The morning sun cast long, hazy shafts of light through the latticed windows of the Imperial Study, illuminating swirling dust motes that danced like tiny, forgotten spirits. The room itself was a monument to accumulated knowledge, vast and silent. Towering shelves of dark, fragrant nanmu wood strained under the weight of thousands of scrolls and thread-bound books, a silent army of words standing guard. The air smelled of old paper, of rich, black ink, and of the dry, sweet scent of time itself. A massive desk, carved from a single slab of rosewood, dominated one end of the room—a throne for a scholar-king. But Ying Zheng was not permitted near it.
Instead, a smaller table of polished elm had been brought in, along with two chairs. One was for his tutor. His own was a ridiculously cushioned affair, his four-year-old legs dangling uncomfortably, unable to touch the floor. It was a subtle, constant reminder of his stature. He was not an emperor receiving a report; he was a child receiving a lesson.
Standing before him was Weng Tonghe, the Imperial Tutor. A man in his late forties, Weng was the living embodiment of the Confucian ideal. He was tall and slender, his face scholarly and kind, framed by a neat, graying beard. He wore the formal robes of a high-ranking mandarin, but carried himself with the patient humility of a dedicated teacher. His family had served the Qing for generations. His loyalty was to the institution of the Dragon Throne, a sacred concept far more important than the temporary, flesh-and-blood boy who happened to occupy it.
Standing silently against the far wall, their hands tucked into their sleeves, were two senior eunuchs. They were ostensibly there to fetch ink, grind the inkstone, and serve tea. In reality, Ying Zheng knew they were statues with ears, their true function to record every word, every sigh, every flicker of an eyelid, and report it all back to the Empress Dowager Cixi. They were the true guardians of this room.
"Now, Your Majesty," Weng Tonghe began, his voice the calm, gentle baritone one reserves for a skittish colt or a very young child. "Observe my hand. The brush is an extension of the mind, and the mind must be righteous. Thus, the brush must be held upright, like a noble gentleman standing tall against the wind."
He demonstrated, his long, elegant fingers holding the bamboo shaft with practiced ease. "Your fingers should be firm, providing guidance, but not tense. The power does not come from the fingers, for that is brutish force. The power flows from the wrist, which provides grace, and the elbow, which provides strength. It is a river of motion. Like so."
Ying Zheng watched, his expression carefully neutral. He had to physically suppress the urge to scoff. This man was lecturing him—the man who had brought order from the chaos of a hundred warring scripts, who had decreed a single, unified system of writing for all of China—on the proper way to hold a brush. The insult was so profound, so utterly monumental in its ignorance, that it had cycled past simple rage and settled into a kind of cold, detached amusement. This was his life now. An endless series of humiliations, large and small.
"We will begin with the simplest of all characters," Weng Tonghe continued, his eyes crinkling in a patient smile. "The character for 'one.' A single, straight, horizontal line. It represents unity, the beginning, the indivisible Dao itself. Can Your Majesty try?"
Playing his part, Ying Zheng picked up the brush. He made his small, childish fingers seem clumsy and uncertain. He dipped the tip into the freshly ground ink, deliberately taking too much. When he put the brush to the delicate rice paper, he pushed too hard, the bristles splaying. He drew a wobbly, wavering line that was thick and blotched at one end and faded into a frail whisper at the other. It was a masterpiece of feigned incompetence.
Weng Tonghe beamed. "A fine first attempt, Majesty! A very fine attempt indeed! The spirit is there. With practice and dedication, your line will become as straight and true as the path of righteousness itself. We must build a strong foundation before we can construct a palace. Now, again."
For the next hour, this was his reality. He, the First Emperor, practiced drawing a straight line under the patronizing gaze of a scholar and the watchful eyes of two castrated spies. He seethed internally, a volcano of frustration capped with ice. But he was also learning. He was a sponge, absorbing every detail. The tutor's deference was layered with the unmistakable condescension of an adult to a child. The eunuchs' silence was not empty; it was heavy with unspoken authority. This room was not a place of learning; it was a beautifully decorated cell.
Finally, he decided it was time to pivot the lesson from the meaningless to the essential. He needed information. He looked up at Weng Tonghe, carefully composing his small face into an expression of childish confusion.
"Grand Tutor Weng," he began, his voice the high, reedy pipe of the boy Zaitian. "Why… why must I learn this?"
Weng Tonghe blinked, the question clearly not on his lesson plan. "Why, Your Majesty? You are the Son of Heaven. The axis upon which the world turns. You must be able to read the memorials and petitions of your officials, to study the sacred wisdom of the ancient sages, to write the imperial edicts that will govern all under Heaven. Knowledge is the bedrock of a virtuous and wise ruler."
It was the perfect, textbook Confucian answer. Ying Zheng pressed on, feigning a deeper layer of childish innocence. "The Empress Dowager… Huang A Ma… she told me I am the Emperor. But you say I must learn to become a ruler. If I am the Emperor, am I not the ruler now?"
A flicker of surprise, perhaps even alarm, crossed Weng Tonghe's face. The question was dangerously direct for a four-year-old. It scraped at the very heart of the current political arrangement. The tutor glanced nervously towards the eunuchs, who remained utterly impassive, their faces like polished stone. He chose his next words with the care of a man walking on rice paper.
"You are indeed the Emperor, Majesty. The Mandate of Heaven rests upon your sacred person. No one questions this. But a wise ruler, following the example of the great emperors Yao and Shun, understands that wisdom is not a title that is granted, but a virtue that is earned through diligent and humble study. The Empress Dowager, in her infinite wisdom and selfless compassion, generously guides the great ship of state while you prepare your mind and spirit for the immense responsibility that awaits you."
It was a masterful piece of political deflection, framing Cixi's power grab as an act of benevolent sacrifice. But it gave Ying Zheng the opening he needed.
"This 'ship of state'…" he said, tilting his head with calculated curiosity. "Is it sailing in calm waters, Grand Tutor?"
Weng Tonghe's patient smile tightened. "Majesty, these are complex matters of governance, far beyond what is necessary for today's lesson. We should perhaps focus on the character for 'two,' which represents the duality of yin and…"
"But you said knowledge is the bedrock of a ruler," Ying Zheng interrupted, keeping his tone respectful but firm, the perfect imitation of a precocious child. "If I do not know about the waters my ship sails upon, how can I ever become a wise ruler? It seems to me that is the most important knowledge of all." He paused, then delivered the payload. "Tell me about the 'foreigners.' The ones with the fast ships and the loud guns."
The question landed in the silent room with the force of a physical blow. The air grew tense. One of the eunuchs coughed softly into his sleeve. Weng Tonghe stared at the small boy sitting before him, and for the first time, he seemed to see past the childish frame to the unnerving intensity in his eyes. This was not idle curiosity. He made a decision. It was his duty as a tutor to answer, however simply. The Emperor had asked a question about the state of the realm; to refuse would be a dereliction of duty.
"Your Majesty's perception is… astute," he began, his voice losing its gentle, patronizing edge and becoming somber. "Yes. There are men from across the Western Ocean. They come from nations called 'Britain,' 'France,' and others. At first, they came to our shores seeking trade in tea and silks. But their methods were… dishonorable. They began to bring a poisonous drug, a black mud called opium, that has corrupted our people, weakened our soldiers, and drained the treasury of its silver."
Ying Zheng's blood ran cold. Poison? They allow foreign merchants to openly poison the population and steal the state's wealth? In his time, the punishment for such a crime would have been slow boiling for the merchants, and the execution of their entire families, along with the local official who failed to stop them.
"Why were they not stopped?" he asked, his small voice tight. "Where were the armies of the Great Qing? Where were the generals?"
A deep, painful shame washed over Weng Tonghe's face. He looked down at his hands. "We fought, Majesty. Our soldiers and generals fought with great bravery. But their weapons… their ships are powered by steam and clad in iron. Their cannons fire farther and faster than our own. Their rifles are instruments of a devilish artifice, capable of killing a man from a great distance. They defeated the Eight Banners. They sailed up our rivers and threatened our cities." His voice dropped to a near whisper. "They forced the previous emperor, your uncle the Xianfeng Emperor, to sign… unequal treaties."
"Unequal treaties?" Ying Zheng pressed.
"Agreements," Weng Tonghe clarified, his face pained. "They have taken lands, like the southern island of Hong Kong. They force us to open our ports to their trade on their terms. And they demand that we pay them vast sums of silver, called indemnities, for the cost of their wars against us."
The information settled in Ying Zheng's mind, each fact a block of ice in a growing glacier of rage. Indemnities? We pay the invaders for the privilege of being defeated? We give them our land? The Great Wall, his wall, was a monument of stone, earth, and the bones of a million men, all sacrificed for a single purpose: to keep the barbarians out. And these… these successors… they paid them to stay.
This was not an empire. It was a carcass being picked clean by vultures, and the so-called rulers were shooing away anyone who tried to stop them.
The rage building in his chest was immense, cold, and pure. It was the rage of a master architect who returns to find his magnificent palace has been turned into a brothel by squatters. The Mandate of Heaven did not just rest upon him, as the tutor so quaintly put it. The Mandate of Heaven was him. And everything he was hearing was a profound, cosmic blasphemy against his very being. Unconsciously, he clenched his small fist tightly under the table, his knuckles turning white as bone. He focused all his fury on the concept of these treaties, these symbols of ultimate surrender.
"So the Mandate… is weak?" he asked, the words sharp as shards of ice.
"The Mandate is never weak, Majesty!" Weng Tonghe retorted, a flash of indignation in his eyes. "It is eternal and absolute! It is the virtue of those who hold it that may wax and wane. We have strayed from the path of the ancestors. We have become complacent and arrogant. We must look inward, cultivate our virtue, strengthen our spirit, and in time, the natural strength of the Great Qing will be restored and the foreigners will be expelled…"
As Weng Tonghe launched into his classic, philosophical Confucian explanation for military and political failure, a thin, unnatural wisp of gray smoke suddenly rose from the far corner of the room. It was almost imperceptible in the dusty sunlight.
The edge of a hanging scroll, a priceless piece of calligraphy by the Song Dynasty master Mi Fu depicting a misty mountain landscape, began to smolder. A tiny, ember-red line appeared on the delicate, centuries-old paper, glowing brightly for a brief second. It looked like a crack in reality, a line of fire with no source. Then, just as quickly, it vanished, leaving behind a small, ugly, blackened scorch mark.
One of the eunuchs, a man with a nose like a ferret, sniffed the air delicately. "A strange smell, Grand Tutor," he observed, his voice flat.
Weng Tonghe paused his lecture, annoyed by the interruption. He glanced around. "It is likely just the old incense in the main burner giving off a last gasp. Pay it no mind."
But Ying Zheng had seen it. His eyes, sharper and more observant than anyone in the room could imagine, had locked onto the phenomenon. He had seen the scroll smolder at the exact moment his internal rage had peaked, at the very instant he had focused all his will on the concept of his empire's humiliation. He had felt a strange, hot pulse in his clenched fist, a thrum of power that had no earthly source.
He didn't understand it. A part of his logical, ruthlessly practical mind dismissed it as a bizarre coincidence—a stray spark from an unseen source, a trick of the light. His mind was too preoccupied with the infuriating, catastrophic state of his new empire to dwell on it. The lesson had to continue. He needed more information. More names. More facts. More ammunition.
But the seed of a new, terrifying possibility had been planted.