“Oww—hic!” Clapping a hand over the cheek that had just been pinched, Ying Yang stared at her own father in astonishment.
Ying Zheng withdrew his hand, his face entirely expressionless, as though he had had nothing whatsoever to do with the pinch.
Don’t tell me my father is one of those secretly mischievous, outwardly solemn types…
The possibility was almost too extraordinary to believe. Ying Yang regarded him with mingled shock and suspicion.
A muffled sob came from nearby. “Gongzhu, save me…”
“Hic—” Recalled to herself, Ying Yang pointed at A-Liao, intending to tell them to release her. Yet for all her efforts, no words would come.
Seeing this, Ying Zheng waved a hand. The eunuch released his hold and retreated. A-Liao understood at once and hastened to kowtow, swearing that henceforth she would serve Gongzhu faithfully and well.
Ying Yang then pointed to several faces among those present who had never mistreated her. Most of the attendants she singled out were between ten and fifteen years of age.
The bad people who bullied me deserve punishment. But these ones are innocent. Better not to incur such needless bloodshed.
Still hiccupping, Ying Yang shook her head and waved her hands at Ying Zheng and Xia Bazi. She gestured this way and that, desperate to explain herself, but remained unable to utter a word. In frustration, she beat a small fist against her chest.
Xia Bazi misunderstood. Her eyes sharpened. “Why have you not seized those villains yet?”
Ying Yang shook her head so furiously that the little attendants began to weep and plead for mercy.
Ying Zheng stroked his daughter’s head. “For three years you suffered humiliation,” he said evenly. “These servants failed in their duty to protect their mistress. They must be punished.”
Ying Yang grew frantic. She caught hold of his sleeve and gazed up at him imploringly.
Please don’t! Heaven cherishes living things! Saving a single life is worth more than building a seven-storied pagoda! These are living, breathing human beings! They never bullied or abused me. They shouldn’t have to die!
Ying Zheng appeared thoughtful. Without realizing it, Ying Yang pressed her palms together and made a pleading gesture toward him.
“Guaren has already ordered the proper officials to investigate the accomplices of Feng Shi and Rui Shi thoroughly,” Ying Zheng said. “If these attendants are not among their confederates, the palace regulations will not demand their lives.”
As long as so many people aren’t killed.
Relief washed over Ying Yang. She bestowed upon him an enormous smile.
Thank goodness, thank goodness. The young Qin Shi Huang hasn’t yet become the tyrant he’ll be later.
Ying Zheng, whose own lips had just begun to curve: “??”
What an enormous black pot to have dropped upon his head from nowhere!
After the founding of the Zhou dynasty and before the Qin fell in its second generation, the epithet tyrant had belonged, in particular, to Jie and Zhou, the two kings whose dynasties had perished with them.
Why’s he suddenly unhappy? Ying Yang could make neither head nor tail of it. In the blink of an eye, her father had turned glacial; anyone with eyes could see that he was angry.
His face changes faster than the weather in the sixth month! That’s Qin Shi Huang for you… A man ruthless enough to dash his younger brother to death, execute twenty-seven ministers for remonstrating, and burn books and bury scholars alive. Tsk, tsk.
Ying Zheng’s anger gave way to sheer disbelief.
The shock was so extreme that it actually calmed him. He did not consider himself a tyrant now, nor did he believe that his future self would be one.
The character huang, formed in relation to wang, was a title of exalted beings, such as celestial deities and ancestors—the Three Huang, for instance.
Di was the supreme and sacred designation of a ruler who stood in accord with Heaven, as with the Four Heavenly Di.
As for shi, it signified a woman’s beginning: when a woman came of age and married, that transition was called her shi. Naturally, he was not going to become a woman and marry. But he would enter a new stage of his life—he would unite the seven states, become lord of all under Heaven, and see every living soul bow before him.
For such an achievement, what title could possibly suffice except Huangdi, drawn from the Three Huang and Five Di?
To one who wielded sovereign power, the mere thought of the entire world prostrating itself at his feet was enough to set the blood surging.
Ying Zheng maintained his outward composure and kingly dignity, but his body betrayed him: his heart was beating at a furious pace. Before his elation could subside, however, he heard his daughter—this little prophet—call him a tyrant and cite, as proof, events so monstrous that an ordinary person could scarcely have invented them.
Fortunately, since ascending the throne as a child, Ying Zheng had endured the allied armies of five states advancing against Qin, a great drought that sent grain prices soaring, and even the near prospect of being supplanted by his younger brother through his own grandmother’s intervention. These trials had tempered him into a man of extraordinary fortitude. That, together with his youth, was all that kept Ying Yang’s revelations from throwing his blood and qi into such disorder that his health suffered.
Setting his emotions aside, Ying Zheng carefully considered the vital intelligence concealed in those few words.
Burning books and burying scholars. Books were precious, and Confucian scholars placed great weight on ritual propriety. Such an act would indeed be appalling. What circumstances in the future could induce him to undertake it, despite the enormous cost? To establish new rites, perhaps, to bring the minds of all under Heaven into accord and make the people forget the preceding age? If so, it would happen after the unification. That matter could wait.
Dashing his younger brother to death. He already had five sons. Could Chengjiao still be harboring designs upon the succession? But wait—Chengjiao was already seventeen, no infant. Ying Zheng himself stood eight chi and five cun tall—approximately 196 centimeters. Even so, how was he supposed to dash to death a brother who stood seven chi and five cun?
Executing twenty-seven remonstrating ministers. What momentous affair could make so many court officials willing to stake their lives upon their objections? It must concern the very foundations of the established order. Had Damu Xia Taihou assisted Chengjiao in rebellion, forcing him to imprison—or even kill—his own kin? Yet Xia Taihou had held the reins of state for seven years and was a cautious, reserved woman, hardly one to act rashly. Besides, Huayang Taihou and A-Mu were still there…
Unless A-Mu and Huayang Taihou both perish in the rebellion?! Could this be the great event Yangzi said would happen this year?!
The stakes were too high. Ying Zheng turned the possibilities over and over from every political angle. After waiting a while and hearing no further momentous revelations—only his daughter’s thoughts about trifles of everyday life—he bestowed generous gifts of money and silk upon her and upon his consort, Xia Bazi, as rewards and consolation. Then he departed at once. He needed solitude in which to think.
…
[Neurological treatment consists of three courses. Following the first course, the host will experience a marked improvement. However, the host’s nervous system has been affected by toxins for a prolonged period, and her body will require time to adjust to a healthy condition. The host is advised to attend carefully to recuperation and rehabilitation.]
[Precautions and guidance: Recommended post-treatment diet and dietary restrictions ×1; Correct Vocalization Training ×1; Muscle Reactivation Exercise Procedures ×1.]
It was the end of the third month, in the last days of spring. With birds singing clearly in the branches, Ying Yang chewed the end of a tender willow twig and refused her maidservants’ assistance, determined to clean her teeth herself.
Working from top to bottom and from side to side, she used the frayed twig to scrub every one of her little rice-grain teeth until they were spotless. Then she took a mouthful of salt water, swished it vigorously from one cheek to the other, tipped back her head, and gargled with a prolonged gulu-gulu.
This was not merely for amusement. She was exercising the uvula, the little pendant of flesh at the back of the throat, commonly called the “little tongue.” Many sounds in ancient Chinese required vigorous trilling; without a sufficiently developed uvula, one might as well be half mute.
When she had finished brushing her teeth, Ying Yang had a bronze mirror brought to her. Studying her reflection in its clear yellow surface, she began massaging her face, slowly working the points marked in her rehabilitation instructions as sympathetic nerve nodes—or, in the terminology of traditional medicine, acupoints.
Once her face was done, she brought out several pieces of white silk, each cut to fit the dimensions of her neck, back, and limbs. Taking up a brush, she dabbed them lightly with dark-brown medicinal liquid, then instructed the attendants to lay the spotted silk against her neck and back.
“A-Liao.”
At her call, the maidservant with twin buns, a silver comb in her hair and a red silk ribbon, pressed her thumb against the brown marks, transferring them to Gongzhu’s skin.
When the white silk was peeled away and the medicine had dried, A-Liao and another twin-bunned maidservant, A-Luo, whose ornaments were much plainer, reached out together. Following Gongzhu’s instructions, they applied a little pressure and slowly rubbed the marked acupoints, always in the same direction.
Acupoints. Nerves. Ever since Wu Gongzhu had astonished everyone by opening her mouth and speaking, these unfamiliar terms had been constantly upon her lips. Not only the illiterate maids and eunuchs but even nobles who had read the classics were at a loss to understand them.
Yet however strange others found her methods, however much they whispered about them in private or regarded them with fear, the improvement in Wu Gongzhu’s condition could not be denied. Anyone with eyes could see that she walked more nimbly with each passing day, spoke more fluently, and had exchanged her former habit of sleeping at all hours for a bright, alert gaze.
A child once thought all but helpless had been given a new lease of life. She could run and jump. It was a miracle made flesh!
Surely the ancestors and the gods of Heaven had blessed her. Surely Wu Gongzhu must have been extraordinary from birth, for such a wonder to have occurred!
…
[Name: Ying Yang / Ying Yangzi (Gongzhu of Qin)
Sex: Female
Age: 2.9 years
Works: 1
Earnings: 500 jin of gold; 200 bolts of silk; (Unavailable for viewing)
Popularity: 18 (Respectful Distance)
Fans: 15 (Viewable)
Followers: (Unavailable for viewing)]
Why had part of her earnings been obscured, as though by a mosaic censor? In her previous life, Ying Yang had nearly been swindled out of her money by an agency, and she was especially sensitive about such things. A lack of transparency about earnings meant that she might not receive the full fruits of her labor.
[This information can only be made available to the host with authorization from a higher-level authority.]
Ying Yang: “.”
Immersing herself in the System’s space, she explored every function she could find until she located the option marked Complaint. She made a mental note of it. Whether she lodged a complaint would depend on the outcome of the so-called “response from higher authorities” promised in two months’ time.
…Though she had no idea whether the complaint function would be of any use.
Ying Yang sighed. If she had not suddenly regained the power of speech, and if her health had not improved day by day, she would never have fully believed that she was bound to a higher-dimensional System. Until then, a small voice within her had constantly questioned whether the whole thing might be the product of religious delusions.
System, you can sense what I’m thinking, can’t you?
[Yes.]
I doubt you. Doesn’t that make you angry? Don’t you have anything to say about it?
[Your reasoning is entirely reasonable and consistent with human nature.]
[Would you like psychological healing services?]
[Please select the psychological healing model that best suits your needs: 1. Psychologist; 2. Psychiatrist; 3. Religious Practitioner; 4. System.]
Ying Yang’s mouth twitched. She selected number four. She wanted to see what words of comfort the System could possibly offer.
[Understood. Thank you for your trust. The following is my analysis of your psychological condition and my recommendation: If you complete the final hidden achievement, the Popularity Prize Pool may contain the thing you desire most.]
The thing I desire most?
She did not even know what that might be…
[Ding—The System has disclosed restricted information. Confinement punishment protocol initiated!]
Ying Yang froze.
Author’s Note
The little System isn’t a bad fellow. It’s just that it ran into a problem way beyond its training on its very first day at work. _(:з」∠)_