Sublime

It wasn’t exactly a tiger, of course. Tigers were natural animals, and this one was not. It was like someone had molded pale flesh like clay to resemble a tiger, with blazing purple eyes and a radiant aura of hunger. Its teeth were gleaming white steel, its black stripes shifted and moved by the second, and a blazing halo hovered over its head. The

It wasn’t exactly a tiger, of course. Tigers were natural animals, and this one was not. It was like someone had molded pale flesh like clay to resemble a tiger, with blazing purple eyes and a radiant aura of hunger. Its teeth were gleaming white steel, its black stripes shifted and moved by the second, and a blazing halo hovered over its head. The

The sun shone in the wilderness on a group of people, some familiar faces among them: King Wen of Zhou, Newton, Von Neumann, Aristotle, Mozi, Confucius, and Einstein. Sparsely distributed, they faced Qin Shi Huang, who stood on a rock with a sword across his shoulders. “I am not alone,” he said. “This is the core leadership of seven speaking.”

Greeting him was a man named Zhang Xiang, the same young man who—along with Shi Qiang—had sent him off five years ago, and who now was in charge of security. He had aged considerably in five years and now looked like a middle-aged man.