Deep beneath the sprawling palace complex, in a section of the foundations that had not been used since the Ming Dynasty, was a series of small, stone-lined cellars. They were originally designed for storing ice cut from the lakes in winter, and as such, they were cold, silent, and completely soundproof. It was the perfect, untraceable location for an interrogation.
The captured assassin, Ying, was bound securely to a heavy wooden chair in the center of one of these cellars. The only light came from a single, sputtering tallow candle that cast huge, monstrous shadows on the damp stone walls. She was unafraid. Her entire life, from the moment she had been plucked from a starving orphan's existence, had been a brutal education in pain and loyalty. She had been trained to resist torture, to embrace death before betrayal. She stared with cold contempt at the hulking figure of Meng Tian, who stood impassively in the corner. She expected him to begin the crude, physical work soon—the breaking of fingers, the pulling of nails. She was prepared for it.
"Do what you will, you brutish guard," she sneered, her voice echoing slightly in the small space. "You will get nothing from me. My life and my silence belong to Her Imperial Majesty, the mother who saved me."
The door to the cellar creaked open, and a new figure entered. It was not another guard, but the small boy Emperor, holding a single, steady candle, his presence an utterly bizarre and surreal intrusion into this grim scene. Ying stared, momentarily confused. Was the boy a prisoner too? Or was he brought here to witness the punishment, a cruel lesson for a disobedient child?
Ying Zheng calmly walked to the center of the room, his small silk slippers making no sound on the dusty floor. The light from his candle illuminated his face, and Ying was struck again by his eyes. They were not the eyes of a child. They were ancient, patient, and held a chilling depth of understanding. He dismissed his formidable general with a slight nod.
"Leave us, General," he commanded. Meng Tian bowed and retreated to the shadows by the door, his presence a silent, looming threat.
Ying Zheng pulled up a small stool and sat down directly in front of the bound assassin. He did not threaten her. He did not ask her about troop movements, secret plans, or palace conspiracies. He asked her a question that was so simple and so unexpected that it completely bypassed her years of conditioning.
"What was your name," he asked, his voice a quiet, gentle whisper, "before they called you Shadow?"
Ying's defiant sneer faltered. Her name. No one had asked her that in more than a decade. She couldn't even remember it herself. It was a ghost, a remnant of a life that had been systematically erased.
"I have no other name," she said, her voice hard.
"Of course you do," Ying Zheng continued, his tone still soft, almost sympathetic. "Everyone does. Do you remember the taste of the first warm bowl of rice they gave you at the school? After knowing only hunger? It must have tasted like Heaven itself. Do you remember what it felt like to have a warm bed after sleeping on cold, wet streets?"
His questions were not instruments of pain, but of memory. They were tiny, precise needles, designed not to break her body, but to pierce the thick, calcified armor of her indoctrination. He was forcing her to remember the child she had been before she was turned into a weapon, reminding her that her loyalty was not born of love, but bought with a bowl of soup.
She remained silent, her jaw clenched.
"Very well," Ying Zheng said with a sigh. He stood and walked to the door. "Lotus, you may enter."
Lotus stepped into the room, his face pale in the flickering candlelight. He looked at Ying, the girl he had trained alongside, the girl who had always been stronger, faster, more ruthless than him. He was terrified of her, but his terror of the Emperor was greater.
"Ying…" he began, his voice trembling.
"Traitor," she spat, her eyes filled with venom. "You have betrayed our mother. You deserve the death of a thousand cuts."
"He is not what you think he is," Lotus pleaded, gesturing towards the small Emperor. "He is not just a boy."
Ying Zheng gave Lotus a slight nod. "Tell her," he commanded. "Tell her what you felt when you held the bowl by the koi pond. Tell her what you saw in my eyes."
Lotus took a shaky breath, his own memory of the event still vivid and terrifying. "He… he made it vibrate, Ying. The porcelain bowl. It hummed in my hand like a living thing. The power… it came from him." He looked from Ying to the Emperor. "And his eyes… when you truly look at them… he is not a child. He is something… other. Something ancient." He took a step closer to her. "The Empress Dowager, she gave us food and a roof, yes. But she made us into weapons of fear and death. She owns us. He… he offers a purpose. He is not just a ruler; he is the Mandate itself. I felt it. It is a power beyond anything we were ever taught to fear."
Ying stared at Lotus, at the genuine, soul-deep conviction in his eyes. Her mind, so rigorously trained in logic and deception, struggled to process what she was hearing. It was madness. But Lotus was not lying. He was a convert, speaking with the terrifying sincerity of one who has witnessed a true miracle.
Her defiant certainty began to crack. Her training had prepared her for physical pain, for psychological tricks, for threats against her life. It had not prepared her for this. It had not prepared her for a gentle, philosophical interrogation by a four-year-old child. It had not prepared her for a fellow assassin's testimony of a supernatural event. And it had not prepared her for the silent, hulking guard in the corner, a man whose impossible strength she had experienced firsthand.
Ying Zheng saw the crack in her conditioning, the flicker of doubt in her eyes. He stepped forward again, his voice calm and final.
"The woman you call mother sent you here to die for her," he said. "She considers you a tool, a blade to be used and discarded. If you had succeeded in killing my general, she would have praised you. If you had failed and been caught, she would have denied your very existence." He leaned in, his ancient eyes seeming to pierce her very soul. "I am offering you a different choice. Remain a disposable blade for a mortal woman whose power is already beginning to crumble. Or become a valued soldier in the service of a cause that will remake this empire." He paused, letting the choice hang in the suffocating silence of the cellar. "Serve a leash, or serve a destiny. Choose."