Chapter 1 Emperor
Chapter 1 Emperor
The dripping sound of the clepsydra sounded six times, and Li Wuxiang woke up from his sleep. He squinted his eyes and frowned, and took a short while to adapt to the light from the long-burning lamp on the wall, then slowly sat up from the bed and began to put on the dark yellow dragon robe.
The dragon robe was already very worn out, with the cuffs and hem torn into strips, the back and chest full of holes, and the fabric rotten. Therefore, he did not dare to use too much force and put it on carefully.
Then he walked to the door and stood by the rough stone wall, waiting patiently. After about ten breaths, a piece of iron plate on the wall popped open, and two fist-sized black balls rolled out. Li Wuxiang made himself look anxious and happy, and couldn't wait to catch them and took a bite immediately.
Dry, astringent, and slightly salty. It was a mixture of grains, dried meat, vegetable shreds, and perhaps some medicinal herbs. It was hard to swallow. But he forced himself to eat one of them in big mouthfuls, then lay down beside the stone pool and drank a few sips of the slightly fishy water.
This was his breakfast.
Next up is the morning court session.
He pushed the door open and walked out, passing through a narrow, dark stone corridor and entering another stone chamber. The stone chamber was quite spacious, but had no doors or windows. There were also burning lamps on the walls. At the north end of the stone chamber was a nine-dragon throne carved from granite. Li Wuxiang walked over slowly and sat on the throne.
Now, he can see his civil and military officials in this Golden Palace.
There were two rows of dry bones, short and slender, which looked like they had once belonged to children or teenagers, extending from the stone steps of the throne to the darkness in the distance that could not be illuminated by the eternal lamp. The clothes on the dry bones were also rotten, and there were black stains on the robes and bones, which were the traces left after the body rotted, decomposed, and dried in the shade after death.
"If you have something to report, please come forward. If not, please dismiss the court." Li Wuxiang spoke weakly, then leaned back in the stone chair and stared at them.
He didn't hear any response. The withered bones stared at him with their dark eyes. The stone chamber was extremely quiet, with only the occasional crackling sound of the burning eternal lamp.
But he did not leave in a hurry. Instead, he continued to sit upright, looking blankly at the officials in front of him and the darkness in the distance.
He had to sit like this for two full hours before he could leave the throne to walk around and rest. For a traverser who had just occupied this body more than ten days ago, this process was quite difficult, but he told himself that if he wanted to survive, he had to adapt.
Because he was very sure that somewhere in the darkness, there was someone or something observing him.
Today is the eleventh day that Li Wuxiang has been in this body, and it is also the first day that he has finally escaped the risk of going crazy and losing his mind.
The first time he woke up in this body, he almost went crazy. It wasn't because the original owner of this body was a lunatic or had some mental disability, but because his memory and worldview were extremely weird and crazy.
In the original owner's cognition, he was an emperor, the sixteenth emperor of a dynasty called "Daye", and his name was "Li Wuxiang". Daye ruled the whole world, and "the whole world" referred to four rooms - the "bedroom" where he slept, two large bedrooms where one hundred "civil and military officials" lived, the Golden Throne Hall where he was currently, and a toilet.
This was the whole world as he knew it. There were only one hundred and one people in the whole world, including him... no, there was also a god - in the deepest part of his and his civil and military officials' memories, there had been a one hundred and second person who educated them about age, respect, hierarchy, and language, and who tortured those who did not abide by the order of this "world".
When they all learned how to stay in their own positions, the "god" disappeared. For the next ten or more years, the 101 people lived in this world consisting of four stone rooms without doors or windows. Their food consisted of two dumplings "given by God" that rolled out from behind the iron plate on the wall every day, as well as water that seeped from the stone wall.
The original owner had only the most basic language skills and mastered very few words. What he did every day was extremely monotonous: eating, going to the Golden Throne Hall to announce the start of court, sitting in meditation, taking a short rest, continuing to sit in meditation, and then sleeping.
Therefore, after traveling into such a body, such memories, worldview, and thinking ability almost immediately shattered his mind. It took him about three days to barely regain the concept of "himself", and another seven days to gradually distinguish "himself" from "the original owner" and establish a normal way of thinking.
But the memories of his true self had almost all turned into a mess in his head. He couldn't even remember his own name, and could only continue to call himself "Li Wuxiang". And now, there was another problem - according to the memory of the original owner, Li Wuxiang was very sure that the 102nd person, the "god", had been observing this small world called Daye from beginning to end, and had begun to kill everyone here in the past year.
Even now, he should be watching him somewhere.
Li Wuxiang exhaled lightly, letting his eyes continue to maintain a foolish and confused look. At the same time, he moved his body slightly and let his gaze quickly scan every corner of the stone chamber.
Almost all of the withered bones in front of him died of cannibalism. Since a year ago, the food given by the "gods" has been gradually reduced, and only the "emperor's" room occasionally has dumplings and water. The original owner was a little smarter than his "officials", and the respect and hierarchy left in their hearts by the "gods" also played a role. Therefore, when everyone killed each other, only the emperor survived.
The original owner didn't seem to understand the concept of "death". He rearranged the corpses on the throne and let them rot. At the same time, he continued to repeat what he had done every day for the past ten years. Until a month ago, no food rolled out of his room anymore.
This is probably how the original owner starved to death.
In recent days, Li Wu has made some intermittent speculations about his situation.
He initially thought that this might be a large-scale social experiment. In his original world, some ancient kings wanted to find out whether "language" would emerge spontaneously, so they placed babies in an isolated environment and did not allow anyone to communicate with them in order to observe the results.
But no one has ever been so crazy as to lock up one hundred and one people in such a small space for more than ten years.
Yes, more than ten years - there is no concept of time here, and there is no change of day and night. Li Wuxiang can only piece together some clues from the original owner's memory: the original owner had a wet dream about three years ago, which means he has entered puberty.
For this reason, Li Wuxiang felt that there might be supernatural powers in the world where these four stone chambers were located.
The evidence is the other dumpling he is still holding in his hand.
He pretended to want to take another bite and looked down at the thing. It looked like it was steamed, with a very bad texture and taste. Occasionally, you could taste small stones, and the dried meat and vegetable pieces inside were also of different sizes. But it was this kind of thing that allowed more than a hundred teenagers who had been trapped in a dark room for a long time, lacking light and fruit, to grow into their teens relatively healthily, which meant that this kind of food could provide extremely balanced nutrition.
Both supernatural powers and extremely high levels of technology can achieve this, but the food produced by the latter would never be as crude and completely disregard taste as it is now.
Another piece of evidence was the wall. Li Wuxiang cast his eyes on the wall and the ground. There were obvious traces of chiseling on the rough stone wall - but in the world he came from, this kind of stone could be cut quite smoothly.
However, there is still one question left:
Why did the "god" choose their identities, establish their status, and make them form a deformed and weird little society, but discipline them to repeat the same life pattern day after day? This is completely contrary to the purpose of the "social experiment", and it is more like...
Li Wuxiang tensed his body slightly and took a deep breath. A thought inexplicably popped out from the depths of his disturbed memory.
Some kind of sacrificial ritual.
The new book has been updated. The number is 24 words per day. If there are two updates, they will be published at 05:8 and 24:05 am every day. If two chapters are combined into one, it will be published at : every day.
(End of this chapter)