Seeking Medicine in the East Sea

The Lower Realm, South Jambudvipa Continent, Xianyang Palace of Qin State.

Ying Zheng—or rather, the Ancestral Dragon—was facing a mountain-high pile of bamboo-slip memorials, his brows twisted into a knot.

"Yesterday, a disciple of the Mohist School presented mechanical arts: blueprints for a Wooden Ox and Flowing Horse that could travel a thousand li in a day. However, its driving core is called a Steam Engine, and it requires boiling water."

"The day before, a fangshi presented the Golden Core Great Dao, saying that after consuming it, the fleshly body would not decay. Are you all certain this is not gunpowder?"

"Today, someone from the Agricultural School even said he could cultivate immortal rice with a yield of ten thousand catties per mu. Its seeds are golden, its grains are extraordinarily large, and it is named Hybrid Rice?!"

Ying Zheng slapped the bamboo slips onto the desk, blue veins twitching at his temple.

Ever since he had unified the six directions and ascended the throne as the First Emperor, such strange talents and eccentrics had been sprouting up like bamboo shoots after rain.

Every one of them possessed unique skills and could talk rivers into the sky.

They spoke with absolute certainty, saying they had come to help him forge the undying Immortal Qin Empire.

The things they offered were more outrageous than the last, each surpassing the era more than the one before.

At first, Ying Zheng had been rather delighted, feeling that this was his destiny, his fortune surging forth and drawing talents from all directions.

But as time went on, the flavor turned wrong.

The way this bunch looked at him always carried a strange expectation.

As though they had known him long ago and knew what he wanted.

When they spoke privately, words he could not