On a snowy night in Handan, four-year-old Ying Zheng was hunted down by Zhao soldiers, assassins, and Qin spies. The mother protects her son with a poisonous hairpin, and Lu Buwei secretly sends a message to the sky. He clings to the unchanging ice seed in the blood-fire snowfield: strike first to gain strength, and strike later to destroy the country. China's two thousand years of imperial rule began with the first heartbeat of a proton orphan.
