The Palace of Compassion and Tranquility was a name steeped in irony. It was the personal residence of the Empress Dowager Cixi, and while it was undeniably tranquil on the surface, compassion was a commodity in short supply within its perfumed walls. The private dining hall was a jewel box of imperial wealth, its walls lined with panels of shimmering silk embroidery depicting scenes from mythology. A round table of black lacquer, inlaid with mother-of-pearl phoenixes, dominated the center, and it was laden with a truly staggering array of food. Dozens of small, exquisite porcelain bowls and silver dishes held meticulously prepared morsels: shark fin soup, braised abalone, delicate crystal shrimp dumplings, crisp-skinned duck, and a hundred other delicacies, each one a testament to the skill of the imperial kitchens and the bottomless depth of the imperial treasury.
It was a meal designed not for sustenance, but for display. A performance of power. And Ying Zheng was the captive audience.
He sat on a cushioned stool, the table just slightly too high for him to be comfortable. Directly across from him sat the other Empress Dowager, Ci'an. She was a quiet, handsome woman with a gentle, almost sad smile. She seemed content to exist in Cixi's shadow, a placid foil to her co-regent's restless ambition. She radiated a genuine kindness that Ying Zheng's instincts immediately tagged as a form of weakness.
But the true center of gravity in the room was Cixi. She sat to his left, the picture of serene, maternal grace. Every movement was fluid and calculated, every smile a carefully calibrated instrument of control. And behind her, standing motionless, was her shadow, the head eunuch Li Lianying. His face was a mask of servility, but his eyes, dark and intelligent, missed nothing. They flickered from the food, to the Empress Dowagers, to the child Emperor, constantly assessing, constantly aware.
"You are too thin, Zaitian," Cixi said, her voice a silken melody. "A Son of Heaven must possess a body as strong as his spirit. You must eat more."
With a graceful movement, she reached out with her personal, ivory chopsticks, picked a succulent piece of glistening duck from a central dish, and placed it gently into Ying Zheng's small rice bowl. The gesture was intimate, motherly. It was also an act of profound dominance. The Emperor was not served by a eunuch; he was fed by his regent, as one would feed a favored child or a prized pet. It reinforced the hierarchy with humiliating precision.
Ying Zheng forced himself to swallow the bile of indignation that rose in his throat. He had to be the obedient child. He had to be weak. For now. He picked up his own small, silver chopsticks, his movements deliberately clumsy, and ate the piece of duck.
"It is very good," he said, his voice the small, high pipe he was learning to master. "Thank you, Huang A Ma."
Each time he was forced to utter that title—Imperial Father—it felt like swallowing ground glass. It was a verbal prostration, a constant reminder of his emasculated position.
"He is a good boy," Ci'an said from across the table, her smile warm and genuine. "I received a report from the Grand Tutor's office. Weng Tonghe was very pleased. He said His Majesty was attentive and showed a great willingness to learn."
Cixi turned her cool, appraising gaze upon him. Her eyes were not warm like Ci'an's. They were like polished obsidian, reflecting light but revealing nothing of what lay behind them. "Is this true, Zaitian? Did you listen to your tutor? Did you show the proper respect due to a great scholar and a servant of the throne?"
"I did, Huang A Ma," Ying Zheng replied, meeting her gaze for a brief second before looking down at his bowl in a display of childish shyness.
"Good," Cixi said with a nod of satisfaction. "A foundation in the classics is the root of all virtue. But an Emperor must understand more than just books. He must understand decorum, hierarchy, and wisdom. Grand Tutor Weng teaches you knowledge. I will teach you wisdom." She paused, letting her words sink in. "And the most important piece of wisdom you can learn is this: listen to those who have your best interests at heart."
Her eyes held his, and the message was as clear and sharp as a shard of ice. Listen to me.
The meal continued in this excruciating fashion. It was a suffocating display of Cixi's absolute control, all of it masked by a veneer of maternal affection. She spoke at length, her voice a pleasant murmur that filled the room, but she was not speaking to him. She was speaking at him, and for the benefit of Ci'an and the listening eunuchs. She discussed trivial court matters with the gravity of a general planning a campaign.
"The tribute silks from Suzhou this year are of a lesser quality," she mused, frowning delicately at a plate of steamed fish. "I believe the Imperial Household Department is growing lax. Li Lianying, make a note. The supervisor is to be… reminded of his duties."
"Yes, Your Highness," the eunuch murmured.
"And the plans for the renovation of the western gardens," she continued, turning to Ci'an. "I have reviewed the landscaper's proposal. Placing the Scholar's Rock near the Pavilion of Listening to Orioles is a clumsy choice. It disrupts the flow of qi. It should be moved closer to the water, to balance the element of earth with water."
Ying Zheng ate in silence, a storm of fury and disbelief raging within his mind. This was his court. This was the center of his new empire. And they were discussing the quality of silk and the placement of ornamental rocks. He had just learned from Weng Tonghe that the state was being actively plundered by foreign powers, that the military was in shambles, that the people were being poisoned by opium. The northern borders were porous, the treasury was being drained to pay off humiliating debts, and the so-called rulers of the Central Kingdom were preoccupied with gardening.
The cold, controlled rage from his morning lesson returned, magnified a hundredfold by this obscene display of decadent, self-absorbed impotence. These were not rulers. They were parasites, feasting on the decaying grandeur of a legacy they had not built and did not understand.
Then, Cixi said something that made the storm in his mind cease, replaced by a sudden, deadly stillness.
"The British minister was most insistent in his audience today," she said with a sigh, as if discussing a bothersome but necessary errand. "He complains that the new provincial governor in Guangzhou is making things difficult for their merchants, inspecting their cargo too thoroughly and levying the proper taxes with too much zeal. It is causing a disruption."
Ying Zheng's head snapped up.
Cixi continued, oblivious to the change in the boy's demeanor. "I have, of course, assured the minister that the governor will be sent a sharp reminder of his obligations under the Treaty of Nanking. Our officials must be firm with our own people, but they must learn to be flexible with our… friends from afar. Harmony, above all else, is paramount."
Friends?
The word detonated in Ying Zheng's consciousness with the force of a siege engine. Friends? She called these parasites, these invaders who had defeated her armies, burned her capital's summer palace, and humiliated her nation, friends? She was going to punish her own governor—a man who, by the sound of it, was actually trying to do his duty—in order to appease a foreign barbarian?
This was not incompetence. This was not weakness. This was active, knowing treason. This was surrender, gift-wrapped in the language of diplomacy. The will that had unified China, the will that had built the Great Wall, the will that would have had Cixi and her British "friend" flayed alive for even suggesting such a thing, surged through the small boy's body like a bolt of lightning.
He was gripping his solid silver chopsticks so tightly that his small knuckles were bone-white. The humiliation of his position, the rage at the state of his empire, and the sheer blasphemy of her words coalesced into a single point of incandescent fury.
And then he felt it again.
It was not a thought, but a physical sensation. A strange, intense heat, blooming in the palm of his hand. It was an internal fire, a furnace igniting within his own flesh. It poured from his hand directly into the dense, conductive silver of the chopsticks. In the space of a heartbeat, they became unnaturally hot, then searingly hot, far beyond the temperature of any food on the table.
A sharp gasp, half of pain and half of pure shock, escaped his lips. The searing metal burned his fingers. His hand spasmed open instinctively, and he dropped the chopsticks. They clattered loudly against the fine porcelain plate, the sound sharp and shocking in the otherwise quiet room.
"Oh, dear!" Ci'an exclaimed, her gentle face full of concern. "Are you alright, Your Majesty? Did you burn yourself on the soup?"
Cixi, however, did not look concerned. She frowned, a deep line of annoyance creasing her perfectly powdered forehead. "Clumsy boy," she chided, her sweet tone gone, replaced by a sharp edge of impatience. "One must have grace. Li Lianying, get the Emperor a new set. Be careful, Zaitian. You must not be so hasty. It is unbecoming."
She had completely misinterpreted the event, dismissing it as childish clumsiness. Li Lianying moved with his usual silent smoothness. He bowed, picking up a fresh pair of chopsticks from a nearby sideboard. As he placed them by Ying Zheng's bowl, his other hand reached down to clear away the dropped set. His long, pale fingers brushed against the chopsticks Ying Zheng had held.
The eunuch's movements, for a fraction of a second, froze. His eyes widened almost imperceptibly as his skin made contact with the silver. He felt the unnatural, intense residual heat—far, far hotter than any soup could have possibly made them. It was the heat of a blacksmith's forge, not a kitchen. He gave the Emperor a quick, sharp, deeply inquisitive look, his eyes boring into the boy's for a split second, before his face became an inscrutable mask of perfect servility once more. He cleared the chopsticks away without another word.
But the look had been exchanged. He knew.
Ying Zheng stared at his own hand. The pads of his small fingers were angry and red. He had felt the heat. It had come from him. The smoldering scroll in the study had not been a coincidence. The two events were linked, both born of his rage. Something was wrong. Or something was profoundly, terrifyingly new.
He looked down at his small, childish hand, and for the first time since this nightmare began, a sliver of something other than pure rage entered his heart. It was a terrifying, exhilarating, and deeply dangerous curiosity. He had been given a new body, a new life, a new, broken empire to fix. And it seemed, he had also been given a new weapon.