Chapter 3: chapter 3 : Roots first, then sky.
The air hung heavy with the scent of aged stone and iron—a metallic whisper of empires long buried.
Long Su's boots echoed sharply against the black jade floor as he stepped into the vaulted hall, his pulse quickening at the sight of the throne.
It loomed atop a dais of cracked onyx, its scaled arms carved into coiling dragons, their gemstone eyes glinting like frozen stars.
this throne and main hall looks exactly like the throne in Zhangtai Palace, the main palace of the Qin Dynasty
but just smaller and the majestic feelings no longer in the atmosphere
He climbed the steps, the silence around his is so thick it pressed against his eardrums.
The throne's gold leaf flaked beneath his touch as he sat, cold seeping through his robes.
For three breaths—four—he waited. Nothing.
"Long live Daqin!"
His voice ricocheted off the walls. The dragons stared.
The hall swallowed his words.
Did he expect trumpets? A chorus of long-dead ministers? He gripped the armrests, nails scraping grooves into the gilded serpents.
"Long live the First Empire!"
Silence.
"Long live moonlight!"
desperation sharpening the edge of his tone
"Long live the sky, damn it nothing works!"
His shout dissolved into quiet.
Sweat prickled his collar. Somewhere, water dripped—a slow, mocking cadence.
'Think.' His gaze raked the throne. Every scale, every claw was a cipher. He traced the spine of a carved qilin, its mane a labyrinth of fractures.
"how to activate the palace abilities?" he muttered, half to himself, half to the shadows. 'Blood? Oaths?'
While he was thinking a dry click made him freeze.
The skeletons stood below the throne
they followed him.
He'd almost forgotten them—ten bone-slaves flanking the dais, jaws slack, eye sockets voids.
They stood motionless, like statues made of bone.
Their fingers curled like dead branches, still clutching rusted halberds.
One tilted its skull, vertebrae creaking.
For a wild moment, he swore its hollow gaze followed him.
"You." Long Su rose, voice steadier than he felt. "Do you remember this place? Are you old Qin people?"
No answer.
Dead silent filled the void.
He laughed, bitter. 'Asking skeleton slaves for answers. How far you've fallen long su '
But when his hand brushed the throne's central dragon—a black bird with smoke like tails fly out of the Imperial Seal from the top of the throne
his breath hitched.
.
He pressed his palm in the throne fearing that any movement may destroy or cut the balck bird action
'Finally he konw a way to activate the palace power '
Looking at the small black bird and how he circle the throne room
Until he fly to a single skeleton and pass through it
the skeletons shuddered and fallsdown.
The actual movement was normal
until the moment of clashing with the skeleton that happened very fast that didn't allow long su to see where the balck bird disappeared after tye skeleton falls down
Long Su moved from the throne
heart hammering, as the skeleton slave bone magically re groped and the dead skeleton come to life again
Its jaw dropped, emitting a sound with a name : "Zh… H.."
He froze. "Zhen? *Zhen* what? Speak!"
"Zh… H.."
The skeleton slave keep saying the same broken name
After trying many times but still nothing can be understand from the skeleton mouth
Time is running out, he need to return to the blue star
He turned around to face remaining skeleton slaves in the main hall, who were still standing like statues.
He gave the command,
"Protect the palace while I'm away."
"Allow no one to enter or harm it in my absence."
With their empty eyes fixed forward, the skeletal slaves gave a dutiful nod.
Suddenly, the skeleton who spoke of moved, its joints creaking and popping as it turned to face Long Su.
Its mouth opened as if to speak, but no sound came out, and then it returned to its old soulless state again.
Long Su couldn't help but feel a little uncomfortable.
Their skeletons and lifeless appearances were disturbing, despite their obedience and loyalty.
Long Su took one last look around the throne room before returning to the playground through the magical portal.
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The throne room's chill clung to Long Su's bones even as the portal spat him back into sunlight.
He staggered, asphalt biting his palms, the scent of sweat and trampled grass replacing ancient stone.
The magic circle in the center of the playground disappeared, and no ethereal light could be seen anywhere
Around him, the world snapped into focus—student's shouts, a whistle blaring, the acidic tang of failure thick in the air.
But not all the people happy, There were even a few girls with tears flowing over them.
Just hearing their crying, you can imagine that they lost this opportunity to become a lord.
Clink.
A girl's hairpin hit the ground beside him, its pearl cracking as she tore at her uniform collar.
"Nine years preparing! Nine!" Her voice frayed at the edges.
A boy nearby vomited into hydrangeas, his shoulders heaving like a bellows.
Long Su's fingers found his own wrist—pulse rabbiting, alive, chosen—as he counted the survivors.
Thirty-four. Thirty-five if you included the kid catatonic by the swings.
' many people didn't come back '
This thought come to his mind as he look at the numbers of students numbers
There are not many people who can awaken the Lord's talent.
Only about one in twenty and some years one in fifty
In the Dragon Kingdom, normal students have two choices for study.
One option is to awaken the lord's ability, take the lord's exclusive high school entrance exam
attend a lord-specific school, and serve in the armed forces and police after graduation.
Students who have failed to awaken their Lord's talents can only take the standard high school entrance exam and the college entrance exam.
become an unhappy worker who might die in other domains monster attacks while doing a jop his boss order him to do outside the city
As a result, awakening the Lord's talent is equal to designing a new and better degree of lifestyle.
But the story is different for the rich family they can use other mean to increase their strength and level and some of them even stronger then the lord's itself
But this ways are far away from the hands of normal family's
Under the the fees of long su a fant light shining with mixed kind of different colors
This colorful colors means long su success awakens his Lord's seed world.
A middle-aged teacher approached him and said, "Student, congratulations on your lord awakening. "
"You can go to your home now and come back early tomorrow to get familiar with your new Lord classroom."
"Okay, thank you teacher." Until now, he did not have any time to study the new memories and understand his new life.
From class to the playground and entering the river of time, everything's happened quickly, and he did not have time to understand everything.
Hearing that he could go home, he nodded quickly.
Tracing the way home using ' long su ' memories.
It took no more than 10 minutes of walking, and he arrived at a two-story house with a beautiful front garden.
Rotten magnolias. His mother's favorite.
The garden was a graveyard of blooms now—petals blackened, stems oozing sap like congealed blood.
She'd weep to see it like this.
The thought came unbidden, accompanied by a memory-flash: Small hands buried in soil, a woman's voice singing
"Grow strong, Su'er. Roots first, then sky."
Keys jammed in the rusted lock.
Inside, dust motes swirled in shafts of amber light, catching on the portrait above the stairs.
Their faces were still a punch to the gut. His nose. Her stubborn chin.
Both gone before he'd memorized the sound of their laughter.
He traced the photo's gilded edge. "You die and left me alone " he whispered. The glass fogged where his breath hit. "I'll take your revenge as you son and live happily life, so don't worry about me."
The floorboard creaked like a mourner's wail as Long Su circled the parlor.
Dust motes swirled in the late afternoon light, catching on the lone photograph like fireflies drawn to a grave.
He stopped mid-step, fist clenching at his side. ' Don't look. Keep moving.'
But his feet betrayed him, carrying him to the table where the frame sat askew, its corners rusted.
The glass was cold. His breath fogged their faces first—a man with laugh lines deeper than sword scars, a woman whose smile outshone the mountain vista behind them.
Their arms looped around each other's waists, knuckles whitening with the force of their grip. '
'As if they knew' he thought.
As if they clung tight against whatever storm took them.
A flicker behind his ribs—not his pulse.
The ghost of the boy who'd once traced these faces with grubby fingers. 'You're still here' Long Su realized, palm pressing harder against the glass.
A phantom ache bloomed in his left knee—childhood scar from the cherry tree—and suddenly he was six again, sobbing into a policeman's coat as the man said "Accident… no remains…"
Only this words that kept to himself over and over again in the mind of a lonely six years old little boy
He approached the table and took up the parents photograph
Long Su couldn't help but feel sad and lost as he gazed at the photo.
He realized that he had taken over this body and that he had destroyed the former owner's existence.
But feelings for his family still deep down his heart
He pondered how the couple in the photos would react if they realized what had happened to their child.
Even though the original owner didn't have many memories about them
maybe the death of parents to a child who was 6 years old made him love the death element and work hard to make his world seed have death attributes
Despite these thoughts, Long Su felt a sense of motivation and purpose.
He understood he had the obligation to do; someone who knows nothing about this world anticipates the memory of 'long su '.
" I'm now long su , your parents are my parents and I will avenge them no matter how long it takes "
As a new long su, he will seek to solve the murder of his parents.
He returned the photograph to the table, gave it one long, lingering glance, and then went around to the bedroom
The stairs groaned as he climbed. His new-old room stank of camphor and obsession.
Newspaper clippings papered the walls—" death lord Massacre a full alien city", "Soul smith CEO Acquitted create new undead weapons " — many connected by red marks wherever you see something that mention the death elements and undead words .
In the corner a child's desk crouched beneath the window, its surface scarred with knife marks.
Lonely, depression, anger
Only this feelings spread everywhere in the room
Long Su ran a thumb over the deepest many newspaper in the ground .
He lay down on his bed with the thoughts that he need to study all the memories from big and small to be a start point of the beginning of his new life.
confront the challenges that awaited him on the path to creating his world.
But when he lay back, the mattress swallowed him whole and surrender to sleep