Chen Mo, an overworked office drone, was working late into the night when he accidentally tapped a pop-up ad and tumbled into the Qin Dynasty, phone and all. The good news was that his phone still had one working app: “Great Qin Live.” The bad news was that he had no viewers, and a Qin soldier's spear was pressed against his neck.
Dragged into the main hall of Xianyang Palace, he faced Emperor Qin Shi Huang, Ying Zheng, seated on the steps of the throne. The emperor narrowed his eyes and opened with a line delivered in a thick Guanzhong accent: “You dare barge into my empire?” Chen Mo nearly burst out laughing. He'd gone to university in Xi'an for four years, so he knew that accent all too well!
To save his life, he opened the livestream in front of the assembled court officials and read out three things from the comments: it would rain outside the hall, what the memorial in Li Si's arms said, and where Wang Jian's old injury was on his waist. All three came true. Ying Zheng's expression shifted from “this guy's a spy” to “this man is a divine messenger,” and he appointed Chen Mo the “Heavenly Word Envoy” on the spot.
Chen Mo thought he'd just become a mouthpiece, but he never imagined Ying Zheng would get hooked. The emperor asked about infrastructure at morning court, the weather at lunch, and while reviewing memorials in the middle of the night would suddenly look up and ask, “Minister Chen, what do the people of Heaven think of me?” Even more absurdly, the viewers in the livestream began conspiring to mess around: teaching Emperor Qin Shi Huang the “Subject Three” dance, asking His Majesty for autographs, and flooding the comments with “My Great Qin!”
What Chen Mo didn't know was that the System was quietly calculating a number: the historical deviation rate, 0.07%. With every “prophecy” he made and every time Ying Zheng was led astray, the path home grew hazier.
