Colonel Jiao knelt on the cold stone floor of the Emperor's study, his body a perfect, rigid expression of absolute deference. He had requested this private audience, bypassing the entire military and ministerial chain of command, a breach of protocol so severe that it could only be justified by a matter of the most profound and existential importance. He was not here as an officer reporting to his sovereign. He was here as a zealot, a true believer, bearing witness to what he perceived as a dangerous and growing heresy.
The Emperor, Qin Shi Huang, sat behind his desk, his face a calm, unreadable mask. He had spent the days since his delegations' return consolidating his own fragile strength and processing the torrent of information about Yuan Shikai's treachery and the new, humiliating pact with the Americans. He looked at the kneeling commissar, a man he had personally chosen for his fanatical loyalty, and waited.
"Your Majesty," Jiao began, his voice a low, fervent thrum, "I have come to deliver my personal report on the conduct of Chief Strategist Meng Tian during his time in the northern theater and in the barbarian lands of America. It is a report I could not, in good conscience, submit through official channels."
He began by establishing his own "objectivity," a classic rhetorical maneuver. He praised Meng Tian's undeniable courage. He spoke of his tactical brilliance, the sheer genius of the raid on the Chita railway hub. He painted a picture of a commander beloved by his men, a true hero of the Empire. He was polishing the sword before revealing the flaw in its steel.
Then, the tone of his report shifted. The praise became the foundation for his accusations.
"But this brilliance, Your Majesty," Jiao continued, his voice dropping, taking on a conspiratorial, concerned tone, "is wedded to a profound and dangerous arrogance. The General consistently and deliberately disobeyed the spirit, if not the letter, of your direct orders. Your strategy for the northern campaign was a grand, overwhelming assault. General Meng, believing his own judgment to be superior, pursued a secret, heretical strategy of his own design."
He recounted, with meticulous detail, the lies. The falsified after-action reports. The myth of the "bloodless victories." He framed Meng Tian's desperate attempts to save the lives of his men not as acts of compassion, but as acts of supreme, unforgivable disobedience. "He placed the lives of his soldiers above the strategic objectives of the throne," Jiao stated, the accusation hanging in the air like poison. "He valued his own tactical preferences over the expressed will of the Son of Heaven."
Having established the sin of disobedience, Jiao moved to the far more dangerous sin of heresy.
"And the source of this arrogance, Your Majesty," he said, his voice now a hushed, awestruck whisper, "is the true, terrifying heart of the matter. In the Siberian wilderness, our unit was trapped. The situation was hopeless. And then… a miracle occurred."
He described the scene at the impassable gorge. He painted a vivid picture of Meng Tian closing his eyes, of finding a path that did not exist, of leading his men to safety through a feat of impossible intuition. And then he delivered the damning, physical proof. "And after this… this miracle… the General collapsed. He was struck down, Your Majesty. And he bled. From the nose. A sudden, inexplicable affliction."
He paused, letting the immense, terrifying weight of his implication settle in the silent room. He was explicitly, dangerously, drawing a direct parallel between Meng Tian's strange collapse and the Emperor's own well-known "divine affliction."
"He possesses a shadow of your divine gift, Your Majesty," Jiao whispered, his eyes wide with a mixture of terror and zealous fervor.
Finally, he delivered the killing blow, twisting the events in America into a narrative of conspiracy. He described the "unwilling alliance" between Meng Tian and Yuan Shikai at the Maraclad Estate. But in his telling, it was not a desperate survival tactic. It was a "smooth and conspiratorial partnership." He spoke of how the two men, the heretic and the traitor, had worked together with a "suspicious and unnatural ease" to deceive their American captors.
He rose from his knees to his feet, his report reaching its final, damning conclusion. He was no longer just a soldier; he was a prophet, warning his god of a false idol.
"Your Majesty," he declared, his voice ringing with righteous conviction. "General Meng Tian is a flawed, unworthy vessel. He possesses a sliver of your divine power, but he does not embrace it. He hides it. He lies to his sovereign to conceal it. He uses it not in service to the throne, but in service to his own private code of honor. He allies himself with known traitors with an ease that is deeply alarming. Such a man, Your Majesty, a man of such immense power, who is not guided by an absolute and unquestioning loyalty to you, is not a loyal sword. He is a potential usurper. He is a heretic who must be purged before his flawed power and his independent will can poison the very heart of the Empire."
Throughout this entire, extraordinary report, Qin Shi Huang sat in absolute, stony silence. His face was a perfect, unreadable mask. Jiao's words were a confirmation of his own darkest, deepest suspicions. He had known Meng Tian was deceiving him. He had not known about the power.
The idea that another human being on the planet possessed even a fraction of his unique, divine gift was a universe-shattering revelation. It was a flaw in the very fabric of his reincarnation. Was this man a threat, a rival sent by a cruel fate to challenge him? Or was he a priceless, unique, and powerful asset to be cultivated and controlled?
As he was processing this impossible new variable, an aide entered the study, his movements swift and urgent. He carried a dispatch folder with the red seal of the Ministry of War.
"Your Majesty, an urgent military dispatch from our observers on the Liaodong Peninsula."
The Emperor took the dispatch and broke the seal. It was a report from the front lines of the Russo-Japanese War. He read the words, and his face remained impassive, but a new, cold light entered his eyes.
The Japanese Third Army, under the command of the notoriously stubborn General Nogi, had finally begun their first massive, direct assault on the heavily fortified Russian positions defending the high ground around Port Arthur. The dispatch described a horrific, bloody slaughter. The Japanese soldiers, driven by their fanatical Bushido code, were charging directly into machine-gun fire and fortified trenches. The report spoke of entire regiments being annihilated in minutes, of catastrophic casualties for almost no territorial gain. It was a brutal, mindless, human-wave assault, a strategy of pure, costly attrition.
It was exactly what Meng Tian had predicted in his lecture at West Point.
The Emperor looked from the report in his hand, a testament to the brutal realities of modern warfare, to the kneeling, fanatical Colonel Jiao, a man who spoke of heresies and purges. He was faced with an impossible, but perfectly clear, choice. His most brilliant and strategically gifted general, the only man in his entire empire who seemed to truly understand the nature of the wars to come, had just been credibly accused of the highest forms of treason and heresy. But with a major, bloody, and technologically advanced war now raging on his very doorstep, a war that would serve as a crucible for the future of warfare itself, could he possibly afford to cast aside his best and sharpest weapon?
He made his decision. The choice was not between loyalty and treason. It was between incompetence and genius. And the Emperor would always choose genius.
He turned to his chief eunuch. "Summon General Meng Tian to the Grand Strategy Chamber," he commanded, his voice cold and decisive. "He and I will discuss the matter of Port Arthur. And his… future."
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