"Zachary Ying and the Dragon Emperor" by Xiran Jay Zhao, Chapters 8–11

Colorful panels appeared before her, looking suspiciously like the cards that represented your roster in Mythrealm—except instead of myth creatures, they each had a watercolor painting of a person in ancient Chinese garb.

The emperors can summon subordinates from their dynasty if they’re also legendary, but it takes a lot of qi to fuel the magic.

The bottom of his belted tunic billowed above his boots.

With the grace of a cloud, he fell to his knees before her and prostrated himself with his hands flat on the ground.

“I’ve got my own legendary subordinate to summon,” Tang Taizong said, the sudden cockiness to his tone giving Zack whiplash compared to Simon’s demure one.

“Arise, Cheng Yaojin, brash warrior of legend!”

As he fired a more concentrated torrent of daggers at Zack, Zack swung the sword over his shoulder.

“This is a spirit construct of the Tai’e sword, heirloom sword of Qin,” Qin Shi Huang explained out loud, tone holding a reverence Zack didn’t think he was capable of.

Jing Ke and Gao Jianli convulsed against the spirit blade together, grunting. The sword was so long that it’d gotten them both.

I had a clear agenda, and I worked my entire life at achieving it. I wasn’t one of those knuckleheaded tyrants who wasted their power on self-destructive indulgence.

Sometimes I get called the Nero of China because we both had issues with our mothers. I resent that. I was far more productive than he ever was.

If I recall correctly, almost all of your American founding fathers owned slaves, despite claiming to be advocates for liberty for all. At least I never spewed such a blatant lie.

A major war had broken out between Qin and Zhao a couple of years before I was born. It had ended with Qin burying four hundred thousand Zhao soldiers alive and then besieging its capital.

Qin Shi Huang’s form shifted again, this time on par with Cinderella. His face full of cuts and bruises vanished. His long hair untangled and became half tied up into a neat style.

I wasn’t nearly as well-mannered or charismatic as my younger half brother, who my father had had with a proper princess of another state.

Maybe I would’ve been deposed in favor of my brother, but...

I fought off an invasion by a coalition of the six other states.

I quelled a rebellion by my brother and grandmother.

“Being raised by single mothers, being ostracized for an association with a country you didn’t even grow up in, being forever caught between two worlds?”

“And no one else in history can say they did it as well as me.”
“Now you’re just humblebragging!”
"Kid,” Qin Shi Huang scoffed. "There’s nothing humble about me.”

It’s this famous mythical island where Daoist sages cultivate magical pills that can grant immortality.

She slogged to the kitchen in an oversized T-shirt, pajama pants, and fuzzy bunny slippers.

"Sometimes she likes to pretend we’re actually Tang Taizong and Wu Zetian.”
“This is why you didn’t get custody of the kids," Melissa deadpanned while stabbing a thin straw into the foil lid of her yogurt.

He would just look weird and petty, going after a bunch of kids.

They meandered through a small street to get there.

Hui Muslims were unique in maintaining a tradition of female-led mosques, which Zack’s mom, being a Muslim feminist who followed a more liberal view of the Quran, often boasted about.

Melissa chimed in with explanations of how trade between East and West had flourished during the Yuan dynasty, when the Mongols had taken over everything and basically forced everyone to intermingle.

Spirits are kept strong and whole because of legends, but legends can get muddled. There’s this pretty popular rumor that Wu Zetian killed her baby daughter to frame the empress before her and take her place. I don’t believe she did it—it only popped up in history books long after she died—but when I asked her if she did, she said she honestly didn’t know.

Like, Tang Taizong says King Yanluo actually barged into the Chinese underworld and vanquished Houtu, the previous native Chinese ruler. There aren’t any explicit legends about this, but it did make Houtu fade from popular belief, and only afterward did Chinese people start telling stories about King Yanluo.

Another wave of tears surged in Zack’s eyes. He swallowed through a lump in his throat, trying his best to look nonchalant.

This included the Old Dragon’s Head, where the Great Wall’s eastern end stretched into the sea over a beach crowded with tourists. Zack’s portal-lens gave a brief history of it. From a distance, it really did look like a pixel rendition of a Chinese dragon, with its horns being formed by a square watchtower.

Her grandson Boyi became the minister of animal husbandry for the mythical King Shun. Our people have a tradition of being good with animals, particularly horses and birds.

LADY MENG JIANG
Lived: ?–? BCE
Protagonist of one of China’s Four Great Folktales. Husband was conscripted to build a defense wall but died during the process.

The door was a single reach away, yet Zack’s hand lay lifeless in the dithering light cast through the doorway, refusing to respond to him.

The crewman held his hands up as if approaching a rabid animal.

The incessantly cawing seagulls crowded in the air above.

Vaguely he saw a smattering of splashes as seagulls tried to dive after him, but they quickly flapped back out.

Light streamed out of Tang Taizong’s chest. In whimsical blooms like red watercolor, a man spun out of it.

LI BAI
“The Sage of Poetry”
Lived: 701–762 CE
The most distinguished poet in Chinese history.

Traveled all over China during the height of the Tang dynasty, left thousands of poems that could “make ghosts and gods weep” (as attested by fellow poet Du Fu).