The Emperor of Great Xia Has the Final Say

In a corner, a few soldiers with lighter wounds huddled together, silently passing a flask of cheap liquor between them.

It was a specialty of Zhennanguan—"shaodaozi," a firewater distilled from sweet potatoes that grew in the cracks of volcanic rock. It was harsh and biting, burning a trail down the throat with every swallow. But no one complained about the burn now, because only that searing heat could momentarily drown out the stench of blood that hung in the air.

"What about Li Laosan?" an old soldier with three fingers missing took the flask, gulped down a mouthful, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and looked at the man beside him.

"He's dead," his companion replied flatly.

"Happened last night. The poison—that eldritch venom—got to his heart. The army surgeon said there was no saving him. He went quietly, though. His last words were: 'Did His Majesty win?'"

The three-fingered soldier was silent for a long time, then raised the flask and poured a thin arc onto the ground. The liquor seeped into the cracks between the stone slabs, hissing softly.

"Li Laosan, this one's for you. May you be reborn into a better life—never come back to soldiering again."

The flask wasn't dry when the three-fingered soldier suddenly cracked his chapped lips into a dry, bitter laugh.

"Damn it—who's crying?—We're soldiers who died on the battlefield, better that than rotting in a bed. When Li Laosan gets down there, even the King of Hell will have to give him a seat—you hear me? This man fought alongside the Emperor."

The makeshift mourning hall was set up in an abandoned warehouse behind the City God's Temple. It was spartan—a single offering table, a few white candles, and rows upon rows of wooden tablets inscribed with the names of the fallen.

Most of the tablets were cut from scrap ammunition crates, their names scrawled with a brush in hurried handwriting, some strokes still wet with ink. The tablets stretched from the altar table all the way to the warehouse door, then out into the courtyard, then spilled from the courtyard out into the street.

An old clerk with white hair knelt in a corner of the mourning hall, a roster spread across his knees, carefully transcribing the birthplaces and ages of the fallen soldiers.

When he came to "Zhang Erlang, from Dengzhou Prefecture, North Frontier Province, age nineteen," his brush stopped mid-air. Zhang Erlang was his nephew. Three years ago, he'd come from his hometown in Dengzhou to seek his uncle in Zhennanguan, and the old clerk had managed to get him a position in the Left Guard of the Imperial Guard. Now, he had to cross his nephew's name out of the living register and inscribe it in the book of the dead.

The clerk dipped his brush in ink again and continued writing. As the brush touched the paper, a single cloudy tear fell, blurring the freshly written character "Zhang." He didn't wipe it away—he simply rewrote the character beside it.

But his hand trembled so badly that no matter how many times he tried, he couldn't get the character "Zhang" right.

At some point, clusters of white cloth began to unfurl from the city battlements, and Zhennanguan turned into a city of mourning, pale and ghostly in the wind.

This battle had been brutal.

He Lanyue, the defending general of Zhennanguan, sat at the highest watchtower of the city gate. His left arm was bound in a sling around his neck, and in his right hand he clutched a jade slip just delivered by messenger—the casualty report. He read it three times, then closed his eyes and slapped the slip onto his knee.

"Has His Majesty arrived yet?"

"Still on the way," replied Deputy General Zhao Polu, standing behind him, his bearded face lined with exhaustion. "It's half a day's ride from Nan'an City—he should be here by dusk. Messages say His Majesty was wounded too—internal injuries. Details are unclear."

"Then send someone to find out." He Lanyue opened his bloodshot eyes and handed the jade slip to Zhao Polu. "Give this to His Majesty as well—the casualty report: six thousand four hundred and thirty-one confirmed deaths, eight thousand nine hundred and twenty missing, four thousand three hundred severely wounded, and countless light injuries. The navy lost two hundred and thirty-seven warships. Forty-two Void-Walker realm commanders have fallen. The South Sea Dragon Clan lost three hundred and thirty thousand souls—elders and children—devoured by that eldritch horror. These were all fine sons of Xia, who should have died on the grasslands of the North, not in the mouths of monsters in the South Sea."

His voice was hoarse and cracked, nearly giving out by the last few words. Zhao Polu took the slip and turned to leave, but He Lanyue called him back.

"Wait." He Lanyue unhooked a gourd of wine from his waist, raised it to his lips, and drank deep. Then he wiped his mouth and tossed the gourd to Zhao Polu. "Tell His Majesty—my life is his. Whatever order he gives from now on, I will obey."

To the southeast corner of Zhennanguan, in the temporary resettlement area for the South Sea Dragon Clan.

One million nine hundred thousand dragon elders, women, and children were crammed into a harbor district originally built for two hundred thousand.

Dragon-scale boats, beast-hide skiffs, and crude wooden rafts stacked tight against one another on the sea, with barely three feet of space between each vessel—so little room that turning around was impossible. The seawater was stained a faint, pale gold by the falling scales and the blood seeping from dragon wounds.

Ao Yue sat on a derelict dragon-scale boat at the outermost edge of the harbor. Her white hair cascaded over her shoulders, and in her arms she cradled the dragon infant she had saved with her complete cultivation—all of it sacrificed.

The infant slept soundly, unaware of the price the South Sea Dragon Clan had paid for his life.

Behind Ao Yue, a stone wall rose along the harbor, inscribed with the names of the three hundred and thirty thousand dragon dead.

The names were packed so tightly they covered every inch—from the top of the wall down to the base, then across the front and onto the back. The old dragon who carved them had his fingers raw and bloody, but no one told him to stop—because every name was a life, and every life deserved to be remembered.

Ao Guang stood before the stone wall, hands clasped behind his back, fingers trembling within his sleeves.

He was the Dragon King of the South Sea. He had lived for fifty-three thousand years and weathered countless storms. But standing before this wall, he was motionless as a stone statue.

The territory of the Qingchi Clan—the island devoured by the Soul-Eater—lay at the edge of his sight to the south. On that island had stood thirty thousand years of the Qingchi Clan's palaces and treasures, the coral groves where he practiced as a child, and the deep-sea canyon where he first shed his scales. Now only black water remained. The very foundation of the island had been eaten away, leaving nothing but an abyssal, bottomless hole in the seafloor.

"My king." The voice of the Dragon Queen, Ao Yue, came from behind him, so weak it was barely a whisper. "The clan elders are all waiting for you—they need your decision on the next step for our migration."

Ao Guang slowly turned around. His vertical pupils contracted in the dawn light.

"Migration?" he rasped, his voice carrying a bone-deep exhaustion. "Where is there left to go? The South Sea is gone. The North Sea belongs to others. The East Sea—" He stopped, unable to finish the sentence.

The East Sea was the territory of Donghuang—and the Emperor of Donghuang had just given up his own life to save the last one million nine hundred thousand of the dragon kin.

Ao Guang owed Wang Hao a life. The entire South Sea Dragon Clan owed Wang Hao a life.

That debt was so immense that the South Sea Dragon Clan would never again be able to hold their heads high.

"Go tell the elders," Ao Guang said, closing his eyes. "The thirty-six tribes of the South Sea Dragon Clan—no, thirty-five—are no longer an independent clan from this moment forward. We are the South Sea Dragon Clan of the Great Xia. The Emperor of Xia commands—wherever he says we go, we go."