The Convict Emperor

I am Convict No. Qiqi, a corpse that has not yet gone cold in the mausoleum at Mount Li. The Great Emperor Ying Zheng has passed away, and the skies of Great Qin are slowly collapsing.

General Zhang Han gave me a rusty bronze sword and ordered us two hundred thousand convicts to keep Qin alive with the blood of the nobles from the Six States. But I know history: at the Battle of Julu, the Hegemon will rise, and we cannon fodder will be buried alive, becoming nothing more than a footnote to his legend.

But I refuse to accept my fate.

“Are kings and nobles born to their station?” Chen Sheng’s cry is my declaration too. But becoming a king or emperor is too far beyond my reach. Right now, all I want is to survive with this band of desperate brothers by my side.

Starting at Mount Li, I gathered convicts and made allies among the heroes of the age. Amid the mountains of corpses at Julu, I snatched a sliver of life from beneath Xiang Yu’s Hegemon Spear. While Liu Bang was still lost in the wealth of Guanzhong, I had already set my sights on the land where a new dynasty would rise: Bashu.

Han Xin commands my troops, Zhang Liang sits with me and discusses strategy, and Xiao He procures provisions for me. The eighteen princes enfeoffed by Xiang Yu? They are nothing but stepping stones on my path to power. When the invincible Hegemon of Western Chu takes his own life by the Wu River, he will never imagine that the one who ended his legend was a nobody he could once have crushed without a second thought.

I stand amid the ruins of Xianyang Palace, with two hundred thousand “elite convicts” sworn to follow me to the death at my back. They shout, “Long live!” Their voices shake the heavens.

Very well, then. The heavens are dead, and the Yellow Heaven shall rise. I, Qiqi, will take the throne today and personally establish an eternal empire even more glorious than Great Qin.