As I departed the walls of Ling An, the cheers faded behind me like incense smoke—thick, perfumed, and quickly forgotten.
No banners. No heralds. Only six handpicked soldiers and a handful of silent attendants drawn from my own chambers. We wore no crests, no silks—only plain traveling robes, the color of ash and shadow.
Beyond the jade towers and gold-tipped halls, the empire revealed its true face. The roads grew rougher. The laughter thinner. The silks faded into rags. Here, the people did not bow in reverence—they begged in silence.
I passed starving children gnawing on husks. Old men who once wore soldier's armor now scoured ditches for coins. Mothers, gaunt and trembling, cradled sickly infants at their breasts and stared at my passing convoy with eyes that no longer believed in salvation.
They didn't ask for help. Only a future.
And not even that with conviction.
So this is what lies beneath the throne, I thought. This is what the court refuses to see. This is what they feast while forgetting.
And still, they dare call themselves nobility.
They drape themselves in titles inherited from decaying bloodlines, hiding cowardice behind tradition, and corruption behind ceremony. They speak of Heaven's Mandate—but they serve only themselves.
I watched them from my carriage window, not with pity—but with resolve.
This kingdom is broken. Not simply by famine or war—but by the rot of unchecked power.
If the heavens will not correct it—
I will.
Even if I must become what the old texts call heresy. Even if the power I wield whispers in tongues I do not understand. I will wear it, mould it, and bend it toward order. As long as it takes me to the throne.
Because this land does not need compassion.
It needs correction.
And I alone have the will to do what others will not.
As we approached Longzhou, there were no drums. No red ribbons strung across gates. No firecrackers to herald a prince's arrival.
Only barren fields, choked with rot. Black clouds, heavy and unmoving. And faces—so many faces—hollowed by hunger, darkened by despair. The wind carried no scent of cooking rice, no incense, only smoke and mildew.
At the gate, a woman stood waiting.
Her robes were once official—now dirt-stained, torn at the hem. Her posture was straight, but fatigue clung to her like the dust on her sleeves.
"I am Zhou Fen, Mayor of Longzhou," she said, her voice measured. "We welcome Your Highness to our… humble town. We have little, but in honor of your presence, a small banquet has been prepared."
I looked past her, into the city.
There were no banners hung, no flower petals thrown. Only gaunt-eyed children watching from alleyways and old men leaning on canes too thin to bear them.
"There is no need for banquets," I said coldly. "Use the food to feed those who have not eaten. Let them taste rice before ceremony."
Zhou Fen hesitated—just for a moment. Then nodded.
"As you command."
As we passed through the gates, I felt it.
Not fear. Not resentment.
Stillness.
A silence too deep, too practiced. Not the quiet of defeat, but the hush that comes before something breaks.
The city stank of decay. Granaries collapsed inward like hollowed teeth. Temples stood open, but their altars were blackened—as if burned and rebuilt again and again.
We passed a shrine where the statue of the Bodhisattva had been defaced—its eyes gouged out, its smile still intact. Offerings of rotting fruit and melted wax surrounded it in spirals.
Not in prayer. In something else.
I glanced at Zhou Fen, who avoided looking at the statue entirely.
There were whispers in this place—of a curse, a beast, or that the imperial court itself had come not to help, but to punish.
Not spoken aloud. No one dared.
But I saw it—carved into doorways, chalked in spirals behind crumbling stalls, stitched in trembling thread across peasant sleeves like talismans turned inward.
The people no longer pray to Heaven.
They no longer believe in it.
They believe something else will save them now.
Not the court.
Not the gods.
Something hungrier. Something closer.
In Ling An, my enemies played games with quills and scrolls.
Here, they twist minds.
Here, they kneel to things with no name.
I have no ministers at my back. No army at my flanks.
My name, once spoken with fear in the north, earns only suspicion here.
No loyalty. No awe.
Only watching eyes.
And from the edges of the city—from behind the broken statues, the hollow temples, the grain that rots without reason—something watches.
Not human.
Not imperial.
Older.
And as I walked beneath Longzhou's splintered gates and shattered sigils, I understood.
I was not sent here to restore this city. I was sent here to be buried with it.