An Audience with the Dragon

The room was stark, empty, and silent. There were no decorations on the paper walls, no ornate furniture, only a single woven mat on the floor. It was a room designed to strip away all distractions, all comfort, and leave a man alone with his own thoughts. Kenji, the young guerilla fighter, knelt on the mat, his hands bound behind him, his broken arm throbbing with a dull, persistent pain. He had been taken from the filth of a military stockade, washed, given clean clothes, and brought here. He did not know why. He only knew that he was in the heart of the enemy's power, and he was determined to die with his honor intact.

The door slid open. Two immense Imperial Guards entered first, their faces like stone masks, and took up positions on either side of the door. Then, the Emperor entered. He was smaller than Kenji had imagined, a boy in a simple, dark silk tunic, yet his presence seemed to suck all the air from the room. He moved with a quiet, deliberate grace that was more intimidating than any show of force. Meng Tian followed him in, a mountain of a man who stood silently in the corner, a living shadow of immense power.

An interpreter, a nervous-looking Japanese man, knelt by the door.

Kenji, summoning all his courage, spat on the tatami mat in front of him. "I will tell you nothing, you foreign demon!" he snarled, his voice rough with defiance. "Do what you will! Kill me! My death will only inspire a thousand more true sons of Japan to rise up and fight you!"

Qin Shi Huang did not react to the insult. He regarded the boy with a look of detached, academic curiosity, as if studying an interesting new species of insect. He sat on a simple cushion placed opposite Kenji, a move that brought their eyes almost to the same level.

"Why would I kill you?" QSH asked, his voice calm, the words flowing smoothly from the translator. "Death is a blunt and unimaginative tool. You are far more valuable to me alive. You are a window. Through you, I wish to understand the nature of your fanaticism. So tell me, boy. Why do you fight?"

The question caught Kenji off guard. He had expected threats, torture, a swift execution. He had not expected a philosophical debate. Goaded by the Emperor's quiet challenge, he launched into a passionate declaration of his beliefs, his voice ringing with the absolute certainty of youth.

"I fight for the glory of Japan! I fight for the spirit of Yamato, which has remained unconquered for a thousand years! I fight to protect my sacred home from invaders who burn our shrines and murder our people!" His chin lifted in defiance. "And I fight for my Emperor, a living god on earth, whose divinity makes our cause righteous and our victory certain!"

Qin Shi Huang listened patiently, his head tilted slightly, as if carefully considering each point. When Kenji finished, his chest heaving, the Emperor nodded slowly. "A living god," he repeated, the words tasting strange in his mouth. "An interesting, if primitive, concept. So this god, your Emperor… he is all-powerful? Omnipotent?"

"Yes!" Kenji shot back without hesitation. "His will is the will of heaven!"

"I see," QSH said, his voice still maddeningly calm. "Then explain something to me. If your god is all-powerful, why did he allow my fleet to cross the sea unharmed? If his will is that of heaven, why did his 'divine wind' not rise up and sink my ships as it did to the Mongol hordes of old? Why did he allow my cannons to shatter his navy? Why is his main army trapped and starving in Korea while I sit here, in one of his palaces, drinking his tea?"

He leaned forward, his dark eyes seeming to pierce through Kenji's bravado. "Logically, there are only two possibilities. The first is that your god is not, in fact, all-powerful. That he is just a man in a palace in Kyoto, as helpless as you are. In which case, he is not a god." He paused. "The second possibility is that he is all-powerful and simply does not care about you. That he watched my fleet sail, watched my army land, and allowed your villages to burn without lifting a finger to stop it. In which case, he is not worthy of your worship. So, tell me, boy. Which is it? Is your god weak, or is he cruel?"

Kenji stared, his mouth suddenly dry. The simple, brutal logic of the question was like a physical blow. He had no answer. He had never, in his entire life, even considered questioning the divinity of his Emperor. It was the bedrock of his entire world.

Seeing the boy's confusion, QSH pressed his assault, shifting from theology to morality. "You speak of honor," he continued. "A noble concept. So tell me of the honor in ambushing a medical convoy and destroying supplies meant to ease the suffering of the wounded. Tell me of the honor in hiding in the mountains like cowards while the peasants in the valleys below pay for your 'brave' attacks with the lives of their sons and the ashes of their homes. Your leaders sacrifice the innocent to make a political point. I sacrifice soldiers to win a war. Which of us is more honorable, and which is merely more practical?"

Kenji flinched as if struck. The attack on the medical convoy had been weighing on his conscience, an act he had justified through the lens of total war. Now, this foreign demon was holding it up to him like a dirty mirror.

"And your cause is righteous?" QSH's voice was relentless, a surgeon's scalpel methodically cutting away every layer of Kenji's belief system. "Was it righteous when your government sought to conquer Korea and enslave its people, just as you now accuse me of doing to you? Your Meiji government was weak, corrupt, and so blinded by its own arrogance that it walked into a war it could not win, a war that has brought nothing but suffering to its own people. I am bringing order where there was chaos. I am bringing stability where there was foolish ambition. Under my rule, the trains in this land will run on time, the rice bowls will be full, and there will be no more pointless wars of conquest. I am offering your people peace and prosperity. Your leaders, your god-emperor, they offer you only a glorious death in a hopeless cause. How is that righteous?"

It was too much. Kenji's entire worldview, the foundation of his identity, the very pillars of honor, faith, and righteousness upon which he had built his life, had been systematically deconstructed and shown to be nothing but lies and contradictions. The fire in his eyes died, replaced by a profound, empty, horrifying confusion. The world no longer made sense. A terrible sob escaped him, then another. He broke down completely, weeping not from fear of death, but from the spiritual void that had just been carved into the center of his soul.

QSH watched the boy's collapse with a dispassionate eye. The interrogation was over. He stood up. "I am not your enemy, boy," he said, his voice softening almost to kindness, which was the cruelest blow of all. "Your enemy is the lie you have been told your entire life. The lie that your nation is special, that your god is real, and that your cause is just."

He turned to Meng Tian. "He will be given food and a comfortable room. No more chains. Post a guard, but let him see the sky. I want him to think on what has been said today. Tomorrow," he added, looking back at the weeping, broken figure, "he will write a letter to his comrades in the mountains. He will not tell them to surrender. He will simply tell them what he has learned today. He will tell them the truth."

The two Imperial Guards entered and gently lifted the unresisting Kenji to his feet. As they led the empty shell of a boy from the room, QSH knew he had won a far more significant victory than any battle. He had not broken a body. He had conquered a mind. And a conquered mind was a far more potent weapon.