He had seen the Emperor's eyelids flutter, the sudden tension in his jaw, the slight disorientation as he returned to himself. And he had seen the fresh blood. The Spymaster's face remained a perfect mask of impassivity, but his eyes, for a fraction of a second, widened with a new, dawning comprehension. He was witnessing something beyond statecraft, something secret and fundamental to the Emperor's nature.
The Emperor, shaken but unwilling to show it, brushed the blood away with an almost casual gesture. The monstrous vision, though horrifying, had served its purpose. It had confirmed the substance of Shen Ke's report in the most undeniable way. The cancer was real. And it had to be cut out.
"You have done well, Spymaster," the Emperor said, his voice tight, the softness gone, replaced by the hardness of forged steel. "The jackal will be put in a cage. Prepare your men. I want this done cleanly and swiftly. At dawn, you will arrest Yuan Shikai at his residence. You will seize the Ministry of Industry and secure every ledger, every contract, every document within its walls. I want his entire network of corruption dismantled before the sun is high in the sky. No one is to know until it is done."
Shen Ke bowed low. "It will be done, Your Majesty." He was about to turn and take his leave, his mind already racing with the operational details of the most significant arrest in the new dynasty's history.
But at that moment, the chief eunuch, Li Lianying, scurried into the room, his usually placid face pale with urgency. He moved with a haste that bordered on panic, a breach of protocol that spoke volumes. He held a single, sealed envelope in a trembling hand.
"Your Majesty," Li Lianying stammered, bowing so low his forehead nearly touched the floor. "Forgive this intrusion. A message… it was delivered to the residence of Prince Chun by a foreign source. The Prince, in his unwavering loyalty to the throne, sends it directly and immediately to you. He says it is a matter of the highest treason."
A heavy silence descended upon the study. The Emperor's eyes narrowed. Prince Chun. A relic of the old court, a man he regarded with mild contempt. A foreign source. He took the offered envelope. The wax seal was simple, unmarked.
He broke it with a flick of his thumb and unfolded the single sheet of paper within.
He read the neat lines of calligraphy. His face, which had been a mask of cold fury, slowly drained of all color. His knuckles went white where he gripped the paper.
The note contained a concise, devastatingly accurate summary of Yuan Shikai's crimes. It spoke of black market steel sales, of a secret fund, of the theft of state resources. It was almost a perfect, bullet-pointed summary of the very information contained in Shen Ke's hard-won, top-secret report.
The Emperor slowly raised his head. He looked from the anonymous note in his hand to the face of his Spymaster. The order to arrest Yuan Shikai at dawn died on his lips, frozen by a new and infinitely more chilling possibility.
His immediate, white-hot fury at Yuan was instantly eclipsed by a wave of ice-cold dread. This changed everything. This was not a simple matter of internal corruption anymore.
The Westerners knew.
They knew the secrets of his court. They knew the sins of his ministers. The carefully planned, surgical arrest of a single traitor had just become impossibly complicated. He did not see the note as an outside power trying to sow discord. His paranoid, absolutist mind saw it only one way: as proof. Proof that there was another, deeper traitor in his midst, one with access to his most secret intelligence. Or worse, proof that his enemies possessed an intelligence-gathering capability so profound, so invasive, that it was beyond his comprehension. It was as if they had a window directly into his palace.
The hunt for one traitor was over before it began. Now, a new hunt had to start. The hunt for the ghost who had whispered in the barbarian's ear.