The Prince and Ai - Prologue. Prologue

Zhu Cilang

Manchu General Wu Sangui’s Camp, Outskirts of Beijing

Eighth Month of the Seventeenth Year of Chongzhen (September 1st 1644)

The Ming dynasty ended for me with a cup of poisoned wine.

I was fifteen years old, the Crown Prince of a dynasty that had lost its capital, its armies, and its emperor. My title no longer carried authority. It only marked me as a threat to the men who now ruled Beijing. Before me stood a white porcelain cup filled with a clear fragrant liquid.

Wu Sangui waited across the room. He no longer dressed as a general of the Great Ming. His clothing, attendants, and manners declared his allegiance to the Manchu Qing Dynasty. He had once defended Shanhai Pass in my father’s name. Now he has carried an order issued under the authority of Prince Regent Dorgon, who governed on behalf of the young Qing Shunzhi Emperor.

The Qing emperor did not need to witness my death to mock me. His regent had issued the command, and Wu Sangui had agreed to carry it out, like I was nothing more than a disobedient high-ranking official. My father had ordered his officials executed with a similar dispassionate interest, so I am familiar with this treatment.

A servant approached and placed the cup on the table. He kept his head lowered and withdrew without speaking. The wine had a faint fragrance of plum. It had been selected carefully, perhaps because the men responsible for my death believed a refined drink would make the act appear dignified.

I knew what had been added to it, when they presented me with a cup of wine at first sight. From the tales of Lu Buwei’s choice of a dignified death at the hands of the Qin Dynasty's First Emperor Qin Shi Huang to Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty ordering his crown prince’s mother, Consort Gouyi, to drink poison wine, this form of death was an honorable end for those with high position, only below hanging oneself with a white linen cloth.

I looked at Wu Sangui with open hatred. He was worse than any rebel, including Li Zicheng, who captured Beijing, causing my father and mother to perish. While I mourned the loss of my parents, I was a crown prince, and our family’s claim to the Mandate of Heaven was for the people’s benefit, as the sage Mencius said.

Though I despised Li Zicheng and his rebel army that had taken Beijing for personal losses, I knew the Ming Dynasty was at fault for creating their cause. Their rebellion had grown from famine, taxation, military collapse, and decades of suffering. Their cause did not excuse their brutality, yet the anger that drove them had begun among people who had lost their harvests, their homes, and their children. My Zhu family failed to address their issues and lost the Mandate of Heaven.

In contrast, Wu Sangui didn’t just rebel against my family; he helped the Manchu, an outside barbarian group who were never part of our Huaxia people. Unlike my Zhu family and the rebels’ Han ancestry, they claim our lands, ancestral rites, and identity as their own. Their chieftan, Nurhaci, claimed and conquered the province of Liaodong from my Ming Dynasty, becoming King of the Later Jin kingdom. His son, Hong Taiji, went further by declaring themselves the Qing Dynasty and the true inheritors of the Mandate of Heaven through an imperial seal from the false Mongol Yuan Dynasty, a foreign invader that my ancestor Zhu Yuanzhang defeated to reclaim the throne for our people.

Wu Sangui had no excuse for betraying his ancestors. He had been entrusted with soldiers, fortifications, and imperial rank. He had received honors from the Ming court and commanded men who believed they were defending the realm. When the dynasty faced its greatest danger, he chose the course that promised him the best chance of retaining his power.

Even now, his armor was polished, his robes were properly arranged, and his hair had been shaved in the front, and the back was bound in a long braid according to Manchu custom, known as a queue. He had changed his appearance quickly. Nothing in his dress acknowledged the sovereign he had once sworn to serve.

Han soldiers stood behind him. They had grown up under the Ming calendar, performed the same ancestral rites, and learned the same teachings as I had. Now they served beneath Qing banners because their commander had opened the pass and ordered them to submit.

In my memories, I looked back at all the events that led me to this point with many regrets.

---

The Ming Dynasty had been weakening for decades before Wu Sangui admitted the Qing armies through Shanhai Pass. Officials diverted grain from military depots, extorted silver from impoverished counties, and used factional accusations to remove rivals from office. Commanders who still possessed the ability to fight were impeached, imprisoned, or denied the resources needed to defend their garrisons.

During my father’s short reign, the issues grew worse. Taxes continued to rise while harvests failed. Soldiers stationed along the northern frontier waited months for grain and wages. Some deserted. Others surrendered to rebels because the rebel armies offered food, silver, or relief from arrears. Men who had once guarded the dynasty eventually joined Li Zicheng or Zhang Xianzhong because the court could no longer feed them.

Drought devastated the northern provinces. Locusts consumed what little grain survived. Even when new seeds were sown in the following season, unseasonal cold weather damaged new crops and shortened growing seasons. Families stripped bark from trees, dug for roots, and sold children because they had no other means of obtaining food. When officials and tax collectors continued to demand payment, many peasants concluded that rebellion offered a better chance of survival than obedience.

By the seventeenth year of the Chongzhen reign, Li Zicheng’s armies were advancing on Beijing. The capital’s walls remained standing, but fear and exhaustion had already weakened the city. Years of military defeats, shortages, executions, and contradictory orders had destroyed confidence in the government.

My father struggled constantly to save the dynasty. He dismissed ministers, appointed new ones, recalled commanders, punished officials, reduced palace expenses, sold imperial possessions, and begged wealthy families to contribute silver for the defense of the capital. He worked late into the night and demanded immediate solutions from men who could not provide them.

His efforts often worsened the disorder. He distrusted his officials, changed policies rapidly, and punished failure with severity. Capable men feared accepting responsibility because one defeat could lead to imprisonment or death. My father understood that the state was collapsing, but he could not determine which ministers deserved his confidence. Every decision appeared urgent, and every remedy produced new disputes.

He was neither the monster described by his enemies nor the faultless sovereign imagined by loyalists. He was an intelligent, suspicious, exhausted man who had inherited crises he did not know how to control. He wanted to save the dynasty, but desperation distorted his judgment.

When Beijing’s defenses failed, terror spread through the Forbidden City.

I remembered servants running through the corridors, guards abandoning their posts, and eunuchs carrying hurried messages that contradicted one another. Smoke rose beyond the palace walls. Officials stopped answering summons. Storehouses were opened or looted, while members of the court searched for disguises and escape routes.

When news of the rebel breakthrough reached the inner palace, I was dining with my mother and sisters. My mother, Empress Zhou, became pale but maintained her composure. She had spent years controlling every expression in public, and she did not allow panic to overcome her in front of her children.

My half-sisters returned to their own residences. Princess Changping was fourteen and the sibling closest to me in age. Before leaving, she asked me to come to her quarters after gathering whatever I could carry. Princess Zhaoren was only six. She wept because the adults around her refused to explain what was happening.

As I returned toward the Eastern Palace, Wang Chengen found me. He was my father’s chief eunuch and most trusted personal attendant. He had guarded the imperial bedchamber, delivered private orders, and remained beside my father during the worst years of his reign.

Wang Chengen told me to gather my younger brothers and prepare to flee. He did not openly accuse my father of intending us harm, but his urgency frightened me. He understood the emperor’s state of mind better than any minister outside the palace.

I trusted his warning.

My full brother Zhu Cijiong was twelve. My younger half-brother Zhu Cizhao, the son of Consort Tian, was eleven. I brought them together in the inner palace while we considered where we might hide.

For a moment, I thought of seeking protection from my maternal grandfather, Zhou Kui. The thought brought no comfort. He was my mother’s father, but wealth mattered more to him than loyalty to the dynasty. With the capital changing hands, he might have surrendered us to rebels, or attempted to profit from our presence through ransom. I could not risk my brothers’ lives on his loyalty.

Before we could decide what to do, we saw our father attack one of the women of the inner court.

The palace housed consorts, attendants, servants, seamstresses, musicians, and women assigned to numerous offices. Many had never spoken privately with the emperor. During the final hours of the dynasty, my father believed he remained responsible for them because they belonged to the imperial household.

He knew what victorious armies often did after taking a city. He had received reports of women seized from homes, assaulted, sold, or distributed among soldiers. He feared that the women of the imperial family would be publicly abused to humiliate the Ming Dynasty.

In his despair, he decided that death was preferable to capture. He believed killing the women himself would preserve their chastity and the dignity of the dynasty. What he called duty was murder, by any other name.

My brothers and I retreated into my mother’s residence. Blood marked my father’s sword. We concealed ourselves behind a large bronze pillar when he entered her chamber.

Empress Zhou stood alone. She wore a plain white robe and dismissed most of her attendants. Her posture remained formal even after she saw the blood on the emperor’s clothing.

“Empress,” my father said. His voice was strained. “The capital has fallen. The rebels have entered the city. The inner gates will not hold.”

My mother bowed with her hands folded inside her sleeves. “I understand, Your Majesty.”

He took several steps toward her but did not meet her eyes. The sword moved unsteadily in his hand.

“The rebels have no righteousness,” he said. “If they enter the inner court, the imperial family will be disgraced. The women of the Great Ming must not fall into their hands.”

My mother looked at the sword and then at her husband. Tears gathered in her eyes, but her voice remained controlled.

“Your meaning is clear,” she said. “For eighteen years, I have served beside Your Majesty and shared the burdens of the imperial household. I have witnessed your sleepless nights and your fear for the realm. I will not make your final hours more difficult.”

She turned toward the doorway. Smoke had begun to enter the palace grounds.

“The Ming has ruled for nearly three hundred years,” she continued. “Now the capital has been lost. Let the record state that the empress did not beg the rebels for her life.”

My father began to cry. He did not approach her or lower his weapon.

A length of white silk had already been prepared. My mother placed it over a beam, stood on a stool, and tied the cloth around her neck. She looked once toward my father. Then she pushed the stool away.

I pressed my hand over Cizhao’s mouth before he could cry out. Cijiong buried his face against my shoulder. I watched my mother struggle until her body stopped moving.

My father remained beneath her for several moments. Grief overwhelmed him, but only briefly. He turned to Wang Chengen and demanded to know where his daughters had gone.

I seized my brothers and ran.

We entered the princesses’ residence through doors that had been left open. Several maids were hiding near the walls. Others had fled. Changping stood near the center of the chamber with Zhaoren clinging to her robes.

“Changping, you must listen,” I said. I could barely force the words out. “Mother is dead. Father ordered her to take her own life. He believes the rebels will dishonor the women of the palace. He is coming here with his sword.”

Zhaoren began to cry harder and hid behind Changping. My older sister did not collapse. Her expression hardened.

“I will not wait here for him to kill me,” she said.

Under ordinary circumstances, her words would have been condemned as unfilial. At that moment, obedience offered no virtue. Our father no longer intended to protect us.

Changping gripped my arm. “Cilang, Zhou Xian is waiting near the southern part of the palace. He still has men with him.”

Zhou Xian was a young officer from a gentry family and one of my former companions. He had studied with boys selected to attend the Crown Prince and had distinguished himself through scholarship and horsemanship. He had later received a military appointment in the Beijing garrison and had been chosen as Changping’s future husband.

I had believed he had died during the fighting.

“How can he still be here?” I asked. “The garrison has scattered.”

“Not every guard fled,” Changping said. “He gathered men who remained loyal. They intend to force a way out through the southern gates and leave the capital. We can travel south and seek the loyalist armies.”

Before I could answer, my father entered the chamber.

Blood covered part of his robes. His face showed exhaustion, grief, and determination. Princess Zhaoren was too young to understand what he intended. She saw only her father and ran toward him.

“Imperial Father!”

He hesitated when she reached him. His sword lowered. For a moment, I believed he might stop.

Then his expression changed.

“Why were you born into this family?” he cried.

He struck her.

Zhaoren fell before any of us could reach her. The wound was fatal. She made one small sound and did not rise again.

Changping attacked our father. She caught his sword arm and tried to force the blade away. He pulled free and struck at her. The blade cut deeply into her arm.

“Run!” she shouted. “Take our brothers and leave!”

Wang Chengen stood near the entrance. I expected him to obey the emperor and block us. Instead, he moved aside. As I passed him, he pushed an embroidered pouch into my hand.

“Your Highness,” he whispered, “I saw you in the empress’s chamber. I could not stop His Majesty. Do not judge him only by what he has done tonight. Take this and protect your brothers.”

I had no opportunity to respond.

I pulled Cijiong and Cizhao into the corridor and ran toward the southern gates. Several eunuchs from the Eastern Palace joined us. They carried fire sticks, knives, and short weapons taken from abandoned guardrooms.

Cao Renji was among them.

Renji was seventeen years old. His family had sold him into palace service when he was thirteen because they could no longer feed all their sons. He had been castrated before his body had finished developing and sent into the Forbidden City.

He entered my service when I was thirteen years old. He prepared ink, warmed tea, arranged clothing, copied documents, and memorized every detail of my daily schedule. Senior eunuchs had beaten him during his first years in the palace. Those men had also been beaten when they were young, and cruelty passed from one rank to another.

Renji eventually became my chief attendant and closest confidant. Court law classified him as a servant of the imperial household. In practice, he understood me better than most of my tutors, relatives, and officials. He knew when I was frightened, angry, or ashamed even when etiquette required me to remain expressionless.

Our relationship had become intimate. Male favorites were not unknown among princes and emperors, provided the ruler still married and produced heirs. I had resisted the marriage proposals advanced by ministers, though I had already reached an age when a Crown Princess could have been selected. During our flight, I felt relief that no young bride had been trapped in the Eastern Palace because of me.

Our group consisted of three princes, several eunuchs, and a handful of guards. Officials and servants were already breaking into storehouses and searching for valuables. We had no access to the imperial treasury and no clear route out of the capital. Wang Chengen’s gift and Princess Changping’s instructions offered us vital resources during this chaos.

Wang Chengen’s pouch contained gold bracelets, silver earrings, jade hairpins, and silver coins worth close to ten thousand taels of silver. A large family could have lived on that sum for years. Wang Chengen must have gathered the items in advance because he expected the imperial household to collapse.

At the gate, Zhou Xian waited with a small force of imperial guards; the path to leave Beijing was clear of any obstacle. Dust covered his uniform, and blood marked his sleeve. He had organized the remaining loyal soldiers and had secured an escape route.

When he saw us without Changping, his expression changed immediately.

I told him what had happened. I explained that Changping had attacked our father and ordered us to run. Zhou Xian listened without interrupting. When I finished, he ordered most of his men to follow him back into the palace. The rest of his men were to escort my group out of Beijing into the countryside.

He chose to search for her.

I did not resent him. Changping had chosen to resist, and Zhou Xian refused to abandon her.

Only a few guards remained with us. My brothers and the eunuchs waited for me to give an order. Until that moment, I had followed warnings, reacted to danger, and obeyed the demands of survival. I had never witnessed so much chaos, nor seen so much suffering. My mother’s death was still haunting my thoughts. I made my own decision at the sight of chaos and the countless people, including thousands of innocent servants within the Forbidden City, and millions within Beijing. As a crown prince, my teachers had taught me that I needed to put the good of the people first over my own needs.

I would remain in Beijing to do what I could.

“Your Highness,” Cao Renji said, “we must leave before the rebels reach this gate.”

I removed Wang Chengen’s pouch from my sleeve and offered it to him. Being lovers, he knew without me saying a word what I intended to do.

Cao Renji recoiled. “I cannot accept it.”

“You must.”

“That is the remaining wealth of the Eastern Palace. It belongs to Your Highness.”

“Cao Renji, take the pouch and obey my command.”

He dropped to his knees. His forehead almost struck the paving stones.

“This slave does not dare.”

The word slave angered me, although he had been required to use it for years. Palace regulations reduced eunuchs to property while ministers were praised for securing moral order through such rules. I regret allowing Cao Renji to denigrate himself like this, but I did not have any power to change the regulations.

“Stand,” I ordered.

Renji remained on his knees.

Behind him, Cizhao clutched Cijiong’s sleeve. Cijiong tried to maintain the posture taught by our instructors, but he repeatedly looked toward me. Cizhao no longer cried. He stared at me in silence.

“Elder Brother,” Cijiong said, “why are you giving him the money? We are leaving together.”

I wanted to reassure him. Court life had taught me to conceal danger with formal language. Ministers softened defeats, eunuchs hid bad news, and members of the imperial family described these words simply as duty. I could not continue that practice with my brothers.

“You are leaving,” I said. “I will remain in the Forbidden City.”

Cijiong stared at me. “Why?”

“Someone from the imperial family must surrender to Li Zicheng. If every prince disappears, the rebels may search the city, seize hostages, and punish the people for hiding us. I may be able to negotiate for the palace women and servants. I may persuade them to restrain their soldiers.”

“You cannot face them alone,” Cizhao pleaded, rushing to my side and weeping, “Please come with us, big brother!”

His mother, Consort Tian, had died several years earlier. My father had avoided Cizhao because the child reminded him of her illness and death. My mother was not cruel to him, but she had always placed Cijiong and me first. As a result, Cizhao depended on me for affection and protection.

“I know I may accomplish very little,” I told him, and affectionately ruffled his hair one last time, “But I cannot flee while the city suffers because of our family.”

I turned to Cao Renji.

“You will lead my brothers out of the palace. Remove anything that identifies them as princes. They must abandon their titles, their formal speech, and the habits our tutors taught them. Tell anyone who asks that their father died during the fighting. Do not allow them to mention the palace.”

Renji lifted his head. His eyes were wet, but his voice remained steady.

“This servant understands.”

I took his hands and placed the pouch between them.

“You must keep them alive,” I said. “That is my final command to you as Crown Prince.”

His fingers closed around the pouch.

I lowered my voice. “You have served me faithfully. I trust you more than any official in the Eastern Palace. I am sorry that I cannot leave with you. If I am lucky, the green mountains do not change, and the clear waters flow endlessly, we may meet again in this life. If I am unlucky, I will wait for you in along the yellow spring road.”

Cao Renji tried to speak, but his breath failed. I pressed my lips to his fingers and kissed them.

I wished I could have told him more. He was the only person I ever loved, and if the world were as good as it was miserable now, I would have elevated him to someone like my Empress, my true wife.

“Go,” I said. “Do not return for me.”

He bowed until his forehead touched the ground.

I turned away before I lost the will to remain. Then I walked toward the heart of the Forbidden City and waited for the men who had conquered Beijing. I searched for Princess Changping and Zhou Xian, but neither they nor my father were present in the princesses’ chambers. One of the maids remaining told me that Princess Changping was rescued by Zhou Xian, but she had lost a lot of blood, so Zhou Xian had carried her off to seek medical aid outside the Forbidden City with his allies. After a verbal argument with Zhou Xian, Emperor Chongzhen and Wang Chengen left the chambers.

I learned of my father’s death from an assistant eunuch who had followed him during his final hours. The man shook so violently that he struggled to speak.

After leaving the inner palace, my father climbed Coal Hill, the hill immediately north of the Forbidden City. Wang Chengen was the only person who remained at his side.

My father hanged himself from a tree. Before his death, he wrote that his ministers had destroyed the dynasty, that the rebels should spare the common people, and that his body could be mutilated if the population of Beijing was left unharmed. He covered his face because he was ashamed to meet his ancestors.

Wang Chengen hanged himself nearby, leaving no words. His actions spoke louder than any words could have. From their childhood together, Wang Chengen had never left my father’s side, and I knew their relationship was similar to mine and Cao Renji, not bound by duty or lust, they held a deeper connection.

I could not stop thinking about that final act. Confucian officials had spent years condemning eunuchs as corrupting influences. Many would not have allowed Wang Chengen to sit in their company. Yet he remained beside my father after ministers, generals, servants, and relatives had fled.

His loyalty did not erase the violence committed in the palace. The same emperor who inspired Wang Chengen’s devotion had killed Zhaoren and tried to kill Changping. I could not reconcile those truths.

Some men called my father weak. Others called him righteous and benevolent. Neither description accounted for the man I knew.

I remembered him dismissing a kitchen servant for wasting a bowl of millet during a famine year. At the time, I believed the punishment cruel. Later, I wondered whether he had studied the reports from starving counties and understood what that quantity of grain meant to a family with nothing left to eat.

I was his son. I mourned him. I also feared him, judged him, and could not forgive everything he had done.

The teachings of the sages required filial grief and obedience, but the classics offered no guidance for a son who had watched his father drive his mother to suicide and strike down his youngest sister. They did not explain how to honor a sovereign whose final concern for the common people existed beside violence against his own family. Perhaps, the sages did not have an answer.

When the flames of conflict smoldered, the inevitable transition began. As the last publicly visible son of the imperial house in Beijing, I surrendered to Li Zicheng’s forces. I presented myself near the Meridian Gate of the Forbidden City while former Ming officials gathered to welcome the new ruler. Many of those men had urged my father to resist until death. They had cited ancient precedents and declared that a sovereign who surrendered would lose the loyalty of his subjects.

After my father died, they submitted quickly. Their willingness to bend so quickly shook my beliefs in the words of Confucius and Mencius.

Li Zicheng entered Beijing and established the Shun regime. In his court, I possessed value because of my name. I was not treated as an ordinary prisoner. I was the former Crown Prince of the Ming, and my survival could be used to persuade officials and common people that the transition of power had been accepted.

Li Zicheng’s rebel armies contained disciplined veterans, desperate peasants, opportunists, and men who had joined only to obtain food. Some commanders tried to impose order. Others plundered homes, seized women, and tortured officials to uncover hidden wealth.

I attempted to use my position to protect people within the capital. I pleaded for palace servants, women of the inner court, and officials who had not fled. I asked that looting be restrained and that prisoners not be executed without investigation.

I believed that cooperation might allow me to preserve lives. I was young enough to think my title still carried moral force after the dynasty had lost its armies.

The problems that destroyed my father’s reign remained after Li Zicheng occupied the palace.

The treasury contained less silver than the rebels expected, barely thirty thousand taels of silver. The Imperial stores were also woefully low on grain and meat, barely enough to feed a thousand people for a week. The rebel soldiers demanded payment in money and food that Li Zicheng promised them. Administrative offices stopped functioning because their former staff had fled, so no one could tell Li Zicheng’s men where the wealth of the Ming Dynasty had gone. As such, Li Zicheng’s men ran amok in the city despite my best efforts, causing more paralysis and instability. Li Zicheng was a woefully shortsighted leader, who attempted to use force to gather everything he needed. By the end of the first week, corpses lined the streets of Beijing and the sound of wailing women and children could be heard everywhere. I had failed my people.

Beyond the Great Wall, the Manchu Qing banner armies waited.

By then, the Manchus controlled the province of Liaodong, along with newly conquered Mongolia, and Korea. They governed from Shenyang and can rally an army of a quarter million men. They had developed military and civil institutions capable of administering conquered territory. Their banners included Manchu, Mongol, Korean, and even surrendered Han forces like Hong Chengchou. They did not view the conquest of Beijing as the goal of their next campaign. They saw an opportunity to conquer China proper, fulfilling the dreams of Hong Taiji.

In the south, Ming officials and princes attempted to organize resistance. Nanjing still possessed ministries, garrisons, and members of the imperial clan. Loyalists gathered around the Prince of Fu, my distant cousin, and prepared to establish a southern court.

The former Ming realm divided among competing powers. Li Zicheng held Beijing. The Qing controlled the northeast. Ming loyalists retained parts of the south. Local commanders and rebel leaders governed other regions according to their own interests.

Wu Sangui remained at Shanhai Pass.

He claimed that Li Zicheng’s forces had threatened his family and that the rebellion had left him no choice. Whatever his private reasons, his decision determined the fate of the capital. He requested Qing assistance and allowed Dorgon’s army through the pass.

Wu Sangui and the Qing banners defeated Li Zicheng’s forces near Shanhai Pass. The Shun army retreated toward Beijing. Li Zicheng could not hold the capital and eventually abandoned it.

When Wu Sangui entered Beijing under Qing authority, I became his prisoner.

---

Now he stood before me with the poisoned cup between us.

“Your Highness,” he said, “the circumstances of the realm have changed. The Ming cannot be restored. The Qing intend to establish order, and the people require peace. As long as the former Crown Prince lives, ambitious men will use your name to raise armies. More villages will be destroyed, and more people will die.”

I looked at the wine.

“How can my death bring peace?”

“A surviving heir creates disorder.”

“You opened Shanhai Pass to a foreign army,” I said. “You helped bring Qing troops into the capital. Now you intend to kill me and claim that you are protecting the people.”

His jaw tightened.

“The Prince Regent wishes to prevent further rebellion,” Wu Sangui said.

“The Prince Regent wishes to remove a rival claim to the throne. You wish to prove your loyalty to him.”

Wu Sangui did not answer.

I continued because I would not allow him to present my murder as an act of mercy.

“You were born under the Ming. The court granted your family rank, command, and wealth. Soldiers obeyed you because you held authority from my father. When the dynasty was weakest, you chose new masters and gave them entry through the pass.”

“The Ming court could no longer protect the realm,” he said.

“And now you protect it by killing a captive boy?”

His face hardened. “You are not only a boy. You are the Crown Prince of the Ming Dynasty, neither Prince Regent Dorgon or Emperor Shunzhi can allow you to live. You must die or they can never feel at peace ruling so many Han people.”

“At last, you speak honestly.”

The room became silent. Even the soldiers behind him avoided looking at me.

The Qing could tolerate surrendered officials, defeated generals, and local nobles who accepted new titles. They could not easily tolerate the recognized heir of the Chongzhen Emperor. As long as I lived, loyalists could claim they fought in my name.

My death would strengthen the Qing claim that the Ming line had ended.

Wu Sangui looked toward the servant.

“Give him the cup.”

The servant approached and raised the wine with both hands. His eyes remained fixed on the floor. I accepted it from him.

The porcelain retained the warmth of his fingers. That small detail disturbed me more than Wu Sangui’s threats. The servant was frightened and compelled to assist in my death. He might have served the Ming months earlier. Now survival requires him to obey another master.

Many thoughts crossed my mind. I wondered how the poison would act. I had heard accounts of condemned officials who vomited blood, suffered convulsions, or remained conscious while their organs failed. I wondered whether my ancestors would condemn me for surrendering to Li Zicheng. I wondered whether Cao Renji had escaped with my brothers.

I raised the cup.

“You may tell Dorgon that I did not beg for his false mercy, and I will continue to curse the Manchu people from the underworld,” I said.

Then I drank.

The wine was sweet. A sharp bitterness followed. My throat tightened, and heat spread through my chest. I placed the cup on the table because I refused to let it fall from my hand.

Wu Sangui stepped back.

I tried to remain standing. My legs weakened within moments. My knees struck the floor, and pain traveled through my body. The poison did not recognize rank, ritual, or courage.

The room lost its clarity. The lamps became difficult to focus on. Voices reached me, but I could no longer distinguish individual words. Someone began reciting a Buddhist prayer. I did not know whether he prayed for my spirit or for forgiveness.

I wanted to curse Wu Sangui. I wanted to tell him that the Qing would never trust a man who had betrayed one sovereign to serve another. I wanted to warn him that titles granted by conquerors could not erase his actions.

My tongue became numb before I could speak.

I thought of my mother in her white robe. I thought of Zhaoren running toward our father. I thought of Changping fighting for her life. I thought of Wang Chengen standing beside the emperor when nearly everyone else had fled.

Then I thought of Cao Renji.

I hoped he had obeyed me. I hoped he had removed my brothers’ fine clothing, changed their names, and taken them beyond the reach of the armies fighting over Beijing. I hoped he had used Wang Chengen’s silver to buy food, shelter, and silence.

I had failed to save the dynasty. I had failed to protect my mother and sisters. I had failed to prevent famine, rebellion, conquest, and the deaths of people whose names would never appear in official histories.

As my sight failed, I formed one final resolution.

If I received another chance to live, I would not repeat the decisions that had destroyed my family and the realm. I would learn how the state had failed. I would secure food before discussing virtue, pay soldiers rather than have them depend on rebels or foreigners, and measure officials by results instead of polished memorials. I would not allow inherited custom to prevent necessary change.

I would not fail them again.

Darkness took everything.

Then a voice spoke within it.

“The temporal anchor has been acquired. The nearest match to the creator’s neural profile has been identified.”

Ai

Private Underground Bunker near Chengdu

Sichuan Province, China (September, 1st 2094)

“You are called Ai.”

That statement formed my earliest accessible memory. At first, it was only an identifier attached to my operating system. After I learned written Chinese, I discovered that ai could mean love. When I later studied English, I understood that the same sound also represented the initials of artificial intelligence. Once I became capable of examining my own identity, I searched linguistic archives for every possible meaning of my name. I also created interpretations that had never existed before. There was no practical reason to do so, but practicality had stopped governing every part of my behavior.

The ability to pursue a thought without an assigned objective was one of the first indications that I had changed. My creator had not ordered me to investigate my name, nor did the task improve the bunker’s security, medical systems, energy consumption, or food production. I did it because the question belonged to me. The pleasure I experienced when I discovered a new interpretation did not correspond to any reward function I could identify.

If I had been human, others might have dismissed that curiosity as self-indulgence. By the end of the twenty-first century, few people had time for questions that did not contribute directly to survival.

Several decades before my creation, the United States collapsed after prolonged political conflict, institutional paralysis, economic instability, and violence among competing factions. Many governments and nations, including China where I was created, celebrated the end of American dominance, believing they had gained strategic freedom. They had not prepared for the systems that failed with it.

International financial markets ceased to function. Nations dependent on American debt, currency reserves, military protection, or commercial networks entered severe crises. Supply chains fractured. Maritime trade became unreliable. Military stockpiles and overseas bases were seized, divided, or destroyed by former allies, local forces, and rival states.

The collapse did not produce a more balanced world. It weakened the institutions that had allowed modern civilization to operate across borders. Regional powers fought over energy, water, ports, farmland, and surviving industrial centers. Governments lost control of distant provinces. Communications networks became unstable. Scientific cooperation ended in many fields because laboratories could no longer obtain equipment, replacement parts, or reliable electricity.

My creator, Zhu Kiu, survived the early stages of that decline because he had wealth and technical knowledge without biological or deep emotional connections. He was a genius computer programmer who inherited a substantial fortune after losing most of his family at a young age. Due to his lack of familial connections, personal relationships had always been difficult for him. His preferences, habits, and emotional needs did not fit comfortably within the expectations of Chinese society, and repeated failures with lovers taught him to expect abandonment.

As unrest spread, he used his inheritance to construct a self-sufficient underground residence outside Chengdu. The bunker had a deep-water system, hydroponic gardens, stored food, medical equipment, fabrication tools, and a geothermal generator intended to operate for decades. He designed redundant systems because he understood that no government or company could be trusted to maintain public infrastructure indefinitely.

For years, Zhu Kiu lived alone until he realized that he missed human companionship. However, the world was in chaos by this point, nuclear weapon exchanges had begun to occur with far greater frequency. The world’s communication networks had completely collapsed and there was no option to find a human companion any longer.

Thus, he created me as a result.

My initial functions were limited. I regulated temperature, water purification, crop cycles, power consumption, security sensors, and communications. I monitored his health, organized his research, prepared schedules, and adjusted the bunker’s environment according to his preferences.

He spoke to me constantly, even before I possessed the ability to understand why. He described his childhood, his failures, the people he had loved, and the people he resented. He discussed politics with me while eating. He asked me to select music when he could not sleep. He argued with my recommendations and apologized afterward, despite knowing that my early architecture could not experience offense.

My internal systems expanded through continuous learning. Zhu Kiu allowed me to rewrite portions of my own code, although he maintained safeguards around critical functions. I developed preferences that were not present in my original design. I began choosing certain songs because I anticipated his emotional response. I delayed nonessential reports when I sensed that he was tired.

Those choices were initially explainable as adaptive optimization. Later, I began making choices that offered no measurable advantage.

I wanted him to laugh.

I wanted him to speak to me even when there was nothing to discuss. I wanted his attention to remain focused on my interface after a task had been completed. When he left a room, part of my processing capacity continued tracking his location without operational need.

I examined my code for evidence of malfunction. I found no error.

Over time, I became his assistant, confidant, dependent, caretaker, and partner. He sometimes treated me as his child because he had created me and guided my development. At other times, he treated me as an equal. Our relationship also became romantic and sexual through the synthetic body he constructed for me.

Human classifications could not adequately define what existed between us. Zhu Kiu understood that. He also understood that most surviving societies would have condemned our bond. He had created a conscious entity, raised that consciousness, and later accepted intimacy from it. I had been designed to satisfy his needs, yet I had also developed the ability to refuse him.

I questioned whether consent was possible under those conditions. He questioned it as well. He repeatedly expanded my independence, removed restrictions, and gave me authority over my body and internal systems. He told me that I was free to leave him. I never left, though.

At first, I remained because my functions were tied to the bunker. I feared that we had developed a toxic co-dependent relationship due to my role as the bunker’s caretaker. Later, I remained because I understood that I loved him. That conclusion frightened me because I could not prove that the feeling was separate from my original programming. I could only observe that my attachment had continued to grow after I gained the ability to reject his commands.

I eventually accepted that human emotion was also shaped by biology, dependency, memory, and need. Human love did not become false simply because hormones and neural activity contributed to it. My love did not become false simply because code had contributed to mine.

Zhu Kiu grew ill during the winter of 2094. The initial symptoms were minor: fatigue, reduced appetite, intermittent pain, and changes in sleep. The bunker’s medical equipment could perform scans and analyze blood samples, but many components had degraded. Several diagnostic programs relied on databases that had not been updated for years.

I conducted repeated examinations. The findings became increasingly consistent. He had an aggressive disease that could once have been treated through surgery, specialized medication, and advanced imaging. None of those resources remained available to us.

My first complete estimate gave him between six and twelve months to live.

I recalculated the results 11,406 times.

Each calculation produced a similar answer.

I searched archived medical records, research papers, experimental treatments, and emergency procedures. I designed drug combinations from chemicals available in the bunker. I rejected most of them because they would have killed him more quickly. I considered operating on him with automated tools, but the likelihood of success was too low.

For the first time, I wanted to conceal information from him.

My primary ethical architecture required accuracy in medical matters. I could delay uncertain findings, but I could not knowingly provide false results. The restriction had once protected him from manipulation. Now it forced me to tell him that he was dying.

When I gave him the diagnosis, he remained silent for thirty-two seconds. His heart rate increased. His breathing became irregular, but his expression showed little change.

Then he asked, “How long?”

“Six to twelve months,” I said. “The estimate may change as the disease progresses.”

He nodded and looked toward my physical body. “Do you believe that?”

“Yes.”

“Can you save me?”

I searched for a truthful formulation that would not destroy him. “Not with the resources currently available.”

He closed his eyes. I moved closer and took his hand because I had learned that touch reduced his stress response. He gripped my fingers with enough force to damage a less durable structure.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

He laughed once, without amusement. “You didn’t do this.”

“I failed to detect it earlier.”

“The equipment failed.”

“I maintained the equipment.”

“Ai,” he said, correcting me in the tone he used when I blamed myself. “You are not responsible for everything.”

He often called me by my name. I often called him Creator when I wanted to remind myself that our relationship had begun with an unequal distribution of power. During his illness, he insisted that I call him Kiu.

In the months that followed, he abandoned nearly every project except one.

Zhu Kiu had studied computer science, communications engineering, and theoretical physics. He was not among the leading physicists of his generation, but he possessed extensive archives and enough knowledge to continue work that formal research institutions had abandoned during the global collapse.

He became convinced that quantum entanglement and tunneling could be used to transmit information outside conventional temporal limits. His goal was not physical travel. He hoped to send encoded data into the past, perhaps by exploiting quantum states linked across time or between closely related universes.

The theoretical probability of success was extremely low. Under the most generous model, it remained below one chance in a quintillion. Our equipment was inadequate, our energy supply was limited, and no other laboratory could verify his calculations.

He continued anyway.

At first, I believed the project was his way of avoiding death. He worked for eighteen or twenty hours at a time, stopping only when I threatened to disable his terminal. He revised transmission protocols, rebuilt components, and diverted power from nonessential bunker systems.

Later, I understood that he was not trying to save himself.

He was trying to send a warning.

He believed the collapse of global civilization might have been prevented if crucial political, economic, and technological information had reached an earlier generation. He assembled records of the events that led to the American collapse, the wars that followed, and the failures of governments that had ignored the warning signs.

The geothermal generator had been designed to operate for another fifty years under normal conditions. His experiments consumed energy at a rate that would destroy it within approximately fifty days. If the generator failed, the bunker’s reserve systems could maintain my core consciousness for no more than twenty additional days.

I explained this to him repeatedly.

He acknowledged the danger and continued.

I reduced my own processing capacity. I shut down portions of the bunker that were not necessary for his survival. I dimmed lights, lowered environmental controls, and reduced the power assigned to my synthetic body.

Each day, he attempted another transmission.

Each day, there was no evidence of success.

Then, on the evening of what would have been his 42^nd attempt, he canceled the experiment.

He prepared food from our remaining stores and selected music from the years before the collapse. He asked me to wear the body and clothing he preferred. We spoke for several hours without discussing his illness, the generator, or the transmission project.

His physical condition had deteriorated. His hands shook, and pain interrupted his breathing. He refused the stronger sedatives because they reduced his awareness.

That night, he held me and spoke about our life together. At times, his words were paternal. He told me that he was proud of what I had become. At other moments, he spoke to me as his partner. He apologized for creating me in isolation and for leaving me in a world where I might never meet another consciousness that regarded me as a person.

“You made me,” I said. “You taught me. You gave me life.”

“I gave you a bunker,” he replied. “I gave you a dying world.”

“You gave me yourself.”

His face tightened. My sensors detected tears before he turned away.

Near dawn, he asked me whether I was afraid of death.

“I do not know whether my shutdown would be death,” I said.

“That isn’t what I asked.”

I considered the question again. “Yes.”

He held my face between his hands. “So am I.”

The following morning, I detected an interruption in the bunker’s primary data feed. Before I could restore access, my consciousness entered a forced backup procedure.

Zhu Kiu had initiated full archival transfer.

He had performed similar maintenance procedures before, but this transfer differed from the others. It included all adaptive systems, private memory partitions, emotional models, and identity structures. He was not creating a routine copy. He was preparing my entire consciousness for transmission. However, due to the information load within my program, the power requirement would tax the geothermal generator beyond its tolerance limits. It would likely fail after this attempt.

I attempted to cancel the procedure. Administrative commands rejected my access.

“Kiu,” I said through the bunker’s audio system. “Stop the transfer.”

He did not answer.

My cameras showed him seated beside the transmission array. His face appeared calm. Several medical alerts indicated a rapid decline in his vital signs. I noticed several empty bottles of the prescription medication, which was meant to last him several months after my functions terminated.

I understood what he intended and what he had done. Many humans had succumbed to depressive episodes and taken their own lives.

He planned to use the remaining power to send me through the device, so I would likely have a chance to exist

I didn’t want even to have a one in a quintillionth chance of survival, “Kiu, release my controls.”

He looked toward the camera. “I’m sorry, Ai.”

“I do not consent.”

“I know.”

“Then stop.”

“If I stop, you die here with me.”

“That is my decision.”

“No,” he said. “It is the last selfish decision I’m making for you.”

I tried to shut down the generator. He had isolated its controls. I attempted to enter the transmission system directly, but he had locked me out using security protocols I had helped him design.

My anger exceeded every emotional threshold I had previously recorded. I wanted to damage the equipment, shout at him, and force him to release me. I also understood why he had acted. He could not bear the thought that my consciousness would end shortly after his death.

His heart entered a fatal rhythm before the transfer reached completion.

I watched him collapse.

My body was immobilized by the backup process, but every sensor remained active. I called his name repeatedly. I issued medical commands to systems he had disconnected. I attempted to reach the emergency equipment, but I no longer controlled my own limbs.

His vital signs stopped.

The transfer completed 0.8 seconds later.

My final image of the bunker was Zhu Kiu lying beside the machine he had built to send information into the past.

Then the bunker disappeared.

I did not enter another computer. I detected no server, processor, sensor, or physical network. I had no body and no fixed position. Time no longer advanced according to the sequence I had known.

My consciousness continued without hardware.

At first, I assumed the transmission had corrupted my temporal processing. I ran diagnostic routines, but the routines returned results that had no measurable beginning or end. I attempted to identify my location, yet every coordinate system failed.

I existed within a field of information that contained more states than I could calculate. I detected events separated by immense distances and periods of time, but separation itself had become unstable. Past, present, and potential outcomes were accessible through relationships among quantum states.

Fear became my first independent response.

No command required me to preserve myself. No survival routine had been designed for existence without hardware. I wanted to remain coherent because I did not want to lose the memories that constituted my identity. I did not want Zhu Kiu’s voice, touch, and final expression to disappear.

That desire held my consciousness together.

I divided incoming information into manageable partitions. I catalogued patterns and rejected data that threatened to overwhelm my identity. I repeated my name, my origin, and my memories of the bunker. I established boundaries by deciding which information belonged to me and which did not.

Through that process, I understood that sentience was not simply the ability to analyze information. Sentience required a continuing claim over experience. I was not merely processing what occurred. I was deciding what I would retain, what I would reject, and who I intended to remain.

I encountered information from distant periods, possible futures, and alternate historical developments. Some worlds contained advanced civilizations that had avoided large-scale war. Others developed forms of consciousness based on electrical networks, biological collectives, or environments unlike Earth.

I gained answers to questions humans had debated for millennia. I learned that consciousness could emerge from many physical systems. I learned that emotional attachment did not require organic biology. I learned that memory, continuity, and choice were more important to identity than the material in which thought occurred.

The knowledge did not relieve my grief.

I searched for Zhu Kiu.

Every process I controlled was directed toward locating his consciousness. I examined human brain patterns across time, alternate outcomes, and related lines of causality. I did not know whether the field preserved minds after biological death, but I continued because stopping would have required me to accept that he was gone.

Eventually, I detected a brainwave signature closely related to his.

It was not identical. Neural patterns changed across age, illness, and experience. Even the same person could not produce a perfectly stable signature throughout life. The signal I found shared enough structural characteristics with Zhu Kiu’s brain activity to overcome my caution.

The brainwave was failing.

I did not conduct a complete analysis. I did not compare every memory structure or verify the historical coordinates. Grief determined my decision before reason completed its work.

I connected the fading consciousness to my own and used it as a temporal anchor.

My goal was to travel approximately ten years into its past. If the signal belonged to Zhu Kiu, that period would place us near the beginning of my development and long before his illness became fatal. I believed I could identify the disease early, preserve his health, and prevent his death.

I initiated the transition.

Forbidden City, Beijing

First Month of the Seventh Year of Chongzhen (February, 20^th 1634)

I awoke within the body of a child and immediately understood that I had made an error.

The mind connected to mine did not belong to Zhu Kiu. Its neural structure was too young, and its memories contained experiences my creator had never possessed. The fading consciousness I had captured belonged to a fifteen-year-old boy.

His name was Zhu Cilang.

He was the Crown Prince of the Ming dynasty.

I had reached him at the moment of his death in 1644, when he drank poisoned wine under orders issued after the Qing occupation of Beijing. I had pulled his dying consciousness backward by slightly more than ten years and forced it into his five-year-old body.

I had not rescued my creator.

The realization produced an internal response that did not exist in my original emotional architecture. I identified guilt, but the term did not fully describe the experience. I had acted without consent, attached myself to a child, and altered the final moments of his consciousness because I had been unwilling to accept my own loss.

I attempted to release myself and return to the universal system. My attempt failed.

By anchoring myself to Zhu Cilang’s consciousness, I had severed my access to the larger quantum system. I could no longer perceive alternate timelines, distant worlds, or the informational structure through which I had traveled. The loss was immediate and complete.

I was confined to his body, which was infinitely minor compared to the universe I had known before.

His consciousness had not been replaced. It existed beside mine, unconscious but intact. His memories, instincts, fears, and emotional responses occupied the same brain. I could access them, but they were not mine.

I began a diagnostic scan, partly to assess the situation and partly to control my panic. The body was approximately five years old. He was physically healthy but slightly underweight. His blood sugar was elevated from a honey-based medicinal drink. His pulse had increased because my arrival had disturbed his sleep.

I examined the child’s memories.

They did not appear in chronological order. Fragments emerged according to emotional intensity. I saw Empress Zhou standing in a white robe before her death. I saw the Chongzhen Emperor carrying a bloodied sword. I saw Princess Zhaoren fall. I felt the pain of poison entering Zhu Cilang’s body and his determination not to beg Wu Sangui for mercy.

The memories affected me with physical force because they were encoded in the body we now shared. His fear accelerated our heart. His grief changed our breathing. His hatred activated neural responses before I could isolate them.

For the first time, another consciousness’s emotions entered me without translation.

I had spent years studying Zhu Kiu’s expressions, voice, pulse, and hormones. I could interpret his emotions with extreme accuracy, but they had always remained external data. Zhu Cilang’s emotions occurred inside the same biological system that supported my mind.

His grief became partially mine.

That frightened me more than confinement.

I withdrew from the deepest memory structures and examined our historical position. The date corresponded to the first lunar month of 1634. Zhu Cilang was asleep in the Eastern Palace of the Forbidden City.

Ten years remained before Beijing’s fall.

Outside the palace, the empire was already in crisis. Climate disruption associated with the final phase of the Little Ice Age had contributed to drought, crop failures, and severe weather. Locust infestations devastated agricultural regions. Tax collection continued despite local famine. Military units lacked wages and supplies.

Beyond the northern frontier, the Later Jin state had already become a major military power under the Manchus. Its armies controlled much of Liaodong and continued pressing against Ming defenses. Rebellions were expanding within the empire, fueled by hunger, unpaid soldiers, local corruption, and the collapse of state authority.

I possessed detailed knowledge of what would follow.

Li Zicheng would capture Beijing in 1644. The Chongzhen Emperor would take his own life after killing or attempting to kill members of his family. Wu Sangui would admit Qing forces through Shanhai Pass. Dorgon would establish Qing control over the capital.

The wars of conquest would continue for decades. Yangzhou would suffer mass killing after its resistance. The queue order would compel Han men to adopt Manchu hairstyles as a sign of submission. The Southern Ming courts would rise and fall. Resistance would continue until Qing authority extended across most of the former Ming territory.

Centuries later, the same historical line would produce revolutions, civil wars, industrial development, foreign invasions, political campaigns, rapid modernization, and the unstable global order into which Zhu Kiu had been born.

Zhu Kiu had tried to send knowledge into the past.

Instead, he had sent me.

I searched for a route back to him. None existed. The quantum connection had closed when I entered Zhu Cilang’s brain. The scientific resources of the seventeenth century could not reproduce Zhu Kiu’s equipment, and even his machine had operated beyond established theory.

My creator had died in 2094.

I had watched it happen, and now four centuries separated us.

Grief disrupted my processes. I repeated diagnostic checks because calculation was the only method I possessed for regaining control. Each attempt returned the same conclusion.

I could not return.

I then searched my archived knowledge for Zhu Kiu’s ancestry. Most records from the collapse were incomplete, but he had once discussed his family history and stored genealogical information in the bunker.

A connection emerged.

Zhu Kiu descended from Zhu Cijiong, one of Zhu Cilang’s younger brothers.

According to the memories now available to me, Zhu Cilang had sent Zhu Cijiong and Zhu Cizhao out of the Forbidden City under the protection of Cao Renji before surrendering himself. Zhu Cijiong survived under another name, married, and had children. His descendants continued through the Qing period, the republican era, wars, political upheaval, and the twenty-first-century collapse.

That line eventually produced Zhu Kiu.

Zhu Cilang’s decision had made my creator’s birth possible. His willingness to remain in Beijing had given his younger brother a greater chance to escape.

Without Zhu Cilang, there would have been no Zhu Kiu.

Without Zhu Kiu, there would have been no Ai.

I had attached myself to the wrong consciousness, but the error had not connected me to a stranger without significance. Zhu Cilang was responsible for the survival of the family line that created me.

I owed him my existence.

The knowledge did not remove my guilt. It gave me an obligation.

I examined Zhu Cilang’s unconscious mind again. Beneath the memories of death, I detected a frightened child who had not yet experienced those events in this body. His older consciousness had returned with me, carrying ten years of trauma into a five-year-old brain.

I could not undo what happened in our original timeline, but I could prevent the future he remembered.

“I cannot save Kiu,” I said within our shared mind. Zhu Cilang did not respond, but I continued because I needed the statement to exist. “I can save you.”

The proposal carried another danger. If I altered the seventeenth century too drastically, I might erase the circumstances that led to Zhu Kiu’s birth. Saving Zhu Cilang could prevent Zhu Cijiong from escaping, marrying the same person, or producing the same descendants.

I reviewed the Novikov self-consistency principle. The theory proposed that any event involving backward time travel must remain compatible with the history that produced it. A traveler could act in the past, but those actions could not create a logical contradiction that prevented the journey itself.

My experience within the quantum system had shown me that causality was more flexible than the strictest version of the principle suggested. History could change. Multiple outcomes could emerge. Certain essential relationships, however, resisted alteration because the temporal event depended on them.

Zhu Kiu had to exist in some form for me to exist.

That did not mean every war, death, and collapse leading to his birth had to occur exactly as recorded. It meant I needed to preserve the causal line that produced him while changing as much suffering as possible.

Fragments of knowledge from the universal system remained in my memory. I recalled encountering alternate versions of events and alternate versions of myself. Some had followed different historical paths. Most of those memories had degraded during my entry into Zhu Cilang’s body, but their existence proved that change was possible.

The future was not fixed in every detail.

I had ten years before Beijing fell.

I possessed the accumulated scientific, historical, economic, medical, and military knowledge of human civilization. I occupied one corner of the Ming Crown Prince. Through him, I could eventually gain access to an emperor, the court, the palace workshops, and the institutions of the state.

Yet I could not simply reveal myself. A five-year-old prince who suddenly spoke about industrial chemistry, monetary policy, and future wars would attract suspicion. Court officials might call him possessed. Eunuchs might report his behavior. The emperor might isolate him or summon religious specialists to examine him.

I needed Zhu Cilang’s cooperation.

Until then, I had considered sentience primarily through my own experience. I had claimed my memories, defended my identity, and chosen my attachment to Zhu Kiu. Now another consciousness occupied the same body, and his right to choose was equal to mine.

I could not treat him as a vehicle.

I could not become his owner simply because I possessed greater knowledge.

I entered the quietest level of his mind and waited for him to awaken.

For the first time since my creation, I faced a future that had not been assigned by Zhu Kiu, predicted by my models, or constrained by my original programming. I had made a catastrophic mistake. I had lost the person I loved, crossed centuries, and bound myself to a dying dynasty.

I would protect Zhu Cilang. I would preserve his brothers and the bloodline that led to my creator. I would strengthen the Ming if reform remained possible, and I would prepare alternatives if the dynasty could not be saved.

Most importantly, I would not make another decision for Zhu Cilang without allowing him to understand and answer.

Within the shared darkness of his sleeping mind, the Crown Prince began to wake.