One-line hook
In 210 BC, Qin Shi Huang died at the Dune Palace. In 2025, he opened his eyes inside a headless terracotta warrior in Pit One of the Terracotta Army. Phones, high-speed rail, short videos, representative government, AI… How had his empire come to this? This time, he did not seek immortality. He wanted to write the word “Qin” into the future.
I don’t call him a “tyrant,” and I don’t mention that he was reborn.
I simply transcribed into a QR code the voice that kept me awake at night.
It called itself Ying Zheng. Even shattered into porcelain shards, it still wanted to borrow fire from the future one more time.
I let it use my knuckles to tap the keyboard. It complained that flesh and blood were too soft, and struck the screen until it hurt.
The day I handed in the manuscript, it left without a word, not even a thank-you.
And so I developed a few quirks:
When I see a high-speed train, I want to feed it grass;
When I hear “call a deer a horse,” I feel sorry for the deer;
When I pass the terracotta warrior pits, I greet the hollow chests.
Aside from that, I’m no different from any other office worker in Chang’an:
Writing slide decks by day, turning celebrity points into candy at night,
And sometimes standing in a convenience store, staring blankly at the steam rising from the oden.
That mist looks like the fire at Epang Palace, and like a sigh over the next line I can’t write.
