Chapter 171: On Behalf of The People, Questioning the King
The whisper hidden inside the great bell made Ying Zheng freeze despite himself.
It felt unreal, like a voice drifting out of a dream. Yet he knew, with absolute clarity, that it was not illusion. It was a real sound carried within the rainbow light like sunrise.
Words delivered by the one called Great Monarch, Fusang Great Emperor, Water Official Great Emperor, and the new Heaven of Chu, Taiyi.
The chariot drawn by the eight legged, twelve winged Green Dragon halted on the rainbow bridge instead of descending.
At the front, Xu Fu leaned forward. Her small body, swallowed by wide robes, arched as she peered down. Her square hat swayed, and the one visible eye beneath its brim widened with surprise.
Below was Qin.
The Qin army stood like a forest of steel. A single solemn will pressed through the nation, ruler and subject aligned, inside and out unified as one.
"No wonder it became the strongest among the states…" Xu Fu breathed, awe catching in her throat.
Consort Yu glanced twice, then looked away as if bored.
"It is still far inferior to the joint forces of Shennong and Xuanyuan when they fought Chi You's Jiuli."
Rowe answered calmly, taking her comparison without indulging it.
"When the Yellow Emperor fought the God of War, it was an age of myth. This era cannot be weighed on the same scale."
In truth, for Qin to be spoken of in the same sentence as Yan Huang and Jiuli at all was already absurdly high praise.
Rowe's gaze fell to the figure standing before the officials.
The future First Emperor, still only King of Qin.
Black robes embroidered with the Black Bird. A crown. A handsome face. Eyes sharp as a hunting bird.
Young, but already carrying the weight of sovereignty.
From appearance alone, he was an Emperor type. A king no one would dare question.
No one, at least, could guess that his mind was nearly blank.
To others, the bell was sacred sound.
To him, it was saturated with whispers. Strange phrases. Crude, blunt lines that seemed meaningless, yet struck exactly where the human heart was weakest. If Ying Zheng did not possess a will bordering on monstrous, he would have already fallen into stupor.
He pursed his lips, frowned, and did not speak.
He only raised his head and met the gaze of the god above.
"Still resisting?" Rowe chuckled softly.
Aiming the Chaos inside his mind at Ying Zheng had been planned before he entered Qin. It was one of the reasons he came.
And the sight of Qin's unified posture made it even more necessary.
Qin was powerful, yes. Rowe also knew what followed. This empire would collapse in the second generation and perish in the third, even after unifying the world.
Ying Zheng would drive Qin to its peak, and bury the seeds of collapse under the same blade.
Later heirs would not have the strength to suppress what he had forced into place.
There was a familiar echo there.
The first king Rowe had met in this world, Gilgamesh, carried the same faint similarity. Without interference, Uruk would have reached its zenith under Gilgamesh, then cracked apart after his death.
So Rowe intended to do something similar to what he had done then.
On behalf of the people, he would question the king.
Arrogant, perhaps.
But he had earned the right to be arrogant.
Along the way, he had gathered questions from countless lives. He had not refused a single request, and it was precisely for this moment.
He was the god of the people.
So he could demand an answer from the ruler, in their name.
God and king held each other's gaze above Xianyang.
The bell like Chaos echoed, and the whispers overlapped.
Rowe lifted a hand, and his consciousness folded into form. A bounded field formed, not over the land, but across perception itself, stitching a private space between their minds.
Ying Zheng snapped fully awake.
Darkness stretched around him. A vast void, scattered with faint starlight.
He paused only an instant, then laughed.
"Great Monarch. Are you that eager for a private meeting with me?"
A figure sat ahead in the dark, behind a table that felt inevitable, like something that had always belonged there.
Rowe looked at him with steady eyes.
"What do you think? Sit, King of Qin."
He added, tone mild, almost amused.
"Or would you prefer we continue in the open, with those whispers in your ears?"
Ying Zheng's expression shifted, just slightly.
So even his will had limits. Even he would carry a shadow after being scraped by that obscene murmur.
Rowe was satisfied.
Chaos was a defect, yes, but used correctly it became a weapon. It did not need careful rhetoric. It generated language on its own, and still found the precise seam in an enemy's heart.
A dead end that could be sharpened into a blade.
Ying Zheng sat.
His posture did not soften. Even seated before a god, he refused to act smaller than he was.
He smiled, regal and unyielding.
"Truly worthy of Great Monarch. Your demeanor does not fall behind mine."
"No need," Rowe said. "I am tired of hearing praise."
He poured wine into the cups on the table and lifted his own.
"I came for one sentence. One question."
He looked directly at Ying Zheng.
"Can Great Qin rule the world?"
Ying Zheng answered as if it were a matter of weather.
"My Great Qin can rule the world. Look across the land. What is stronger than Qin?"
Rowe answered without pause.
"Yes."
Ying Zheng's eyes narrowed.
"What?"
"Me."
Silence fell.
The King of Qin stared at Rowe, measuring him as one measures a weapon that might break a kingdom.
Rowe set his cup down and spoke, unhurried.
"Do you know what I saw when I arrived in Qin?"
He continued, voice even.
"I saw a Qin sword, majestic and unmatched. But it is also a double edged sword."
"One edge points outward."
"One edge points inward."
Ying Zheng did not speak at once.
He picked up his own cup. In this private darkness, with the court and the world stripped away, his face showed a rare trace of contemplation.
After a long moment, he exhaled and laughed.
"As expected of the Great Monarch. You saw the flaw beneath the sharpness in a single glance."
He knew what Rowe meant.
Qin's strength was forged by farming and war. Farming fed war. War earned land. Military merit became survival, prosperity, inheritance.
The Qin people did not fear death, because death could become land for their descendants.
Since Shang Yang's reforms, the system had been brutally fair. That fairness accumulated trust like iron being hammered into a single piece.
But Ying Zheng intended to unify all under Heaven, and after unification he did not intend to return to feudal enfeoffment.
He intended centralization.
He intended a Qin where power flowed back to the throne, where the emperor could command everything.
Not like Shang and Zhou, where enfeoffed lords became permanent wounds in the body of the state.
That path fundamentally eroded the very system Qin's army was built upon.
And Ying Zheng still said, without hesitation, as if the cost only proved the necessity.
"This step is inevitable."
He leaned forward, eyes burning with ambition that did not bother to hide itself.
"I want Qin to become a true empire. I want to forge Qin into a divine sword that shines across the world. I want that sword to last ten thousand years without dulling."
He smiled, fierce and proud.
"I want the bright moon of Great Qin to still shine here thousands of years from now."
Rowe watched him.
"And you are not afraid of death?"
Ying Zheng laughed as if death were merely an inconvenience.
"I will surpass life and death. I will carve an achievement beyond the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors. Why would I fear death?"
Rowe's lips curved.
"Then back to the question that matters."
He leaned forward slightly.
"Do you know what all under Heaven is?"
Ying Zheng's answer came like doctrine.
"All under Heaven is Great Qin's world. My world. Anything placed under my rule and managed by me is all under Heaven. That is the best possible all under Heaven."
Rowe denied him without raising his voice.
"That is your world. Not the true all under Heaven."
He spoke with quiet certainty.
"All under Heaven belongs to the people."
He paused, acknowledging the gap between thought and era.
"That idea may be ahead of its time. But you should understand one thing."
Rowe lifted a finger and pointed into the darkness around them.
"They are all under Heaven."
Light and shadow blossomed.
Figures appeared, one after another.
The people Rowe had met through wind and rain, crossing into Qin. Those who had questioned him, begged him, doubted him, feared tomorrow.
Old men in rags who could not earn a living.
Women whose families had been ground away by war.
Farmers whose crops failed in famine.
Lives pressed into corners by history.
Rowe's voice did not harden. That was what made it heavy.
"They are all under Heaven. The teeming masses are all under Heaven."
His hand lowered.
"So I ask only one question."
His eyes pinned Ying Zheng.
"Can you treat this true all under Heaven with kindness?"
Ying Zheng did not waver.
"To place them under Qin's governance is the greatest kindness."
He stepped forward, voice rising.
"If they are my people, I will treat them well."
Rowe began, "They"
Ying Zheng cut through the interruption with steel certainty.
"I will not abandon them."
His eyes were clear, unshaken. He refused to be moved by imagery, by rhetorical traps, by a god's moral framing.
He had made his decision long before he ever grasped the sword.
"People call Qin tyrannical," he said. "Then let me answer."
"To end the endless chaos of these hundreds of years is kindness."
He drew himself upright, and in that moment his presence filled the bounded field like a mountain.
"Even if I bear infamy for a thousand generations. Even if I am cursed as a despot."
His hand tightened as if around a hilt.
"My heart will not waver."
A ringing clang split the darkness.
The Qin sword fell, and the images around them shattered into nothing.
Only Ying Zheng remained, standing in the collapse, majestic and unmoving, his words the true goodness he believed in.
Unification under Qin was destiny.
It was the best mercy the era could produce.
The darkness dispersed.
Rowe released the bounded field.
The dragon chariot still hovered above Xianyang. The rainbow bridge shone. The clouds were thinning, and clear sky returned in slow layers.
The bell tone echoed.
Ying Zheng's expression returned to calm as he looked up.
Rowe guided the dragon chariot forward and descended, not into the palace, but toward the mountains behind Xianyang.
Their conversation had confirmed the king's will.
A sword wielder did not fear a weak body.
He feared only a blade that did not know where to strike.
And Ying Zheng knew exactly what he was striking.
Rowe did not deny the conclusion.
In this era, a unified world was infinitely better than endless fracture and war.
And because Ying Zheng understood the suffering of common people, his later actions would change.
Not his path.
His gaze.
He would be forced to look more directly at the true meaning of all under Heaven.
So Rowe entered Qin.
Defaulting, for now, to cooperation.
Ying Zheng's voice rang across Xianyang.
"Issue my decree. From this day onward, Great Qin reveres the Great Monarch as the principal god of the rites of Spring and Harvest, under the titles Fusang Great Emperor, Water Official Great Emperor, and Taiyi."
"Honor him above the Four Emperors Qin has revered, and place him at the center as Azure Heaven."
He turned, issuing orders like a blade striking in sequence.
"Command Wang Jian, Li Xin, Meng Tian. Lead the armies. Move beyond the pass. Garrison Hangu."
"Li Si will plan and deploy."
"Zhao Gao, go to Shu. Transfer grain and fodder from the Shu granaries to the front. You will serve as chief supervisor of supply."
"All other officials remain at post. Fulfill your duties. Do not fail me."
"We obey!"
"We obey!"
"We obey!"
The shout shook the palace and spilled into the city.
On that day, Ying Zheng welcomed the Great Monarch, placed him as chief god, and used the moment to draw the Qin sword and strike beyond the pass.
In the ninth year of Qin's king, the Qin army marched east, with Wang Jian, Li Xin, Meng Tian and others commanding their respective forces, to take the Six States by surprise.
Rowe stood on the dragon chariot in the mountains behind Xianyang and watched the city ignite into motion. Lamps flickered. Troops shifted. Orders raced down roads like fire.
"This Ying Zheng is interesting," Rowe said, genuine amusement in his voice.
Qin's large scale deployment had been known to the other states for days.
They had assumed it was preparation for welcoming the Great Monarch.
They would never imagine Ying Zheng would exploit that cover and send the assembled army directly beyond the pass, skipping mobilization time and catching the Six States off guard.
Xu Fu and Consort Yu exchanged a glance, both unprepared for the sudden turn.
Only Rowe laughed, loud enough to cut through the lingering rain scent in the air.
"Then next"
He paused, eyes sharpening.
"I will sharpen my own sword."
The Qin army would march east.
Rowe's entry into Qin had another purpose beyond meeting Ying Zheng.
He intended to use the Qin sword, and the momentum carried by this vast land, to force out the Six Heavens Ancient Ghosts hiding between states, within histories, within the cracks of each state's human order.
Those ancient ghosts had always been a poison in this world.
Ordinary people had no hope against them. Even immortals and gods risked having their consciousness tainted just by nearing. Even Tamamo no Mae had only dared to touch them with a projection, never moving her true self.
Rowe was not afraid.
Not only because he wanted to absorb their Chaos and make the thing in his mind more vigorous, inching toward the throne he desired.
But because he had watched the land rise and fall, and watched common lives suffer in disorder.
Those who do not fear death, who can treat death as returning home, have always been willing to raise a sword against horrors like this.
To bring peace to all under Heaven.
If only to quiet the ache in their own hearts.
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