Descent into the Dragon's Maw
Riding a hot air balloon in the middle of winter, and at night no less, was absolute insanity.
“Hoo… hoo…”
The basket had been woven from thick bamboo stalks airlifted from the jungles of Gangnam, while the balloon itself was stitched together from the finest Shu silk. Instead of modern solid fuel or even proper coal, we simply lit a pile of collected charcoal and let the thing rise into the sky. To my twenty-first-century eyes, the entire contraption looked hopelessly crude.
To keep the weight down, the bamboo basket had been woven loosely, leaving gaping holes everywhere. The night scenery below was clearly visible through them, which only made my stomach twist tighter. The balloon envelope, sewn together by a team of village women, let faint threads of moonlight leak through its seams. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t shake the creeping dread.
One hour to ascend. Another hour to descend. Even though I had a parachute and had undergone high-altitude jump training, this was the first time I’d ever flown in something that looked this unreliable. Worse, because of strict weight limits, I had to pilot the balloon alone.
I had considered sending one of my personal guards, but the truth was that if anything went wrong, only someone holding the title of Duke of Yan could guarantee survival. There was only one chance.
After descending, I had to load the Emperor into the basket before the balloon fully deflated, shove the remaining charcoal back in, and shoot straight back into the sky. Most winter winds in these parts blew from the southwest toward the northeast. To reach Luoyang in Henan Commandery of Sili Province, we needed to launch from Henan itself, but there was no guarantee the balloon’s path would lead precisely to the imperial palace. Whether the margin of error would be measured in kilometers or meters was known only to the heavens. I had attached a crude sail-like rudder to the bottom of the basket to allow at least basic steering.
Of course, that “simple” modification had torn the already hole-riddled basket even wider, making it feel more like a cage than a vehicle. The lighter basket now swayed violently with every gust of wind.
In short, it was terrifying.
“Fuck… Maybe I should’ve just rammed my head into Hulao Pass instead. This… huff… is… really… fucking scary…”
No matter how many special operations I’d survived as a former soldier, I had never entrusted my life to a single balloon and flown hundreds of meters above the ground. I had a parachute, sure. But launching a hot air balloon at night was fundamentally insane. Night airborne operations were already risky enough, and even those only became feasible once streetlights and lanterns provided some visibility. The idea of trusting nothing but moonlight, guessing the Emperor’s location in Luoyang, and jumping out was even more deranged.
I hooked a rope ladder over the railing and continued drifting northeast on the prevailing wind, waiting for a familiar landmark to appear. The winter sky was bitterly cold. The only cold-weather gear I could bring was a single thin blanket. Shaking my body to generate heat would have risked falling out of the basket, and the charcoal fire had been covered with a blackened board to hide its glow from Dong Zhuo’s troops below. Removing that cover to warm myself was nearly impossible.
The only comfort came from the fermented mare’s milk liquor stored in my leather flask. I could raise my body temperature with it, but drinking too much would impair the mission, so I had to restrain myself. Using my instincts and the familiar terrain of Sili Province, I adjusted the rudder. Soon the sight of Henei Commandery, dotted with countless torches, came into view.
There was no clock, so I couldn’t be sure of the exact time, but I could feel the ground drawing closer. It was time to steel myself.
“Hoo…”
I took another swig of the mare’s milk liquor and fixed my eyes on the brightest cluster of torches—the imperial palace. The Emperor’s sleeping quarters were kept secret from everyone except the Ten Eunuchs, but I had a rough idea where they might be.
I quietly neutralized a few sentries with the Yeongangno, then unfurled the rope ladder and dropped it onto a suitable clearing. From this point on, it was a race against time. The deflating balloon was scheduled to descend slowly. Once all the air left the envelope, there would be no time to refill it in the middle of the palace and relight the brazier.
I ripped off the cover shielding the brazier and tossed it aside, then added several more chunks of charcoal to maintain the heat. I hammered the spikes at the end of the rope ladder into the ground to anchor the balloon so it wouldn’t drift away in search of “freedom.” Then I sprinted into the darkness that swallowed the imperial palace.
“Who—mmph!”
I felt sorry for the Imperial Guard, but I had no time to leave witnesses. It had been a long time since I last held a dagger. I sliced open the sentry’s throat just below the larynx, then stabbed his heart as he collapsed with a sound like escaping air. It was the only mercy I could offer.
The most likely location was nearby. Though the night was deep, torches burned everywhere, leaving no shadows to hide in. Armored Imperial Guards stood watch without a single gap. There were too many to extinguish all the lights, and too many to silently kill one by one. If only the Emperor would step outside, things would be much simpler. But the child ruler of this new dynasty had likely already departed for the land of dreams.
If he woke up and came out into the courtyard… I could manage somehow. I could keep the balloon aloft and simply lower the rope ladder to snatch him. If the Emperor appeared in the courtyard, they would naturally light more torches. And with torches lit, I wouldn’t need to risk wandering through a palace swarming with sentries.
A way to lure the Emperor outside… a method… there was one. And it was an excellent one.
The moon hung high and brilliant that night.
The Imperial Guard handpicked by Dong Zhuo protected Emperor Liu Bian’s residence without a single gap. Torches burned so brightly that they pierced through the paper windows and scattered their light across his sleeping quarters.
The early winter night air was frigid. The few remaining leaves that had not yet fallen rustled and whispered against one another, but sadly their faint sounds could not penetrate the paper windows and lingered only outside the palace walls.
Inside the chamber, a dim glow seeped in like the hour before dawn, disturbing what should have been peaceful sleep. In the empty bedroom, devoid of even a single eunuch, Liu Bian sat alone, reading a scroll.
There was no sound of rustling leaves, but the soft turning of pages could still echo.
If one were being brutally honest, Liu Bian’s pursuit of knowledge might have been pointless. In his position—reduced to nothing more than a seal-stamper for Dong Zhuo—it might have been far more comfortable to empty his mind and live an easy life simply stamping documents as ordered. At least that path would spare him from thinking about the blade that would eventually find his own throat.
Yet Liu Bian could not do that.
Though all real power had been stolen from him, he was still the Emperor of Han. He had never been taught what an emperor should do, yet he remained the Emperor. All his maternal relatives who should have supported him and all the eunuchs who should have assisted him were dead, yet he was still the Emperor. The few high officials left were corrupt bureaucrats who had bought their posts with loans from his father, nothing more than a pack of wolves eyeing his throne, yet he was still the Emperor.
There were countless reasons to empty his head and play the part of a puppet. There was only one reason to continue studying. And so Liu Bian refused to give up thinking.
One could call it the stubbornness of a child. But even at his young age, he had dimly realized his duty, and that realization gave him the tenacity to continue.
Without a single lantern or a brazier, covered only by a tattered blanket instead of silk quilts, the room looked more austere than the residence of an average county magistrate. Yet the torches blazing outside were bright enough for him to read by.
The book in his hands was the Book of Rites, a text on etiquette and its commentaries.
Liu Bian’s legitimacy was beyond question. He had never studied governance or political philosophy, but he still remembered the last words his uncle He Jin had spoken before falling ill.
As the final emperor of a ruined nation, he had never harbored any illusion that he could single-handedly rebuild it. The most he could hope for was a soft landing. At the very least, he wanted to prevent the kind of slaughter that had occurred during the Chu-Han Contention at Xin’an and Hanyang, where hundreds of thousands of civilians had died.
If he could master etiquette so thoroughly that even the stubborn Clean Stream faction could find no fault, then at least no one would dare openly defy his one undeniable claim—his legitimacy.
The information that reached his blocked eyes and ears was limited, but the former Inspector of You Province, Liu Yu, had delivered as much as he possibly could.
‘Gongsun Zan in the northeast, Dong Zhuo in the northwest, Yuan Shu in the southeast, Liu Yan in the southwest…’
With the end of the Danggu Purge, imperial relative Liu Biao had regained some freedom of movement, but there was no way to contact him, so expectations remained low. Liu Yu, who had governed the northeast, had already resigned his post and was struggling just to act as regent and restrain Dong Zhuo’s rampage. The other imperial relatives had either been absorbed into the Clean Stream warlords’ factions or had died as defeated generals.
It was no longer a tripod but a four-legged cauldron. Because Gongsun Zan’s forces had seized the granary lands spanning Ji and You provinces, the campaign against Dong Zhuo had ended in an ambiguous truce. Yet the granary lands of Yi Province still remained a third power.
Even young Liu Bian understood clearly that if Inspector of Yi Province Liu Yan sided with any one faction, or if Dong Zhuo or Yuan Shu attacked Liu Yan’s forces and occupied the Ba-Shu basin, the fragile peace of this chaotic age would once again erupt into flames.
‘Should Yi Province be made completely independent…?’
If one desired stability for the realm, making Yi Province fully independent was the only solution. But Yi Province was the very land where the Han dynasty had begun. It was the region where Emperor Gaozu Liu Bang had risen again after being cornered by the Hegemon-King of Western Chu Xiang Yu. It was also the Han dynasty’s greatest food-producing region, rivaling the fertile plains of the eastern seaboard.
— Crack.
Fearing he might tear the book, Liu Bian gripped the tattered blanket fiercely instead.
“I’m afraid… I’m so terribly afraid… Father, why did you leave me with such a heavy burden before you departed…”
From the day his uncle He Jin had been poisoned, Liu Bian had lived in unending terror. He was only fourteen years old. A normal boy his age would have just begun suffering from adolescent delusions of grandeur, but this emperor, left alone in this vast and desolate palace without parents to protect him, relatives to guide him, teachers, or friends, could not afford such luxuries.
“It would be better… if this single body of mine died and everything ended. I could simply hand over the cumbersome imperial seal to Dong Zhuo and live pretending not to know how the common people suffer.”
Unfortunately, Liu Bian was a boy who possessed the qualities of a ruler. He could not turn his eyes from the suffering faces of the people. He was the kind of boy who would willingly offer his own limbs if it meant one desperate struggle on behalf of a collapsing nation.
Whenever he stepped outside his chambers, the watchful eyes monitoring him burned into his skin until he thought he would go mad. Yet he was also the only person who could even pretend to hold Dong Zhuo’s leash.
“If I am truly the Son of Heaven, the child of the heavens, Father… why have you abandoned me?”
He knew the truth, but the process was so painful that part of him desperately wanted to run away.
— BOOM!
As he trembled in the depths of despair, a tremendous explosion echoed from beyond the palace walls.