The Immortal: Saving the First Emperor and His Mother from the Start

Is immortality truly a blessing? When life slips silently from your arms like fine sand, can an eternal being face a thousand years of solitude alone? History surges onward, never turning back. Can anyone truly alter its course, even by the slightest degree? I once kept the First Emperor company as he read by candlelight deep within the palaces of Xianyang. Beyond the fierce ambition in his eyes, there would occasionally flicker a child's bewildered emptiness. With quiet words, I filled in some of the warmth his imperial childhood had never known. For one brief moment, the hand resting on his sword let go of its disguise. Amid the upheaval in Pei County, I kept heaven's secrets up my sleeve and shared rough wine and easy laughter with Liu Bang among the common folk. The day the Han banners were first unfurled was also the day I quietly disappeared into the crowds. A bitter wind swept across Gaixia, and the songs of Chu broke the heart. I once rode hard through the encirclement, hoping to turn the Hegemon-King's fortunes around. That regret, carried down through the ages, weighs heavily on the heart of my endless years. Later, in the grand halls of the Han court, the emperor bestowed on me the golden seal of Marquis Who Guards the State, hoping to bind this outsider who could see the secrets of fate with a noble title. I bowed to accept his favor, but hid the seal and ribbons away at the bottom of a chest. What are courtly honors beside a life free as a cloud or a wild crane? A thousand years are no more than a breeze passing beneath my sleeve. In the space of a glance, countless battles have turned to dust and smoke, and countless jeweled towers have fallen beneath the weeds. I sit alone on the shore of time's ceaseless current, using the Milky Way as my water clock and the annals of history as my mirror, watching the flowers bloom and fade in the human world.