“Are you telling me that I haven’t even united all of Asia?”
“Is the territory of my Great Qin really still not large enough?”
Ying Zheng stared intently at Ying Qingye.
“That’s right!”
“Do you have proof?”
“I do!”
Ying Qingye had someone bring over a piece of cloth, upon which he sketched out a rough world map from memory.
“What is this?”
“A world map!”
“A world map?”
Ying Zheng stared at the crude, unlabelled map.
“Where is my Great Qin?”
“Come up here and point it out to me!”
Ying Qingye stepped up beside Ying Zheng and outlined the territory belonging to Great Qin.
When Ying Zheng saw how tiny that area looked on the map, he was instantly dumbfounded.
“I united the six states and launched campaigns in the south against the Baiyue, incorporating them into our Great Qin’s territory.”
“And yet, Great Qin is only this big?”
Ying Zheng could hardly believe his eyes.
“Well, what else did you expect?”
Ying Qingye blurted out reflexively.
Ying Zheng stared at the world map, falling deep into thought. But before long, a brilliant light ignited in his eyes—it seemed he had just found a brand-new goal to fight for!
The world is so vast… it’s all mine, every last inch of it!
Hahaha…
“For meritorious service in presenting this map, reward Qingye with a thousand pieces of gold!”
“Dismissed!”
With that, Ying Zheng turned and strode away, leaving everyone in the hall staring in utter bewilderment.
Especially Ying Qingye.
Wait, wasn’t he going to kill me?
How did I suddenly earn merit?
I just insulted his greatest achievements, and he’s rewarding me?!
“Hey! Imperial Father, I just told you your accomplishments aren’t that impressive!”
“Aren’t you even mad?!”
Ying Qingye shouted toward the direction where Ying Zheng had vanished, but received no reply.
“Aiyo! My little ancestor, stop shouting!”
“Do you really want the Imperial Father to kill you?!”
Fusu hurried forward, slapping a hand over Ying Qingye’s mouth and dragging him toward the exit.
Outside the palace:
“Big Brother, why are you dragging me?”
Ying Qingye shook off Fusu’s grip and asked with a look of annoyance.
“Xiao Wu, what is wrong with you today?”
“How could you dare to talk back to the Imperial Father like that in public?”
Fusu tapped Ying Qingye firmly on the head.
“Big Brother, aren’t you in even more danger than me?”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
Fusu looked at him, completely baffled.
“Just now, I merely talked back to the Imperial Father. But what about you?”
“You were opposing a state policy established by the Imperial Father himself—you were opposing the hard work and sweat of everyone in all of Great Qin.”
Ying Qingye said calmly, looking straight at him.
“But the feudal system truly does align with the standards of good governance!”
“Back then, the Zhou Son of Heaven relied on that very system to enjoy eight hundred years of national fortune!”
Ying Qingye rolled his eyes at him.
“Big Brother, stop hanging out with those stuffy, pedantic scholars.”
“Eight hundred years of fortune, my foot.”
“Ever since King Ping’s eastward migration, could the Zhou royal court even get a word in edgewise?”
“What happened afterward?”
“The vassal states constantly waged diplomatic warfare—the strong survived, the weak perished, and the common people suffered centuries of torment under the flames of war.”
“Our Great Qin ancestors were determined to unite the six states precisely to spare the common folk from enduring the horrors of war ever again.”
“When the Imperial Father implemented the commandery and county system, it was driven by that exact same logic.”
“It’s such a simple concept—why on earth can’t you understand it?”
Ying Qingye explained slowly.
Fusu was left speechless, completely at a loss for how to retort. With his gentle and kind-hearted nature, he naturally couldn’t bear to see the common people suffer.
“Big Brother, take the younger brother’s advice: never mention the feudal system in front of the Imperial Father again.”
“The Imperial Father wiped out the six states, which is equivalent to dismantling the feudal system entirely. Bringing it up to him right now…”
“Isn’t that just slapping him right across the face?”
“You were way worse than me just now, you know!”
Ying Qingye said indifferently. Even though he had transmigrated here and didn’t share any deep emotional bond with Fusu, this eldest prince of Great Qin still possessed a rather stellar reputation and public praise in history.
Therefore, Ying Qingye couldn’t bear to watch him get brainwashed by those people.
Fusu nodded thoughtfully.
……………………
Meanwhile, inside the study!
Ying Zheng was meticulously examining the world map in his hands.
“Pass down the decree!”
“Summon Li Si, Feng Quji, Wang Wan, Meng Wu, Wang Ben, Huan Yi, and Dun Ruo to see me.”
“Understood!”
The eunuch hurriedly turned around to dispatch the imperial orders.
Before long, the seven ministers arrived in a hurried rush.
“We, your ministers, pay our respects to Your Majesty!”
“May Your Majesty live for ten thousand years!”
The seven men bowed in unison.
“Rise!”
“Take a look at this first!”
Ying Zheng dismissed the attendants, handed the map over to Li Si, and the rest leaned in closely to inspect it.
After examining the parchment for a moment, the men exchanged puzzled glances with Ying Zheng.
Li Si spoke up first:
“Your Majesty, is this… a map?”
“Indeed!”
Ying Zheng nodded.
The ministers grew even more perplexed. They were all pillars of the Great Qin Empire—what kind of maps hadn’t they laid eyes on before? Yet, they had never seen anything resembling this.
“If we may ask Your Majesty, whose territory does this map depict?”
Wang Wan asked with a frown.
“This is a world map!”
“A world map?”
The men were somewhat dazed. If it was a world map, why didn’t it look anything like Great Qin?
“Your Majesty, this doesn’t resemble our Great Qin’s territory at all, does it?”
Meng Wu asked cautiously.
“The area circled right here—that is Great Qin!”
“What?!”
Everyone’s eyes widened in disbelief, utterly unable to trust their own ears.
The territory that the successive generations of ancestors of Great Qin, alongside all of their own tireless efforts, had fought so hard to conquer… was only this big?!
They had always thought their empire was vast enough, only to discover it was nothing more than a drop in the ocean?
“Your Majesty, this map…”
Li Si didn’t dare to finish his question, terrified that Ying Zheng might suspect him of prying into things he shouldn’t.
“Qingye drew this for me!”
“The Fifth Prince?”
The ministers were once again baffled.
In everyone’s eyes, Ying Qingye was merely a mediocre figure—not only ordinary, but also frivolous and completely devoid of Ying Zheng’s grand, statesman-like vision.
Aside from good looks, he was practically useless!
That was precisely why they were so utterly shocked.
“Your Majesty, the Fifth Prince, he…”
Feng Quji began carefully.
“You want to ask whether this map drawn by Qingye is authentic?”
“Your Majesty, this minister deserves death!”
Feng Quji hastily pleaded guilty.
“Rise!”
“If we want to verify the authenticity of this map, wouldn’t it be clear once we send the Black Ice Terrace to investigate?”
Upon hearing this, the ministers nodded in agreement.
“Your Majesty, if this map is true, then the territory of our Great Qin will reach unprecedented heights.”
Wang Wan said with a trace of excitement.
“But if this map is real, just how unimaginably vast must these lands be?”
“Today, traveling across our Great Qin from south to north takes months, and we’ve always considered that massive.”
“Yet on this map, it looks so remarkably tiny, which proves just how immense the world truly is.”
“To fully explore and map out every single location on this chart… who knows how long that would take?”
Li Si’s words sobered the rest of the room.
What he said was entirely correct; accomplishing a thorough exploration in a short timeframe was simply impossible.
“Since we cannot map it all out in a short time, we can take it step by step.”
“Back then, didn’t Great Qin unite the six states only after generations of preceding kings worked toward that ultimate unification?”
“We will proceed little by little. Explore a region, then conquer it.”
“Eventually, we will map it all out, and by the time we do, our Great Qin’s territory will have expanded exponentially.”
Wang Ben declared with boundless, heroic ambition from the side.
“Hahaha…”
“General Wang Ben speaks the truth. One day, our Great Qin will surely unite the entire world.”