The echoes of the crashing boulder faded, swallowed by the immense, ancient silence of the gorges. In its place, a new, more profound silence descended upon the small group of men standing on the precipice. It was a silence of shattered realities, a vacuum created where the known laws of the universe had just been torn asunder. The Imperial Guards, men trained for absolute discipline in the face of any earthly threat, were frozen, their faces slack with a mixture of raw terror and a dawning, religious awe. The American Secret Service agents, hardened professionals accustomed to violence and political intrigue, stood like statues, their minds refusing to process the input from their own eyes. They had just witnessed an act not of man, but of myth.
Qin Shi Huang stood at the center of this silent storm, his arm still trembling slightly from the monumental exertion. The facade of his perfect, serene control had been ripped away, and for a fleeting moment, his true state was laid bare for all to see. A wave of profound weakness washed over him, a deep, cellular exhaustion that left him dizzy and nauseous. He could feel the broken capillaries inside his own body, the terrible, draining cost of his impulsive, arrogant act. He swayed, catching himself on the arm of a nearby aide, and a single, damning trickle of crimson blood escaped his nose, stark against the pallor of his skin.
He had just made the single greatest strategic blunder of his second life. In a split-second of instinct and pride, he had revealed his ultimate secret, his divine weapon, to his greatest enemy.
But it was the eyes of Theodore Roosevelt that held his entire focus. The American President was not looking at him with fear or with the slack-jawed disbelief of the others. Roosevelt's gaze was sharp, intense, and shockingly analytical. He looked from the massive crater the boulder had gouged in the mountainside, to the panting Emperor, to the single drop of blood on the Emperor's upper lip. He was not looking at a god or a demon. He was looking at a specimen. He was a great naturalist who had just discovered a new, terrifying, and magnificent species, and his mind was already working, classifying it, analyzing its strengths, and searching for its weaknesses.
In that silent, penetrating gaze, Qin Shi Huang saw his mistake laid bare. He knew, with a certainty that was colder and more terrifying than any army, that he could not deny what had just happened. He could not dismiss it as a trick of the light or a freak geological event. The American President was too intelligent, too perceptive. He knew.
QSH drew himself up, forcing his weakened body to obey, calling upon his last reserves of will to project an aura of control he did not feel. He had to regain the initiative. He had to control the narrative of his own impossible revelation.
He spoke first, his voice a low, steady command that shattered the stunned silence. "The events of today have been… taxing. The summit is suspended until tomorrow morning." He turned to the captain of his Imperial Guard. "You will escort the President and his men back to their vessel. Ensure their safety and comfort. They are not to be disturbed."
It was not a request. It was an order, a dismissal. It was a desperate gambit to buy himself time. Time to think. Time to recover. Time to understand the full magnitude of his error and to forge a new strategy from its ashes.
The journey back to the USS Charleston was a study in surreal tension. The Qing guards formed a tight, silent cordon around the American delegation, their faces now unreadable masks of awe and fear. Roosevelt's own aides and Secret Service agents were whispering amongst themselves, their voices low and frantic, trying to rationalize what they had witnessed.
"A secondary blast… it must have been another cache of dynamite," one agent muttered. "It threw the rock sideways. A freak accident."
"I saw it," another whispered back. "He… he pointed. The air shimmered."
"You saw what you wanted to see," the first agent retorted, his voice strained. "There is a logical explanation. There has to be."
Roosevelt walked at the head of his delegation, seemingly deaf to their panicked chatter. He said nothing. His mind was a whirlwind, re-contextualizing every piece of information he had about the Chinese Emperor through this new, impossible lens. The "intuitive" genius that allowed him to design weapons from the future. The "miraculous" naval victory at Batavia, where shells had struck with impossible, predictive accuracy. The "coincidental" volcanic event that had crippled the Dutch port. It wasn't a series of lucky breaks or brilliant strategies. It was a single, unifying, terrifying truth. The man was not just an emperor. He was something more.
When they reached the cruiser, Roosevelt immediately sequestered himself in his private cabin with Admiral Taylor. The Admiral, who had remained on the ship, saw the look on his President's face and knew that something fundamental had changed.
"Mr. President," Taylor asked, his voice low. "What happened up there? The reports of the prisoner revolt, the explosion… they were chaotic."
Roosevelt walked to the small bar and poured himself a stiff brandy, his hand perfectly steady. He took a long swallow.
"The world just changed, Admiral," he said, his voice quiet, almost conversational, but filled with a strange, almost exhilarated awe. "The world as we know it is a fiction." He turned to face his intelligence chief. "Our 'Dragon's Spark' theory, our files on anomalous energy readings, the ghost stories our agents have been chasing for years… it is not a theory. It is a fact. I saw it with my own two eyes."
He described the scene in stark, simple detail: the falling boulder, the Emperor's gesture, the impossible, mid-air deflection, the subsequent physical weakness, the trickle of blood.
Admiral Taylor, a man of iron nerve and pragmatic skepticism, felt a cold chill run down his spine. "My God," he whispered. "So he can…?"
"He can move a mountain, Admiral," Roosevelt finished. "Or at least a piece of one. He can impose his will upon the physical world." He took another drink, his mind working furiously. His entire strategic position had been turned upside down. He had come to this summit as a negotiator, a leader of a great nation, but ultimately as a man at a disadvantage, his people held hostage.
But now? Now he possessed a secret of unimaginable power. He was the sole independent witness to a truth that could, if revealed, throw the entire planet into a new dark age of fear and superstition. It could trigger a global crusade against the god-emperor of China. He now held a new kind of power over Qin Shi Huang, a power far greater than any fleet or army: the power of knowledge, the power of the truth.
"The negotiation is no longer about the Philippines, or trade rights, or even the lives of Hoover's men," Roosevelt mused, his mind already leaping ahead, formulating a new strategy. "That is the old game. We are now playing a new one." He looked at Taylor, his eyes burning with a fierce, intense light. "The question is no longer how we negotiate with a tyrant. The question we must now answer, Admiral, is how in God's name does one negotiate with a god who bleeds?"