The heavy doors groaned inward
admitting two figures who seemed to shrink beneath the cavernous, dragon-carved ceiling of Zhangtai Palace.
Jing Ke led, his posture rigid with a feigned deference that did not reach his eyes.
In his hands, he carried a gruesome offering: the severed head of the traitor general
Fan Yuqi.
Behind him, Qin Wuyang faltered, his steps hesitant, the weight of the Dukang map box in his arms seeming to bow his shoulders.
The pallor of his face was a stark contrast to the vibrant silks and dark woods of the hall, and when he opened his mouth
only a stammering, broken greeting emerged. "M-me… meet t… the King."
Long Su, watching from his place near the throne, felt a cold certainty settle in his gut.
There ,The dagger is in the map.
The poisoned blade.
His eyes flicked to the ornate box in Qin Wuyang's trembling grasp before darting away.
History must play out.
My interference must be invisible, only in this way can get my chance to get the personal token of the king
Jing Ke's voice rang out, clear and bold, cutting through his companion's weakness. "Jing Ke, the envoy of the State of Yan, pays homage to the Qin king."
He held the head aloft. "Your Majesty, behold the fate of the traitor Fan Yuqi! And this," he gestured to the box, "is the map of Dukang, the richest lands of Yan, offered in our desire for peace."
Upon the dais, Ying Zheng's gaze slid over the grisly head with dismissive contempt.
"Take the traitor's head and feed it to the dogs," he commanded, his voice a low rumble that brooked no argument.
A eunuch scurried forward to take the macabre trophy away.
But the King's obsidian eyes remained fixed on the map box, gleaming with a conqueror's avarice.
This was the true prize; lands, rivers, fortifications—the promise of another state to be folded into his growing empire.
"Behold, Son of Heaven!" Jing Ke proclaimed, his tone dripping with a reverence that belied the tension coiling his body.
His knuckles were bone-white where they gripped the carved box.
"Every river, every garrison of Yan's heartland—laid bare for your glorious vision."
Ying Zheng leaned forward, the gems in the dragons of his throne catching the light.
The legendary sword at his hip, Tai'e, seemed to hum, a faint, thirsty vibration felt more in the soul than heard by the ear.
This was the moment.
Long Su began to move, edging imperceptibly closer to the throne.
His pulse was a war drum in his skull, his breath shallow.
No one noticed the prince's slow advance; every eye, every shred of attention in the hall was locked on the unfolding exchange between the king and the envoy.
Jing Ke's hands worked at the lacings of the box.
Then, a flick of the wrist—too sharp, too sudden.
The lid came free. The map, a lavish scroll of silk, seemed to tumble in slow motion, unfurling as it fell toward the polished floor.
But it was not a map that Jing Ke now held.
In his hand was a dagger.
The steel was a shard of captured frost, the edge honed to a cruel sharpness, and along its groove, a slick, venomous paste gleamed with a sinister purple sheen.
The map had been nothing but a sheath, a deception now cast aside.
"DEATH TO QIN!"
The roar tore from Jing Ke's throat, raw and primal. He became a blur of motion, launching himself across the remaining space toward the throne.
His free hand shot out, grabbing a handful of the King's black silken sleeve, anchoring himself.
The poisoned dagger arced upward, aimed directly for Ying Zheng's heart.
Time seemed to fracture.
With a desperate, instinctual lurch, the King threw his weight backward.
The deadly point missed its mark, but the force of the movement and the assassin's grip resulted in a loud, tearing RIIIP as the royal sleeve was shredded.
It was the signal Long Su had been waiting for.
Propelled by a surge of adrenaline that was both Fu Su's filial duty and Long Su's desperate gambit, he accelerated forward.
His mind was a vortex of fear and calculation, his breath coming in short, sharp gasps.
He did not go for the dagger, did not try to grapple the assassin directly.
Instead, as Jing Ke, eyes wild and fixed solely on the recovering king, prepared for another thrust, Long Su drove his foot in a sweeping kick against the man's leading leg.
It was not a heroic blow, but a pragmatic one. The assassin's leg buckled. His perfect balance, essential for the lethal strike, was shattered.
With a grunt of surprise and pain, Jing Ke crashed to the cold obsidian floor, the venomous dagger skittering from his grasp.
The window for a clean kill had lasted only a heartbeat, and now it was closed.
The impact was a brutal, jarring collision of bone and silk as Long Su threw his body over the King of Qin, becoming a living shield.
The opulent hall, moments before a theater of calculated diplomacy, erupted into a vortex of pure pandemonium.
Ministers and generals, their faces drained of all color, stood frozen—ornamental and utterly useless.
The iron law of the Qin court, meant to ensure the king's absolute security, had now become his greatest vulnerability: no official, not even the most decorated general, could bear arms within the palace precincts.
Only Ying Zheng, the Son of Heaven, wore the legendary sword Tai'e.
A cacophony of shouts tore through the air, a dissonant chorus of panic.
"Assassin!"
"Guards! To the king!"
"Help him!"
The cries echoed off the vaulted ceilings, bouncing meaninglessly off the carved dragons.
The elite guards of Xianyang Palace were stationed beyond these walls, forbidden from entering without a direct imperial edict
an edict no one could issue in the heartbeats of this chaos.
"Protect the king!" voices shrieked from a safe distance, but not a single courtier dared step into the lethal radius of the assassin's blade.
Beneath him, Long Su felt the solid muscle of Ying Zheng tense, a tiger preparing to throw off a restraint.
The king began to shove him away, his movement powerful and instinctual.
Desperation clawed at Long Su's throat.
His fingers, concealed by the tangle of bodies and torn silk, frantically patrolled the King's sash and robes, searching for the hard, cool shape of the personal jade.
"Imperial Father, do not move!" he hissed, the words a frantic whisper meant for the king's ear alone. "There is blood! I fear the blade is in your body!" It was a lie, a gamble woven from thin air, but it worked.
The king's struggle ceased momentarily, the paternal—or perhaps merely pragmatic—instinct to assess the claimed injury overriding his fury.
He stilled, allowing his son to 'protect' him, buying Long Su precious seconds.
It was then that Jing Ke found his feet. Holding the poisoned dagger aloft, his eyes burned with fanatical fire.
"Ying Zheng! Enemy of the Six Kingdoms! Today, I, Jing Ke, bring peace to the land by ending your tyranny!"
He lunged as he walked toward Ying Zheng and Fu su
BOOM.
The sudden loud sound changed everything
The sound was not a normal soud but something that effect the space itself.
Come with a white light that was a concussion of reality itself, a light that did not illuminate but unmade.
It bleached color from silk, detail from stone, thought from mind.
For a single, terrifying instant, the world was nothing but a blinding, silent white.
When sense returned, it was to the clamor of finally arriving guards, their boots pounding on the obsidian floor.
They found their king, shaken but whole, and the assassin, Jing Ke, crumpled and unconscious on the ground.
But of the eldest son, the courageous Prince Fusu, there was no trace.
He had vanished as completely as if swallowed by the light itself.
---------
Long Su's fingers had closed around the cool, familiar form of the black jade disc, its surface traced with veins of gold.
The moment his skin made contact, the world tore itself apart.
The magnificent pillars of Zhangtai Palace bled into streaks of meaningless color.
The terrified shouts of the ministers frayed into a silent, high-pitched whine.
The very stone beneath him lost its substance.
He was untethered, a soul adrift in a formless, soundless void, severed from the river of time he had been flung into.
Then—BOOM.
The sound was his own heart, but it was also the heart of a world being born.
It hammered through the nothingness, a primordial beat that shook the atoms of his being and announced a brutal genesis.
The void receded, replaced by a sudden, jarring impact as his knees met solid ground.
He found himself kneeling on a plain of absolute blackness, a soil that seemed to devour the very light, stretching into a flat, featureless horizon under a starless, sourceless gloom.
This was his dominion.
This was his Seed World.
A dry, grating rustle broke the profound silence.
Before him, the dark earth cracked and parted.
From the fissures, ten figures clawed their way into existence, pulling themselves from the void with a sound of clattering bones.
They stood, uneven and swaying, their forms a pathetic assembly of bleached white bones.
Their empty sockets stared into nothingness, and their limbs clicked together with a sound like dice being tossed by a bored god.
As his eyes focused on them, their essence imprinted itself upon his mind, a cold, statistical readout of their wretchedness.
[Skeleton Slave]
Level:0
Strength:1 (Grasping a tool is a struggle) Defense:1 (Brittle bones shatter at a stiff breeze)
Speed:1 (A shambling, lurching gait) Will:0.5 (Mindless automatons, barely capable of following a single, direct order)
Skills: ------
---------------------
"Pathetic." The word was a curse, bitter and hollow in the sterile air.
His fists clenched at his sides.
This was the legacy of the original Long Su—a fool who had squandered a human-type universe seed for the corrupting power of a Death Crystal
trading infinite potential for this desolate wasteland and these wretched, feeble slaves.
"You idiot," he seethed at the ghost of the boy whose body he now wore.
"You had a great chances to get human units in your grasp and traded it for a undead units."
From the memories of long su , one can konw that undead units are the weakest one
They cost low but in return they are very week
Even the weakest human militia units they will be crushed easily
The skeletal slaves, sensing the roiling anger of their master, the core of their existence, dropped to their bony knees in a synchronized, mindless act of submission.
The sight of their utter subservience, their complete lack of will, quelled his fury with a cold wave of resignation.
Anger was a luxury he could not afford.
"No matter," he whispered, the vow a quiet, iron-hard promise to the oppressive darkness. "With this, I will build my path. I will never give up."
As the last word left his lips, a change ignited within him.
His eyes flared with an internal light, and a sound that was both a cry and a command tore through the silence of the nascent worldthe fierce, echoing cry of a black bird.
Where there had been nothing, a structure imposed itself. It did not form or grow; it simply was, as if it had always existed and had only now decided to reveal itself.
A small, stark palace of unadorned black stone, its lines severe and imposing.
Above it, on a pole of jet, a banner stirred in a wind that did not blow—a banner of black silk embroidered with a formidable black bird, its talons clutching a sphere
the characters for 'Daqin' picked out in thread of gold beside it.
He knew this place.
It was a perfect, scaled replica of Xianyang Palace's core, a piece of history made manifest.
Along with it extra memories were there
not just of Long Su the student, but of Fu Su the prince, the weight of a prince's upbringing and a son's duty settling into his mind as naturally as breathing.
' I have the memories of Long Su. It is no burden to carry those of Fu Su as well.'
He walked toward the structure, each step echoing in the profound silence.
As he drew nearer, the details resolved.
The palace was modest, a foundation rather than a monument.
It consisted of a single floor: a main hall for judgment and command, and a single side chamber for rest.
It was a beginning.
It was his personal home .