38. See the Light
See the Light
If someone told Dustin a few months ago that he’d be riding a giant jade dragon through a sentient storm with the goal of ending an immortal tyrant, he would’ve absolutely assumed they were on hardcore drugs.
But now he was clinging on to the divine beast’s smooth exterior as it snaked its way through the sky like an elaborate dance, dodging lightning and gale force winds as easily as breathing.
“What’s the play here?!” Chris yelled, his arms tight around Dustin’s waist as the dragon made a particularly dramatic spin, “we’re a little small to get into a dragon-on-dragon battle!”
“Nothing so dramatic! When we enter the Storm Dragon, we will be effectively penetrating the emperor’s very essence.
To win the battle, we must fight through to the core of him, where my power over him will finally outstrip his own ego.
From there I can exert my dominion… but you must take care not to lose yourselves in what you experience within the clouds,” Mr. Liu’s telepathic voice instructed.
“Lose ourselves? How?” Dustin wondered aloud. Mr. Liu didn’t answer, he just continued into the swirling mass of clouds… and then everything changed.
Ying Zheng was exhausted. By every metric possible.
This dreaded war had been dragging on for what felt like an eternity, though it hadn’t even been a full decade of actual fighting.
The time it took to get himself into a position where war was even possible; espionage, campaigns to weaken potential enemies, consolidating power within the Qin court… that took far longer.
By now, he just wanted this to be at an end.
Such endless violence, constant death, incessant attempts on his own life; it was enough to wear down even the strongest under heaven.
And as the King of Qin, Zheng certainly was the strongest.
As much as he lamented that this is what things had come to, he’d known since he was a boy that this was the only course of action.
He’d spent his formative years cowering in a manor inside a besieged city, while the commoners were forced to eat their own children just to survive.
Now that he held the power necessary to stop such mass suffering, he would see it through, no matter the cost.
Unfortunately, whenever it came time for Zheng to rest at night, after hours upon hours of sifting through heavy bamboo scrolls with proposals for new laws and edicts, he had to look at himself in his mirror of polished bronze.
The face that was once youthful and even handsome was now paved with fine lines.
The hair at his temples greying prematurely.
He knew the truth that his officials and servants refused to admit aloud; he would die before he could see this campaign to its end.
Before he could unite the disparate kingdoms of the Central Plains into a singular Qin Empire.
Though… not if the genius young recordkeeper he’d recently employed from the recently conquered Han Kingdom was as good as the scholars claimed him to be.
The boy couldn’t have been more than sixteen years of age, stumbling into the throne room with little grace and his face entirely obscured by a mountain of scrolls.
He tripped over his too-big feet, scattering them before Ying Zheng in a way that would’ve been punishable by death if he was half as unmerciful as the legends made him out to be.
“M-my king, I am terribly sorry!” the young man’s squeaky voice chirped out, his unbound hair blowing wildly in his exceptionally pretty face.
“Be at ease young Sima Yao,” Zheng did his best to reassure the young man in his gravelly tone, raising a hand, “Prince Fusu and the senior scholars speak highly of your intellect… if not so much of your focus. Tell me what you have uncovered,”
Sima Yao quickly bowed before scrambling to retrieve the scrolls. He cleared his throat and put on his most convincing “serious voice”.
“I have been told that his majesty seeks a cure for the aging process, and thus I have followed up on several leads. Transforming cinnabar into ingestible mercury, beseeching heaven for peaches from the Queen Mother’s garden… ultimately there aren’t many actionable courses of action,”
“Not ‘many’?” Zheng raised an eyebrow, “which seems to suggest that there may yet still be one,”
Sima Yao looked pensive for a long moment, but he eventually nodded, unfurling a scroll that depicted an ink painting of a ferocious dragon, swallowed within storm clouds over the open ocean.
“Ao Guang, Dragon King of the Eastern Sea. Local legends in the Chentang Pass suggest that stealing a scale from his body and mixing it into an elixir, could potentially prolong your life… but I must caution against it,”
The scowl that immediately consumed Ying Zheng’s face was enough to silence the boy immediately.
“Sima Yao, I greatly appreciate your services and your incredible knowledge… but do not mistake my gratitude as permission for insolence,”
Sima Yao’s gaze dropped to the immaculate marble floor, and he pressed his nose against it in a kowtow.
“Forgive me your highness. Shall I alert the officials that you will be journeying to the Chentang Pass?”
“At once,”
Sima Yao collected the scrolls and hastily made his exit from the room, and Zheng simply squeezed the bridge of his nose in frustration.
Just like he did when he was sitting on his bedroom floor amidst torn notebook paper pages; a haze of weed smoke heavy in the air as him and Bailey tried to come up with song lyrics.
Wait… what?
No, it was like when he’d been trying to come up with an effective strategy to shatter the resistance of the Chu Kingdom following Li Xin’s humiliating defeat. He’d come up with several good ideas, but then Chris wouldn’t stop blasting Tupac so loud that he couldn’t think straight.
What in the actual fuck was going on?!
“DUSTIN! SNAP OUT OF IT, DAMN!”
Chris’s abrasive voice along with the smack to the back of his head fully pulled Dustin back into the present, where he was still clinging onto the jade dragon as rain absolutely battered the group.
“Huh? What the fuck just happened?”
“What do you think I meant when I told you not to lose yourself?” Mr. Liu telepathically snickered, “you were temporarily consumed by Qin Shi Huang's regret. Reliving it as though you were the man himself,”
“THAT’S A THING THAT CAN HAPPEN?!” Dustin knew he shouldn’t have been surprised, but he couldn’t take another curve ball, like Jesus fuck.
“I think you’re most sensitive to it, maybe because you’re his descendant?” James theorized, holding onto Chris’s back and yelling over his shoulder, “I mean, Chris is too but he’s not as empathetic!”
“I could be! But yeah, I’m not,” Chris immediately folded, shrugging, “just try to keep it under control. I am NOT losing you to this asshole!”
“That might be easier said than done. Steel yourself!” Mr. Liu commanded, another thundercloud rolling into them. Dustin grit his teeth and braced for it, but it just wasn’t enough…
Getting through the defenses of the Qi Kingdom’s capital city was perhaps the easiest thing Ying Zheng had ever accomplished.
The other kingdoms had fallen before his newfound might; entire armies smote in seconds by his command of the skies, as if they were little more than ants beneath his boot.
Now only Qi and Qin remained, and while he and King Jian once had an alliance, a promise to share the conquered territory…
Zheng no longer had need of such a farce.
Qin soldiers flooded through the streets at his back as Ying Zheng approached the palace. Citizens were pulled from their homes, cowering on the pavement as they anticipated the gruesome deaths they were sure awaited them.
Zheng had to stifle a scoff.
Sure, he’d personally seen to it that those who mistreated him during his childhood in Zhao were buried alive, screaming for mercy he had no capacity to give them… but they’d deserved such a fate. So long as the people of Qi cooperated with their new king, nothing so horrid would befall them.
King Jian rushed down the palace stairs, officials hot on his heels as his beaded crown nearly toppled off his head.
“Ying Zheng, what is the meaning of this?!” he demanded, “y-you promised that so long as Qi didn’t interfere with your conquest, you would spare us!”
Zheng grit his teeth at the blubbering sack of manure standing before him. This man had the gall to call himself a king? Just the idea that he and Zheng shared a title was enough to sour his stomach.
“Compose yourself Tian Jian,” Zheng sneered, “act with the dignity befitting your station!”
King Jian’s jaw just hung open, unable to even form a reply. Two Qin soldiers approached from behind Ying Zheng, escorting a young man bearing striking resemblance to the king, wearing expertly crafted black silk robes, and a hair pin made of solid gold.
“Look upon this man, my son,” Ying Zheng commanded, “is this someone you see as a king? As MY equal?”
The prince’s trembling eyes were locked on King Jian, but he didn’t say a word.
“How pitiful. Even Prince Fusu sees how far the mighty line of Qi kings has fallen,” Zheng shook his head, raising his hand to the sky, “you have brought such shame to your own name, to the very title of king, that perhaps it is time to abandon it altogether. I shall not be conflated with the likes of you, the likes of any who stood against me and failed. Only I had the will to do what was necessary for the good of the realm, only I had the strength!”
Screams erupted from every direction as a single bolt of lightning shot down from the clouds, striking King Jian down where he stood, and leaving nothing but a blackened corpse behind.
“Let this be known across the plains. King Zheng of Qin was slain at the Battle of Linzi. As the Fenghuang rises from the ashes of her nest, an emperor rises from a king’s failures. Qin Shi Huangdi, the first and only Emperor of Qin now stands before you!”