The Almighty Dominance (by Sunshine) novel Chapter 664

One year ago.

The lantern light in the governor’s private study had burned low. Changyi’s night sounds drifted up from the streets below—distant laughter from a tavern, the creak of a night watchman’s boots.

Alex stood at the tall window, hands clasped behind his back, watching the city.

Zhuge Liang spoke. “My Lord. Dong Zhuo holds the Emperor like a trophy. Yuan Shao and the other warlords circle the capital, each one dreaming of the dragon throne. Every ambitious man in Xia wants to be king.” He paused. “Don’t you?”

Alex turned. The cold smile that touched his mouth did not reach his eyes.

“A man has to dare to dream big,” he said. “But a man also has to know the difference between an opportunity and the kind of temptation that burns everything he’s built to ash.”

He stepped away from the window and began to pace.

“If I reach for the throne now, every warlord from here to Luoyang will mark Yan and Qing as the next battlefield. We cannot hold off attacks from one side, let alone two or three. Not while our dikes are still half-finished and our granaries are still filling. Better to let them bleed each other dry while we finish what we started here.”

Zhuge Liang inclined his head, the respect in the gesture genuine. “There is an old saying. To know oneself is fifty percent of victory. To know one’s enemy is another fifty. To know both is one hundred percent. You are wise.”

Alex threw his head back and laughed, the sound raw and unfiltered, echoing off the walls like a challenge. “Don’t you think, as a man, I have to throw myself into this chaotic dream of becoming a dragon too?”

He leaned forward, voice dropping. “Or is it too shameful for someone like me to even try?”

A heavy silence stretched between them. Then came the wary reply: “So you’re joining them?”

“Yes,” Alex said. “But on my way. Have you ever heard the saying, ‘They go high, we go low’?”

Zhuge Liang’s eyebrows lifted a fraction. “Enlighten me, my lord.”

Alex stopped pacing.

“Yuan Shao and Dong Zhuo have been sending beautiful women to us. Spies in silk. Knives with painted smiles. If they can play that game, why shouldn’t we?”

“You mean to send our women to Dong Zhuo and Yuan Shao?” Zhuge Liang asked carefully.

“No.” Alex’s eyes were hard as winter flint. “We send them to the Emperor himself.”

Zhuge Liang did not move, but something shifted behind his calm expression—calculation, and the beginning of understanding.

Alex continued.

“We build the harem mansion not for my pleasure, but as a forge. We select women who are not only beautiful but intelligent, disciplined, and loyal. We train them in court etiquette, in the art of conversation that reveals nothing and learns everything, in the patience required to wait months for a single useful conversation. We teach them how to move through a palace without ever appearing to be moving toward anything in particular.”

He turned back to the window, watching the distant lights.

“We send them in small groups, disguised under every plausible cover we can devise—daughters of merchants chasing richer markets, entertainers endorsed by friendly officials, or gifts from minor lords indebted to us. They move openly through the provinces at first. This serves two vital purposes: it plants the rumor that Yan and Qing have become havens of refinement and safety, while giving our women essential practice before the true contest begins in the capital.”

“Our real target has always been the capital,” Alex continued. “Always the emperor’s side.”

“Dong Zhuo is far too preoccupied with his own appetites—power, women, and the terror he inspires in others—to properly guard a mere fourteen-year-old boy. He believes the Emperor is a puppet he already holds by the strings. He fails to see the threat of allowing well-placed women into the inner chambers.”

“So we will seize that opening. We will place our women beside the king. Imagine it: a young emperor raised in nothing but fear and isolation… how desperately he will crave genuine warmth and attention—especially when it arrives draped in silk and delivered with quiet, razor-sharp intelligence.”

“What exactly is your aim?” Zhuge Liang inquired, his sharp eyes narrowing slightly. “It serves no purpose to win the emperor’s favor. He is merely a puppet, controlled by others. He possesses no authority of his own.”

Alex faced Zhuge Liang fully now.

“There is an old saying. If you are patient enough to sit by the river, you will eventually see the bodies of your enemies float past.”

Zhuge Liang nodded once, slow and deliberate. “Everyone meets their end if one waits with sufficient patience.”

“Exactly,” Alex said. “Dong Zhuo’s position is already cracking. Yuan Shao wants his head. Others want the power he wields. There will be a moment—a gap—when he is weak, reckless, or dead. In that chaos the Emperor will be exposed.”

“If we already have people close to him—people he trusts—the inner doors will swing open without us needing to send a single soldier toward the capital. Our agents will lie hidden in the city, prepared to act. When the boy sees the path we have opened for him, he will follow our people here. There is no need to storm the throne.”

Zhuge Liang bowed his head, deeper than before.

“You are wise, my lord.”

And so Alex waited patiently as time slowly passed. A few weeks later...

The great hall of the imperial palace reeked of spilled wine and anger.

Torches guttered along the walls as Dong Zhuo’s bulk filled the doorway, his face purple with rage. Lü Bu stood in the center of the room, halberd planted like a standard, his broad shoulders rigid.

“You think I’m blind to how you stare at her?!” Dong Zhuo bellowed, flecks of spittle spraying from his mouth. Diao Chan, the greatest beauty in all the land, shrank behind a silk screen, her robes quivering. “My own adopted son—my sharpest sword—dares to covet what is mine?!”

Lü Bu’s jaw tightened. For a heartbeat the only sound was the crackle of flame and Diao Chan’s shallow breathing.

‘Extraction window confirmed. Yan-Qing team in position beyond the western gate. Move within the hour. The boy must not be seen. Move to evacuate the emperor now.’

She gave no outward sign. Only a single, deliberate nod to the kitchen woman when their paths crossed near the scullery.

They gathered in the Emperor’s dim chamber as the sun bled red behind smoke rising from the city. The boy looked up, hollow-cheeked, eyes too large in his thin face. He did not speak. He had learned not to.

The kitchen woman knelt and offered a crust of bread wrapped in cloth. “Eat, Your Majesty. Quickly.”

He took it with both hands and devoured it in silence, crumbs catching on his lips.

The coordinator woman stepped forward. In her arms she carried a bundle of plain servant’s clothing—a faded gray tunic, a cap, a worn sash. “We must leave now. The generals are fighting for the palace itself. No one will notice one more servant boy among the refugees.”

The helper woman helped him change, her fingers quick and gentle. She wiped soot across his cheeks and forehead, dulling the pale skin that marked him as imperial. The smallest of the four kept watch at the door, listening to the clash of weapons growing closer in the outer halls.

When he was dressed, the coordinator woman crouched so her eyes were level with his. Her voice stayed low, steady, the way she had been trained.

“Lord Bai Xiaochun has never stopped being loyal to the true Son of Heaven. In Yan and Qing the fields are green, the granaries are full, and no one will lock you away or leave your plate empty. You will have safety. You will have dignity again. Food that is warm. People who bow because they choose to, not because they are forced. Come with us, Your Majesty. We will take you there.”

The boy’s small hand closed around the edge of her sleeve. For the first time in days, something like hope flickered behind the fear in his eyes. He nodded once.

They moved.

Through servant corridors thick with the smell of smoke and panic. Past a pair of soldiers arguing over a chest of silver—they pressed against the wall until the men moved on.

At the western service gate the fighting had already reached the inner wall; arrows hissed overhead and men screamed. The four women formed a loose square around the disguised Emperor, heads down, steps matching the desperate flow of people pouring out of the city.

Refugees streamed through the gate in a ragged tide—merchants dragging carts, mothers clutching children, old soldiers without masters. The women and the boy slipped into the current like stones in a river. Behind them the capital burned in patches as Dong Zhuo’s generals tore at each other for what was left of the empire.

They walked for days.

By night they sheltered in ruined farmhouses or the edges of refugee camps, sharing the hidden rice and whatever the women could barter or scavenge. The boy slept between them, wrapped in a threadbare blanket one of the women had stolen from a dead cart.

During the day they kept to the middle of the fleeing crowds, faces dirty, voices low. When patrols passed—men wearing the colors of one general or another—the women lowered their eyes and kept moving, the boy’s small hand always in one of theirs.

On the fifth night, as they crested a low hill and saw the first ordered lanterns of a Yan-Qing border outpost glowing in the distance, the kitchen woman finally let herself breathe. The boy looked up at the lights, then at the four women who had carried him through fire and hunger.

He did not smile. But the hollow look in his eyes had eased, just a little.