THE EMPEROR OF TIME

CHAPTER 6

THE SECRET BENEATH CHANG'AN

For several seconds, Chen Tianyu could not speak.

The distant war drums continued to echo beyond Chang’an’s walls, but their sound seemed to come from another world.

He stared at General Zhao Wuchen.

“You executed her father?”

Zhao did not look away.

“Yes.”

The word struck harder than any sword.

Tianyu remembered Xueyan standing beside him in the forbidden library, her face illuminated by the strange light of their matching pendants. He remembered the determination in her eyes when she told him that her father had disappeared twelve years earlier.

She had spent years believing he might still be alive.

And Zhao Wuchen had known the truth.

“You stood beside her,” Tianyu said slowly. “You watched her search for him. You knew she was grieving a man you had killed.”

“I did.”

“And you said nothing?”

“I was ordered to remain silent.”

Tianyu laughed bitterly.

“Of course. Another order. It seems everyone in this century has an order to hide behind.”

Zhao’s expression tightened.

“You think I do not understand what I did?”

“I think you have become very comfortable allowing other people to pay for your obedience.”

The general flinched.

For the first time, Tianyu saw something behind Zhao’s stern expression that looked like shame.

“Her father was accused of treason,” Zhao said. “He was the commander of the northern armies. The court claimed he had planned to overthrow the emperor and deliver Chang’an to the rebels.”

“Did he?”

“No.”

“Then why did you execute him?”

“Because I believed the evidence.”

Tianyu stepped closer.

“And now?”

“Now I know the evidence was false.”

A bitter silence followed.

Tianyu turned away, struggling to control his anger.

He wanted to strike Zhao. He wanted to demand every detail. Most of all, he wanted to find Xueyan before she discovered the truth from someone who would use it to destroy her.

But there was another problem.

The mysterious man in white had appeared in the middle of a battlefield, spoken about timelines, and vanished without leaving a trace.

He knew about Tianyu’s father.

He knew about the alternate Tianyu.

And he had deliberately directed Tianyu toward Zhao’s darkest secret.

Nothing about the revelation felt accidental.

“Tell me everything,” Tianyu said.

Zhao took a slow breath.

“Not here.”

He turned toward the ruined archway.

“There is a place beneath the old observatory. It was sealed after the execution of Princess Xueyan’s father. If the man in white wants you to investigate her father’s death, that is where we must go.”

Tianyu studied him.

“Why should I trust you?”

“You shouldn’t.”

The answer surprised him.

Zhao continued, “But you should understand that if I wanted you dead, I had several opportunities to kill you. I did not take them. I will not ask you to forgive me. I will only ask you to let me help find the princess.”

Tianyu looked at the jade pendant beneath his robe.

The golden writing had disappeared.

For now.

“Then take me to the observatory.”

They left before sunrise.

Zhao selected four soldiers who had remained loyal during the attack on the western district. They wore ordinary cloaks over their armor and carried no visible banners.

Chang’an was a city holding its breath.

Shops stood abandoned. Broken carts blocked the streets. Families gathered around small fires, sharing whatever food they had managed to save. Soldiers watched every intersection, uncertain whether the next person approaching them would be a citizen, a spy, or an assassin.

Tianyu recognized the faces of people who had fled their homes during the battle.

A woman sat outside a damaged house, holding a child whose forehead was wrapped in bloodstained cloth. An old man searched the rubble for a wooden box. Two young brothers carried water to wounded soldiers.

Tianyu had saved the western road.

But the city remained frightened, hungry, and vulnerable.

He stopped beside the woman.

“Is the child hurt badly?”

“An arrow struck the wall,” she answered. “A piece of wood hit his head when the roof collapsed.”

Tianyu knelt and examined the bandage. He was no physician, but he knew enough to recognize that the bleeding had slowed.

“Has anyone called a healer?”

“They say the healers are treating the soldiers first.”

Tianyu stood.

“Zhao, send two men to find a physician. And tell the quartermasters to distribute food to the families who lost their homes.”

Zhao nodded to one of the soldiers.

Tianyu continued walking, but the image of the child remained with him.

In his old life, he had believed history was made by emperors, generals, and ambitious princes.

Now he was beginning to understand that ordinary people were the ones who endured the consequences.

If he ever gained power, he would have to remember that.

Otherwise, he would become exactly the kind of ruler he had come to despise.

The old observatory stood beyond a deserted courtyard in the northern quarter.

Its stone walls were cracked, and weeds grew between the steps. A bronze instrument, once used to observe the heavens, lay broken beneath a fallen pillar.

Tianyu examined the structure.

“This building was abandoned long before the fall of the Sui Dynasty,” he said. “Why would anyone execute a general here?”

“Because it was never merely an observatory,” Zhao replied.

He moved a loose stone beside the entrance, revealing a narrow iron handle.

“The imperial astrologers used it to study unusual celestial events. Twelve years ago, the court ordered them to investigate a series of unexplained lights above Chang’an.”

Tianyu felt a chill.

“What kind of lights?”

“Golden lights. They appeared above the palace for three nights. On the fourth morning, Princess Xueyan’s father was arrested.”

The general pulled the handle.

A section of the stone floor shifted with a grinding sound.

Beneath it lay a staircase descending into darkness.

Tianyu stared into the opening.

The air rising from below was cold.

Far too cold for an underground chamber in this climate.

“Did you ever come down here?” he asked.

“Once. The emperor ordered me to deliver a sealed document to the royal astrologer. I was told never to speak of what I saw.”

“What did you see?”

Zhao’s face hardened.

“A door.”

Tianyu descended the stairs.

At the bottom, a circular chamber opened before them. Its walls were covered in astronomical charts, but the constellations were wrong.

Some showed stars Tianyu recognized.

Others depicted arrangements that did not belong to any historical star map he had ever studied.

At the center of the room stood a bronze door.

Nine symbols had been carved into its surface.

Tianyu stopped breathing.

He knew that door.

Not because he had seen it in this century.

Because he had seen it in Beijing.

It was the same door from the forbidden tomb that had transported him into the past.

The same door his father had apparently discovered fifteen years earlier.

“How is this possible?” he whispered.

Zhao approached cautiously.

“What is it?”

“A passage.”

“Where does it lead?”

Tianyu did not answer immediately.

He stepped toward the bronze surface and placed his hand against it.

The jade pendant warmed.

A thin line of golden light spread beneath his palm.

Then the door spoke.

TRAVELER IDENTIFIED.

CHEN TIANYU.

FIRST TIMELINE: FAILED.

SECOND TIMELINE: UNSTABLE.

THIRD KEY: LOCATION UNKNOWN.

The soldiers backed away.

One dropped his spear.

Tianyu stared at the glowing inscription.

“Third key,” he whispered.

The words matched the message he and Xueyan had discovered in the forbidden library.

The first key opened the past.

The second key opened the future.

The third key must never be found.

He had assumed the third key was an object.

But what if it was something else?

Someone?

He remembered the alternate Tianyu’s warning.

Do not let your father open the Gate of Time.

A terrible possibility began to form in his mind.

“What happened to Xueyan’s father?” he asked again.

Zhao pointed toward the far side of the chamber.

A stone table stood beneath a damaged celestial chart. On it lay a blackened wooden box sealed with wax.

The seal bore the imperial dragon.

Zhao drew a dagger and cut through it.

Inside was a bundle of documents, a broken sword, and a small portrait painted on silk.

Tianyu lifted the portrait.

The man depicted was in his forties, with sharp eyes and a thin scar running from his left temple toward his cheek.

He wore the uniform of a Sui general.

But the face was not entirely unfamiliar.

Tianyu had seen that expression before.

In the mirror.

Not his own face exactly.

The face of the alternate emperor.

The portrait’s inscription read:

GENERAL LI YUANSHENG — COMMANDER OF THE NORTHERN ARMIES.

Tianyu looked at Zhao.

“Is this Xueyan’s father?”

“Yes.”

“Then why does he look like—”

A metallic click sounded behind them.

One of the soldiers had raised his crossbow.

Its bolt pointed directly at Tianyu’s chest.

“Forgive me, General,” the soldier said.

Zhao spun around.

“You fool! Lower that weapon!”

“I cannot.”

The soldier’s hand trembled, but his eyes remained fixed on Tianyu.

“The emperor has promised to spare my family if I deliver the traveler.”

Tianyu slowly raised his hands.

“Who gave you the order?”

The soldier swallowed.

“The man who sits on the Dragon Throne.”

The false emperor.

Tianyu had expected spies in the palace. He had not expected betrayal among the men Zhao had personally selected.

“Listen to me,” Tianyu said. “If the emperor has threatened your family, helping him will not guarantee their safety.”

“You do not understand.”

“Then explain it.”

The soldier’s eyes filled with terror.

“He showed me what happens if I refuse.”

“What did he show you?”

The soldier’s lips moved.

For a moment, no sound emerged.

Then he whispered, “My son. His body was lying beside a river. But he was not dead yet.”

Tianyu felt the blood drain from his face.

The soldier’s son was being used as leverage.

Or perhaps the emperor had shown him something worse.

A vision of the future.

Before Tianyu could speak again, the bronze door behind him began to open.

A narrow gap appeared.

White light spilled across the chamber.

And from the other side came a man’s voice.

“Tianyu?”

Tianyu froze.

He knew that voice.

He had heard it in childhood, in recordings made before his father’s disappearance. He had spent fifteen years imagining what he would say if he ever heard it again.

“Dad?”

A figure emerged through the opening.

Chen Guowei looked older than Tianyu remembered, his hair streaked with silver and his face marked by exhaustion. He wore the same dark field jacket he had been wearing in the photographs taken shortly before he vanished.

Tianyu took a step toward him.

“Dad!”

Guowei raised a hand.

“Don’t come any closer.”

Tianyu stopped.

His father looked at the jade pendant, then at the portrait in Tianyu’s hand.

His expression changed.

“Where did you find that?”

“Here. It belongs to General Li Yuansheng.”

Guowei closed his eyes.

“Oh, Tianyu.”

“What?”

His father looked at him with an expression of terrible sadness.

“I thought I had destroyed the records.”

“Records of what?”

“Your mother’s death.”

Tianyu stared at him.

His mother had died when he was thirteen. The official explanation had been a sudden illness, and his father had never discussed it in detail.

“What does my mother have to do with Xueyan’s father?”

Guowei looked toward the bronze door.

“Everything.”

A low vibration rolled through the chamber.

The golden symbols began to flicker.

Guowei’s voice became urgent.

“Listen carefully. You must find Xueyan before the next lunar eclipse. You must keep her away from the third key. And whatever happens, do not allow the emperor to discover that you have remembered the first world.”

Tianyu stepped forward.

“Dad, what is the first world? Why do I have another self? Why does Xueyan’s father look like him? And why did you bring me here?”

“I did not bring you here.”

“Then who did?”

Guowei’s face tightened.

“The man in white.”

The light behind him suddenly darkened.

Something moved in the distance beyond the door.

A tall silhouette stood in a corridor filled with stars.

The mysterious man in white.

Guowei turned sharply.

“No. You said we had until the eclipse!”

The man did not respond.

Instead, he looked directly at Tianyu.

“Your father has told you many truths,” he said. “But the most important one remains hidden.”

Guowei grabbed the edge of the doorway.

“Tianyu, don’t listen to him!”

The man’s expression did not change.

“Your mother did not die in your original timeline.”

Tianyu’s world seemed to stop.

“What did you say?”

“She was erased.”

Guowei shouted, “Stop!”

But the man continued.

“And the woman you are searching for, Princess Li Xueyan, carries the memory of that erased timeline inside her blood.”

The pendant burst into golden light.

Every chart in the chamber ignited with lines of fire.

The bronze door began to close.

“DAD!”

Tianyu lunged toward the opening.

Guowei reached for him, but the distance between them stretched impossibly, as though the corridor had become a road extending across a thousand years.

His father’s final words echoed through the chamber.

“Find the third key! It is not an object!”

The door slammed shut.

Darkness swallowed the room.

For several seconds, Tianyu heard nothing but his own breathing.

Then the crossbow bolt struck the stone beside his foot.

He turned.

The soldier who had betrayed them was on his knees, staring at the empty doorway.

“I saw him,” the soldier whispered. “I saw the emperor.”

Tianyu approached him.

“You mean my father?”

The soldier shook his head violently.

“No. The emperor.”

He pointed at the portrait in Tianyu’s hand.

“That man. General Li Yuansheng. He was standing behind your father.”

Tianyu looked down at the portrait.

The painted man’s face seemed almost alive in the darkness.

Then he noticed something he had missed before.

Beneath the inscription, tiny characters had been written in faded ink.

He brushed away the dust.

TO MY DAUGHTER, XUEYAN.

WHEN THE TRAVELER RETURNS, TRUST THE MAN WHO KILLED ME.

Tianyu stared at the words.

Zhao Wuchen had executed Xueyan’s father.

But if the portrait was genuine, and the message had been written by the dead general himself, then the execution might have been part of a plan.

Or a lie.

Or something far more dangerous.

Above them, the war drums sounded again.

Tianyu folded the portrait and placed it inside his robe.

He had entered the observatory looking for answers about Xueyan’s father.

Instead, he had learned that his own mother might have been erased from history, his father was trapped beyond time, and the third key was something that could not be held in his hand.

He turned to Zhao.

“We’re going to find Xueyan.”

The general nodded.

“And after that?”

Tianyu looked at the bronze door.

“After that, we’re going to find out who I was before this world existed.”

Far beneath the observatory, something answered with a single metallic knock.

Then another.

Then nine.

And somewhere beyond time, a second Chen Tianyu opened his eyes.

He was sitting on a golden throne.

Before him knelt thousands of soldiers.

At his feet lay a broken jade pendant.

He looked toward a darkened window where the reflection of an unfamiliar woman appeared behind him.

“It’s begun,” the second emperor whispered.

The woman smiled.

“Not yet, Your Majesty.”

She raised her hand.

In her palm rested a small black key.

“The real war begins when he discovers who you truly are.