The Hall of Supreme Harmony was draped in white silk, the color of mourning. A profound, somber silence filled the vast chamber, a silence broken only by the soft, rhythmic chanting of Taoist priests. In the center of the hall, before the Dragon Throne, an elaborate altar had been erected. Upon it rested a single, empty chair, representing the fallen envoy, 'Mr. Li.' His name—his real name, Li Hongzhang, a distant but respected cousin of the famed late statesman—was now emblazoned on a memorial tablet of pure jade.
Qin Shi Huang stood before the altar, his face a mask of cold, imperial grief. The entire court, from the highest ministers to the most junior princes of the blood, was assembled behind him, their own faces a mixture of sorrow, confusion, and a simmering, directed anger. This was not merely a memorial. It was a masterfully orchestrated piece of political theater, and the Emperor was its lead actor.
He delivered the eulogy himself, his voice resonating with a cold, clear power that seemed to vibrate in the very bones of his listeners. He did not speak of Li Hongzhang as a diplomat, but as a warrior. He painted a vivid, and largely fictional, account of the envoy's last moments: a brave, scholarly man, standing alone on the deck of a civilian ship, defying a fleet of barbarian warships. A man who, rather than allow the sacred words of his Emperor to be defiled by foreign hands, had chosen a patriot's death, consigning himself and his vital secrets to the icy depths.
"He did not fall in a great battle," Qin Shi Huang declared, his voice rising in intensity. "He was murdered. Struck down not by an honorable foe, but by pirates. By the lawless, arrogant British, who believe their mastery of the seas gives them the right to trample upon the laws of nations and the lives of men. They sought to steal our secrets. They sought to humiliate us. Instead, they have only succeeded in creating a martyr whose name will be remembered for ten thousand years!"
He had whipped the emotions of the court into a frenzy of anti-British sentiment. The grief in the hall had been transmuted into a palpable, collective rage. Now, with the emotional kindling perfectly arranged, he prepared to throw the torch.
"But the sacrifice of our noble envoy was not in vain!" he thundered, turning from the altar to face his court. "His death has served as a beacon! A light that has pierced the fog of Western deception and revealed to the world who our true friends are!"
He raised a hand. A eunuch scurried forward, presenting a telegram on a golden tray. The Emperor took the message and held it aloft for all to see.
"This," he announced, his voice ringing with triumph, "is a message from a fellow sovereign! A man of honor and vision who sees the world as I do! A message from His Imperial Majesty, Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany!"
He read the Kaiser's explosive, personal message aloud, his voice imbuing the German's bombastic words with a chilling, epic weight. "The insult to my flag will be answered with a fleet of iron… Your war is our war. Your enemies are our enemies… Let the seas boil and the thrones of the old empires tremble…"
A wave of stunned, electrified silence swept through the court. An unconditional, military alliance with the most powerful army in Europe? It was a geopolitical shift of such monumental proportions that it was difficult to comprehend. The Emperor had not just avenged his envoy's death; he had used it to forge a pact of iron, an alliance that would redraw the map of the world.
"The German Eagle has seen the perfidy of the British Lion!" Qin Shi Huang declared. "And it has chosen to fly, wing to wing, with the Dragon!"
With his court still reeling from this revelation, he strode to the massive world map that now permanently dominated the hall. The ministers and generals watched him, their minds racing, expecting him to point to the north, to announce a renewed, now German-supported, grand offensive to crush the Russian armies in Siberia.
He did the exact opposite.
His finger bypassed the vast expanse of Siberia entirely. It moved south. Down the coast of China, past Vietnam and Siam, across the sprawling, rich, and strategically vital territories of British Southeast Asia. He traced a line through the jungles of Burma, down the long spine of the Malay Peninsula, until his finger came to rest on a single, tiny, but all-important island at its tip.
Singapore.
"The war in the north is a war of attrition," he said, his voice dropping to a tone of cold, strategic logic that was more compelling than any emotional appeal. "Marshal Meng will grind the Russian army into dust in due time. But to defeat a beast like the British Empire, one does not attack its claws. You must attack its heart."
He tapped the map. "The British have a global empire built on a single pillar: their navy. Their navy gives them their trade, their colonies, their power. And their navy's power in all of Asia," his finger pressed down hard on the island, "depends on a single, indispensable lynchpin. The coal bunkers, the repair docks, the resupply depots of the fortress of Singapore. Every British warship east of India depends on that base. Without it, their fleet is a flock of flightless birds, unable to operate, unable to fight."
A murmur of comprehension went through the assembled generals.
"We will not fight their fleet on the high seas," he continued, a thin, predatory smile touching his lips. "That is a fool's game, a game they have mastered. We will do what they believe to be impossible. We will rip the heart out of their naval power by taking their greatest naval base from the land, from the jungles, where their precious dreadnoughts and armored cruisers cannot help them."
He announced his new, breathtakingly audacious plan: the formation of a new Southern Expeditionary Army. A force of two hundred thousand men would be assembled in Yunnan province. They would not attack the British head-on. They would launch a massive land invasion south, through the supposedly impassable jungles and mountains, into British Burma and down through Malaya.
"The British rule their vast Asian territories with a skeleton force of their own men," he explained, demonstrating a profound understanding of his enemy's weakness. "Their armies are composed of native troops: Indians, Gurkhas, Malays. We will not just fight their armies; we will turn their subjects against them. Our agents will go before our soldiers, carrying a simple message: 'Asia for the Asiatics.' We will incite rebellion, we will arm local insurgents, we will frame this not as a Chinese conquest, but as a great war of liberation against the white barbarians."
It was a plan of stunning, multi-layered genius. A brutal military invasion wrapped in the seductive, modern language of anti-colonial revolution.
But who could possibly lead such an unprecedented campaign? A campaign that required not just military skill, but a deep understanding of jungle warfare, colonial politics, and revolutionary ideology?
Qin Shi Huang made his final, shocking announcement. "To command this Southern Expedition, I am recalling a man from exile. A man who was once punished for his radical, anti-Western views. A man who has spent the last five years in the wilderness, studying the very enemies we now seek to destroy. I am restoring to his full titles and rank, and appointing as Marshal of the South… General Sun Lian."
A collective gasp went through the court. Sun Lian was a brilliant but disgraced official, a fierce nationalist whom the Emperor had purged in the early days of his reign for being too radical, too impatient, too revolutionary. To bring him back now was a sign of the Emperor's ultimate, terrifying pragmatism. He was willing to use any tool, even his own former enemies, to achieve his goals.
The doors of the hall opened, and an old, rail-thin man with a wispy beard and eyes that burned with a cold, fanatical fire, strode into the room. It was Sun Lian, brought directly from his exile. He walked to the foot of the dais and prostrated himself before the throne, his forehead touching the cold stone floor.
Qin Shi Huang looked down at the man who was to be the instrument of his southern conquest.
"The Siberian campaign under Marshal Meng will grind the Russian army into dust," he declared, his shadow seeming to stretch out from the throne to cover the entire southern half of the map. "But the Southern Expedition, under Marshal Sun, will bring the mighty British Empire to its knees. They have struck at our envoy. We will strike at the very heart of their power. This is not revenge. This is the Mandate of Heaven. The age of the West is over."
He paused, his voice dropping to a whisper that was somehow more powerful than a shout.
"The age of the Dragon has begun."