"Ziying, I'll see you this far. You'll have to walk the rest of the road yourself."
Thirty li outside Xianyang, dawn was just beginning to break in the east. Xiang An looked at Ying Ziying, who stood before him still dressed in plain white robes, and lightly cupped his hands in salute.
Ziying held the reins of a fine horse, which pulled a carriage carrying Ziying's wife and daughter.
This was all that remained of "Qin."
Standing opposite Xiang An, Ziying looked at the upright figure before him, then at Xianyang behind Xiang An, and could not help shedding old tears once more.
"General, for your great kindness, Ziying..." Ziying's gaze returned to Xiang An. His hands overlapped before him as he tried to offer words of thanks, yet none would come.
Great kindness needed no words of gratitude. But before Xiang An had saved his life and preserved Qin's final bloodline, he had also been one of those who brought down Great Qin. The two hundred thousand Qin soldiers by the Zhang River had not even fully rotted away yet.
Ziying was a man who understood reason. He knew that Great Qin had died not so much at the hands of Xiang Yu and Liu Ji as at the hands of the Second Emperor and Zhao Gao. Thus, he bore no resentment toward Xiang An.
As the first light of dawn appeared, Ziying knelt and bowed to Xiang An. "General, I will never forget your great kindness, Ziying..."
"Please rise. Though you are no longer the Qin Emperor or the King of Qin, and though your ancestors' glory is gone, I would not want you, the last descendant of the Ying clan, to lose your ancestors' backbone." Helping Ziying up, Xiang An sighed. "Back then, the First Emperor created