Chapter Forty-Eight Rise, Rise, Rise, Rise

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

RISE, RISE, RISE, RISE

Although we’ve done dream simulations for months, when the night of our strike against the gods comes, I’m not ready.

I don’t think it’s possible to be ready for something like this.

Taiping’s entire body trembles as she hands us her calculations after checking them one last time. A lot are estimations at best. The gods don’t allow us to look too closely upward. What’s sure is that the distance to the heavens is so immense that we have to launch off while the Heavenly Court is halfway around the world to have any hope of intercepting it. Our timing must be precise, or we’ll die for nothing. Likely, we will. There’s so much that could go wrong, my knees wobble when I think of the possibilities. We don’t know what the gods could do to repel us once they realize we’re coming. If they could slow down the Heavenly Court, pull it out of its trajectory, or blast us out of the sky. But better to die fighting back than spend a lifetime wondering what could’ve happened if we’d been braver.

Taiping drives me and Qin Zheng to the Yellow Dragon, twined as usual around Mount Ziwei. Once we get to the Dragon’s head, we share a silent goodbye in the carriage. I clench Taiping’s hands, trying to convey everything in my heart without making a sound.

Thank you for helping us with this madness.

Thank you for living as boldly as you do.

Thank you for being there for me like Big Sister once was.

I am no stranger to the decision to throw my life away. Only this time do I feel a twinge of regret. I’ll miss Taiping, Wan’er, Qieluo, the Phoenix Ladies, and the other Iron Widows, all sisters--in-arms I wish I could’ve had more time with.

Tears shine in Taiping’s eyes. She bites her lip, mouth twisting with a stifled sob.

I could hold on to her for an eternity, but Qin Zheng pats my elbow and gives Taiping an envelope—his last will, packed with instructions on what to do after we set off. For the next five days, she’s to tell everyone we’re sick while getting Qieluo and Yang Jian—the next most high-ranking pilots—to prepare for their likely ascension to leadership. If five days pass and we’re not back, they can announce our deaths and proceed with the transfer of power.

There remain so many problems everywhere that it’s impossible to feel secure in letting go, but we did all we could. It was never feasible for us to wait until the revolution was truly secure in any sense before leaving. The gods wouldn’t have let Qin Zheng live to that point, because they know the first thing he’d do after that is challenge them. The gamble we’re taking by abandoning everything so abruptly is our biggest element of surprise.

We have broken the old order and uprooted its rotting pedestals of power. Every level of government is filled with scholar-bureaucrats from the lower classes, who only got their chance to rise because of the revolution. Vanguards elected by their peers and educated in revolutionary theory keep every community organized and connected. We’ll have to trust them to keep the momentum going. The revolution was never mine or Qin Zheng’s. It belongs to the millions of ordinary people who’ve always dreamed of a better life.

I think of the writings Wan’er and Di Renjie shared with me. So much of it sounded impossible and unrealistic, pipe dreams that would shatter under human greed if brought out of the pages, yet those authors refused to accept despair and dared to imagine more. They burned bright for a future they may not see, fighting and dying and sometimes winning despite insurmountable odds.

They came before, and they will come after. I see now that I am part of a long tradition that cannot be extinguished, and this strike against the heavens will be my ultimate act of revolution.

Qin Zheng opens the carriage door. I shiver at the wind that blows over us when we get out. Taiping and I regard each other for one long, final moment before she pulls the carriage door shut. After another reluctant pause, she drives off. With the way we’re about to take off in the Yellow Dragon, it’ll be too dangerous for her to stick around.

I let out a trapped breath, blinking my vision clear. Tears slip down my cheeks while I watch the carriage disappear down the mountain road. The whir of its engine fades into the ambient sound of rustling leaves.

Qin Zheng moves toward the Dragon’s head, but he does a double take looking at the sea of lights beneath the mountain.

“I never got a chance to see much of the city,” he remarks.

In his eyes, there is not so much longing as there is confusion. I don’t think he ever got over the feeling of being unfastened from time, lost in a world he doesn’t recognize. He never stopped calling this “the future.”

“It’s overrated.” I walk past him with my scythe. “Come on.”

Once we climb into the cockpit, I split my armor at the front, pull out my eight-month pregnancy padding, and abort it behind me.

“Oh, no, not our son,” Qin Zheng says, his tone utterly flat.

“No, that’s yours and Yizhi’s baby.”

“I told Auntie Wei to name him Fusu, you know. Like that folk song. ‘ There are fúsū trees on the mountain; there are lotuses in the pond .’?” He carries half a tune. “Do they still sing it in your era?”

“No. Never heard it.”

He sighs.

Half a step from the pilot seats, the full absurdity of what we’re about to do hits me. It’s the two of us against gods , beings who live in the sky . How did we think this was a good idea?

“Zetian…”

My head snaps up. I can’t remember the last time Qin Zheng uttered my name.

He lifts my hand, running his thumb over my knuckles. His throat bobs. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” I search his face, cradled by the ghostly moonlight coming through the Dragon’s open snout.

“For being the way I am. This world has not made me kind.”

Something goes off balance inside me. Maybe I’m just overwhelmed by the impossible odds, but a fresh surge of tears loosens from my eyes. Without thinking, I throw my arms around him.

After a slight delay, he holds me tight.

“Same here,” I say near the rapid beating of his heart, audible through his armor.

Those like us were not meant to be kind. We were born to rage and burn and destroy all that must be destroyed, so that maybe, one day, much better people than us can live in a world where they’re rewarded for their kindness instead of having it twisted to bind them.

When we move apart, our resolve is reflected in each other’s eyes. In these last hours of our very different lives, despite all the clashes we’ve had, here we stand in solidarity. We are no longer an emperor and empress but two mad fools aiming to break out of a planetary prison.

Let it be known that there once lived two mortals who dared to challenge the gods.

With a cold rush of his qì, our crowns morph into assault-mode helmets, antlered and extending down around our shoulders in overlapping, flexible plates.

“One chance,” Qin Zheng remarks, as though laughing at ourselves. “One chance and no more.”

“Let’s take it,” I say.

Hands clasped, we head up to the pilot seats. I attach my scythe to the floor. Once we settle in, we shut the Dragon’s snout, plunging our bodies into darkness and our minds into the battle link.

After I adjust to perceiving the world through the Yellow Dragon, the yīn-yáng realm steadies in my mind. Qin Zheng’s spirit form sits cross-legged beside me like he’s meditating. Taiping’s schematics appear before us, along with several measures keeping track of everything from time to speed to altitude. I try not to let my mind influence them. Qin Zheng is the one who can better estimate how fast the Dragon is going at any given time.

At least, I hope he can.

The timer ticks down toward zero. Pushing the Dragon up with its claws, we lift its great head and reposition its body so it’s coiled like a spring near the mountaintop. Dirt, vegetation, and rubble from the Palace of Sages tumble down the mountainside with our every colossal motion.

When the timer hits zero, there’s nothing more to do but launch up with a burst of qì.

It feels like regular flying at first as we undulate the Dragon through the air. We don’t go straight up, but diagonally, mindful of Taiping’s insistence that we not ignore the “horizontal velocity.” The Heavenly Court travels at a breakneck speed around the planet. If we don’t match that speed in the direction it’s going, we’ll splatter against it like a bug into a truck window.

Wind roars in the Dragon’s face as we accelerate. The lights of Chang’an pull away below, skyscrapers turning as small as glittering grains of sand. Mountains pass into insignificance. Clouds flit past us as we lash the Dragon’s body to build momentum, whipping faster and faster. Higher and higher we go, fighting the pull of the planet itself, the law of nature which decrees that all that goes up must come down.

This is the law we must break to be free.

Despite all our dream realm rehearsals, after a certain height, none of those simulated sensations come close to the true weight of gravity under challenge. It crushes down on us without mercy, punishing us for our insolence.

It’s too much.

This is impossible.

What were we thinking?

This is not going to work .

I edge close to giving up, but then the image of us plummeting to our death like Di Renjie and Wei Zifu lurches in my consciousness. We’ve spilled too much blood to not carry this through for our people. I reorient the world in my mind, imagining us plunging down from the earth and into the stars.

When it feels like we can’t possibly strain any further, Qin Zheng ignites the Dragon’s tail, consuming its own spirit metal to propel us higher. After getting a sense of how he does it, I help him. The Dragon blazes like a meteor in reverse, smoothing out in shape until it’s no longer a dragon but a blade tearing through the fabric of reality.

It feels like becoming pure scorching heat, pure blinding light in a vortex of fluttering air. Every fiber and connection that makes up who I am stretches to the brink of snapping.

There is no yīn-yáng realm anymore, just a wild spilling storm of both our memories. His child self screams for me from his lab cell. My child self grasps at him from my village home. Two people who were never supposed to meet, coming together through sheer defiance of fate, for one singular purpose. It’s such agony, burning alive, that I regret every choice that brought me here, from crushing the Palace of Sages to resurrecting Qin Zheng to enlisting as Yang Guang’s concubine. Everything would’ve been so much easier if I’d stayed in my village and become a peasant’s wife. What about housework and pregnancy and motherhood did I think I couldn’t endure? At least I wouldn’t be trying to fly to the stars to kill gods .

Focus , comes Qin Zheng’s most dire sentiment, felt more than heard.

Right. It’s up to me to keep us on track with the Heavenly Court.

I reach and grope for Shimin’s spirit signature, but the world is nothing but wind and heat and agony. A flash of memory from Qin Zheng shows a man getting torn apart by five horses galloping in five directions. Never have I found such anguish so relatable.

But I cannot give up. I cannot give up. I cannot give up . I’ve come too far to give up. All this pain I feel, all the pain I caused to survive to this moment, will mean nothing if I give up.

I am not a mortal bound to earth. I am a collection of electric signals, pure human willpower concentrated on one objective—

“ Rise ,” Big Sister tells me, standing in the stream Yizhi and I scattered her ashes in.

“ Rise ,” Xiuying hisses at me, crushed inside the Black Tortoise.

“ Rise ,” Di Renjie and Wei Zifu demand of me on a battlefield full of both flesh and metal carcasses.

“ Rise! ” Shimin calls for me in a shower of light as bright as the sun.

There!

It’s like bursting into a breath of air after a treacherous climb from the deepest ocean bottom. I can feel an inkling of Shimin’s spirit signature. I know I can.

I reel the Dragon sideways, angling into its path.

We are running out of spirit metal! Qin Zheng’s concern reaches me. It jolts me into the awareness that the Dragon has burned down to barely more than the mass that made up its head.

Just a little more! I plead. We can make it. We have to make it!

Shimin’s spirit signature draws steadily closer. At the edge of the Dragon’s warped vision—I’m not sure what we’re even seeing out of at this point—a silver speck hurtles out of boundless darkness. I give a primal cry of both awe and terror while curving into its trajectory. The speck rapidly enlarges into a structure of twin rings attached to a long axis—exactly what we expected.

Except it’s one thing to imagine it and another to see it coming in real life. Horror dawns on me as its true size becomes clear, like a whole city chasing after us. Even the sides of its gargantuan rings dwarf us beyond comprehension. We really are no more than bugs compared to that thing. Every impulse in me screams to get out of its way, but that’s no longer possible.

Before we could ever have been prepared, the Heavenly Court smashes into us.