The Imperial Garden had completely descended into chaos.
“Don’t pull me! Let me take one more breath!”
The Dayuan prince had half his body stuck inside the well, his legs kicking wildly outside like a dog that had fallen into a cesspit.
Nearby, the Qiuci envoy grabbed his hair and desperately tried to drag him out.
“Get out! Do you think you’re worthy of breathing immortal energy?”
“This belongs to Great Qin! I am an ally of Great Qin!”
“Go to hell with your alliance—you were just mocking them for farming a moment ago!”
A group of so-called nobles in luxurious robes were now rolling in the mud.
Hats were crushed, robes torn.
Faces covered in dirt and blood.
This was greed.
Before lifespan and power, so-called dignity was worth less than nothing.
“Throw them out.”
Qin Shi Huang frowned and waved his hand.
Too disgraceful.
Fighting in his imperial garden had dirtied the land itself.
Dozens of golden-armored guards rushed forward, dragging the envoys away like dead pigs—each grabbing a leg and hauling them out as they screamed.
“No! I won’t leave!”
“Your Majesty! I will offer all the princesses of my nation! Let me take one more breath!”
The Dayuan prince dug his fingers into the stone tiles, nails tearing off as he left ten bloody scratches on the ground.
Nearby, Ying Ziye stood casually eating sunflower seeds.
Crack.
He cracked one open and spat out the shell.
“A bunch of uncivilized bumpkins.”
He brushed the dust off his hands.
Then—
“Ding!”
【Great Qin national destiny… awakening.】
【Manifestation of national fate… beginning.】
Ying Ziye paused.
He looked up.
The mist-filled sky above the Imperial Garden suddenly changed.
Not dark.
Gold.
A piercing, radiant, overwhelming golden red light that made it impossible to look at directly.
BOOM!!!
The octagonal glazed well suddenly stopped releasing white mist.
Instead—
A golden pillar of light erupted from the depths of the well, shooting straight into the sky.
The guards dragging the envoys were thrown backward by the shockwave.
The Dayuan prince, still clinging to the ground, was blasted three zhang into the air and slammed into an old crooked tree.
He coughed up blood.
But he didn’t care.
Because he saw the sky.
The sky was collapsing.
Thick clouds were being violently stirred by an invisible hand, forming a massive vortex.
And at the center of the vortex—
was not emptiness.
But scales.
Massive golden scales, each larger than a millstone, reflecting cold metallic light in the sun.
“What… what is that…”
Li Si collapsed onto the ground, his ritual tablet slipping from his hand.
No one answered.
Because everyone’s throat had been gripped by an invisible force.
“ROAR!!!”
A roar descended from the nine heavens.
No.
It came from deep within the earth, from everyone’s blood, from every brick of Xianyang itself.
A dragon’s roar.
A true dragon’s roar.
Even the so-called “heavenly blood horse” brought by the Dayuan prince foamed at the mouth, convulsed, and died on the spot from terror.
The clouds shattered.
A massive, majestic, divine golden head slowly emerged.
Too large.
One single dragon eye was bigger than the pavilion in the Imperial Garden.
Its whiskers flowed like two golden rivers.
Its horns pierced the sky like divine weapons.
It hovered above the Qin palace, blocking the sun—blocking everything.
The entire city of Xianyang was bathed in gold.
“Dragon…”
“It’s a dragon!!”
“The true dragon has manifested!!”
Someone shouted first.
The civil and military officials in the garden collapsed to their knees like harvested wheat.
Wang Li slammed his head into the ground repeatedly, blood pouring from his forehead, yet he felt no pain at all.
This was not fear.
It was suppression from the bloodline itself.
An instinctual reverence—like seeing one’s ancestor, one’s faith.
The Dayuan prince hung from a tree branch, instantly wetting himself.
Yellow liquid dripped down his legs.
His body shook violently.
A dragon?
There really was a dragon in this world?
The heavenly horse his nation worshipped meant nothing before this.
Not even fit to fill its teeth.
“So this is… the foundation of Great Qin?”
His teeth chattered so hard he bit his tongue.
He had just tried to boast about horses in front of such a nation?
He had even thought of going to war with Qin?
What a joke!
One breath from that golden dragon might erase all thirty-six cities of Dayuan without leaving a trace!
The golden dragon roared through the clouds.
It did not leave immediately.
Its burning golden eyes slowly lowered.
It looked down.
At the Imperial Garden.
At the man standing there—
Qin Shi Huang.
Qin Shi Huang did not kneel.
He was the First Emperor.
He was the supreme ruler of the mortal world.
Even a dragon had no qualification to make him kneel.
He stood with his hands behind his back, staring up at the golden dragon.
His black robe whipped violently in the wind.
His freshly restored youthful face showed no fear—only an arrogance that seemed ready to trample even the heavens underfoot.
“Good.”
Qin Shi Huang suddenly spoke.
Only one word.
“Huu…”
The golden dragon let out another low chant.
Then it suddenly dove downward.
The pressure from its massive body cracked the green stone tiles beneath the garden step by step.
Li Si closed his eyes in terror.
But the destruction he expected never came.
The golden dragon stopped three chi above Qin Shi Huang’s head.
It lowered its head and gently touched its enormous dragon snout against the emperor’s crown.
The next moment—
A miracle occurred.
Qin Shi Huang’s body slowly lifted off the ground.
One inch.
One foot.
One zhang.
He floated upward into the air without any support, hands still behind his back.
The golden dragon coiled behind him.
Golden light enveloped his entire body, as if draping him in divine armor.
At this moment, Qin Shi Huang was no longer merely a mortal emperor.
He looked like a Heavenly Sovereign descending from the divine realm, gazing down upon all living beings like ants.
The Dayuan prince fell from the tree with a thud.
He ignored his broken leg.
He wriggled on the ground like a worm, desperately trying to bury his head in the soil.
“I have sinned!”
“I should not have offended divine authority!”
“Your Majesty the Emperor of Qin, please spare my life!”
The other Western Region envoys smashed their foreheads into the ground.
What alliance against Qin?
What demands for benefits?
In front of that floating figure, all such thoughts became suicidal jokes.
This was not even the same level.
This was not even the same kind of power.
Li Si got up from the ground.
He grabbed his fallen ritual tablet, his hands shaking like he was playing a zither.
He shouted to the historian beside him:
“Write it down!”
“Record everything!”
“In the thirty-seventh year of the First Emperor, in winter, the Ancestral Dragon manifested—His Majesty ascended!”
“If even a single word is missing, I will execute their entire clan!”
The historian cried as he wrote, tears and snot smearing across the bamboo slips.
Across all of Xianyang—
Millions of citizens.
From blacksmiths to street vendors.
All of them knelt in the streets.
They looked toward the palace, at the coiling golden dragon, at the floating black silhouette.
Their cries shook the heavens.
Tears of overwhelming excitement.
Great Qin is protected by a true dragon!
The Emperor is chosen by Heaven itself!
Who in this world could ever touch Great Qin again?
In this moment of global shock and kneeling reverence—
Only one person still stood.
And only one person dared to speak casually.
Ying Ziye stood beneath Qin Shi Huang.
He looked up, shading his eyes from the blinding golden light.
“Tch.”
He clicked his tongue.
“So he really flew?”
“Not bad effects though. Better than Hollywood.”
He dusted off the sunflower seed shells on his clothes, completely indifferent.
As if what hovered above him was not a divine dragon, but just a slightly oversized mudfish.
“It’s just a bit too bright. Hard to look at.”
He muttered.
High in the sky, Qin Shi Huang seemed to hear his son’s complaint.
He looked down.
There was a hint of helplessness—and faint indulgent affection—in his eyes.
This rebellious son…
Couldn’t he at least cooperate with the imperial dignity for once?
At that moment—
The golden dragon suddenly opened its massive mouth.
It made no sound.
Instead, it inhaled deeply toward the lands of Great Qin below.
Then—
“Huuuu—”
A stream of golden mist erupted from its mouth.
Not flames of destruction.
Not thunder of annihilation.
It was… national destiny.
Physicalized, liquid-like golden national fortune.
Like golden rain, like golden fog.
It spread instantly.
Crossing the walls of Xianyang Palace.
Crossing the city walls of Xianyang.
Spreading outward in all directions—toward every inch of Great Qin’s land.
Wherever it passed—
Withered trees returned to life.
All things began to grow.
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