The Imperial Alchemist Read online

  The Imperial Alchemist

  A. H. Wang

  Contents

  Author’s Note on Pronunciation

  Map of East China Sea

  F A C T:

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Epilogue

  Enjoyed The Imperial Alchemist?

  Georgia Lee Series, Book Two

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright © A.H. Wang 2018

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without written permission from the author.

  www.AHWangAuthor.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  For any inquires regarding this book, please contact:

  [email protected]

  FOR MY HUSBAND…

  THE MUSE.

  Author’s Note on Pronunciation

  Here is a brief guide on how to pronounce some of the names of the characters and locations:

  Qin, Qi: The letter q is pronounced as ch in English. Hence, Qin is pronounced as Chin.

  Hsu Fu, Lu Hsing: In Chinese, hs is pronounced much like sh in English.

  Sun Quan: Again, q is pronounced as ch, and Sun here is pronounced as soon.

  Xi’an, Xianyang: Like hs, the letter x is pronounced much like sh in English.

  Wang Jian: Wang as in English father. The ian sounds like the currency yen.

  Zhifu: Zh is similar to the j sound in English.

  F A C T:

  221 BCE, China. After two centuries of war and turmoil between the Seven Warring States, a man named Qin Shi Huang conquered all others and unified China for the first time. The new Chinese empire was born, and this man proclaimed himself as its First Emperor.

  Keen to prolong his reign, Emperor Qin made many attempts at acquiring the elixir of life, of which the most well-known is the Voyage of Hsu Fu. In 210 BCE, Hsu Fu was sent to sail east with a fleet carrying hundreds of young men and women, in search of the mystical Penglai Mountain: the fabled home of the Eight Immortals.

  They never returned.

  Prologue

  211 BCE, China

  He was running out of time.

  Panic erupted in his chest as this realisation sank in. As if on cue, the emperor launched into another spasmodic coughing fit. His whole body quaked, the sound of his outburst echoing through the cavernous chamber. When the coughing finally ceased, he withdrew the golden silk handkerchief from his lips, and saw that it was stained red with blood.

  His hands trembled.

  The emperor looked about him, as if to check whether anyone else had noticed that the tremors were becoming more frequent. The imperial guards stood stock-still at their stations, looking dead ahead, as they had been trained to do. The court sorcerer, a decrepit hunchback, leaned over the sacrificial vessel, his face a picture of concentration on the task at hand. The entire imperial ancestral temple was silent, apart from the crackle of the fire burning steadily in the bronze vessel, throwing elongated shadows of the sorcerer onto the distant wall and ceiling.

  Emperor Qin shifted in his throne, watching as the sorcerer performed the pyromancy ritual, anxious for the whole thing to be finished. He needed answers. All of his hard work over the years—and for what? Who would look after all that he had achieved? His sons were imbeciles, weaklings who had no concept of how to rule a people. And he had too many enemies, men who would leap upon any signs of weakness. No doubt the vast land he had united would crumble back into war and chaos if he were to relinquish his reign.

  There was so much left to do. He had such a grand vision for the empire that he had just managed to amass.

  No, he was not about to give it all up now.

  He must live on.

  He watched as the sorcerer finished carving texts on a tortoise shell, anointing it with blood. The old man carefully placed it in the sacrificial vessel and stood back, his shadows dancing with the movement of the flames.

  Moments passed, and Emperor Qin grew impatient, shifting restlessly on his throne. After what seemed to be forever, a loud crack finally sounded from the vessel. With great fanfare the sorcerer stepped forward to retrieve the shell, picking it out of the flames with long pieces of bamboo. Qin leaned forward, expectant and anxious. He watched as the sorcerer placed the heated object on a platter, studying the cracks on its surface. The old man’s face was etched with the lines of time, all of which deepened as a crooked smile began to slowly spread across his lips.

  Qin felt a cold shiver rise up his spine.

  “Your Majesty,” said the sorcerer, now bowing before the emperor, his voice the hoarse whisper that Qin had always found chillingly disconcerting. The old man extended his arms, offering the cooled shell in his splayed palms. “The gods have granted an answer to your query.”

  2015, China

  Georgia Lee watches in agitated silence as the four men grunt with exertion, using a long steel rod to lever a large rock away from the entrance. The round stone holds stubbornly at first, then shifts ever so slightly, gaining momentum, and rolls a few paces before stopping again. A narrow hole about a metre in height is revealed, exhaling a sigh of thick, stale air.

  The entire excavation team draws in an audible breath, the anticipation amongst them palpable.

  “That’s great,” Georgia calls out, and the men with the long rod throw relieved glances at her, releasing the apparatus with a loud clang.

  She hands a torch to the man beside her. Professor Chang, a solemn and looming figure from Peking University, has been working by her side since the first day of excavation. Georgia has hoped th
at by now they’d have developed a more affable relationship, yet despite her Chinese lineage and fluency in the language, the professor still treats her as a foreign outsider.

  Without uttering a word, Chang knits his brows, giving her a terse nod.

  Then, turning to her PhD students, Kate and Michael, Georgia instructs: “Stay up here, I’ll head down with Professor Chang first.”

  Georgia peeks through the entrance to the tomb with her torch and sees polished stone steps leading down into a gaping void of darkness. She smiles to herself, feeling the rush of adrenaline as she squeezes through the gap. With Professor Chang following closely behind her, she slowly descends the stairs. As she approaches the landing, Georgia sees an elaborate archway sentineled with a pair of Chinese guardian lions, each almost as tall as her.

  “Are they—are they carved out of jade?” Professor Chang says in Chinese, gasping with surprise.

  “Looks like it,” Georgia confirms in the same language, and she sweeps her torchlight over the two statues, watching as the light glints and shimmers from the translucent emerald surfaces.

  Her heart drums forcibly in her chest. Guardian lions are traditionally carved from stone, and the more extravagant ones in front of imperial palaces may be carved out of marble. But rarely has she seen these sentries made from solid pieces of jade—especially jade of this quality.

  The tomb, whoever it belonged to, must be the resting place of someone very important and powerful.

  She feels the full force of excitement hit her, and she steps through the threshold, wondering what she will find beyond.

  Long after, when she finally re-emerges from the tomb into the frigid air, she sees that the sky has darkened into a deep purple hue. Glancing at her watch, she raises her eyebrows in surprise. She realises that the whole day has passed as she explored in the underground palace.

  Michael walks towards her as she brushes dust and cobwebs from her braided hair. He hands her the mobile phone, explaining, “It’s Sarah, calling from Sydney.”

  She smiles. After all these years of working side-by-side, her assistant has developed a knack for reading her mind, even when they are continents apart. She thanks Michael and takes the phone, wedging it between her cheek and shoulder as she sits on a nearby rock, unrolling her sleeves against the chill of the evening air. “Hey! Good timing, you won’t believe what we found today.”

  “Yeah, Michael said that the dig is going well.” Sarah’s voice rings down the line.

  “Well doesn’t even begin to describe it. It’s a full treasure trove down there—I wish you could see it. The tomb hasn’t been touched since it was sealed. It was like a scene straight out of the movies—bronze vessels, jade combs and bracelets, silk robes and paintings, and an entire library of manuscripts.” She’s talking fast, a swell of emotion rising in her chest as she delivers her next revelation: “We found seafaring maps, Sarah.”

  There’s a long pause before the older woman replies. “But I thought you dated the tomb to be around 200 BCE?”

  Georgia nods enthusiastically even though Sarah can’t see her, a laugh bubbling out of her throat: “I know, right? Think about it, Sarah, this proves everything. All our hard work—what, five years of research? Years of trying to get people to take us seriously for funding and now excavation—it’s all come to this point.”

  She exhales, thinking about the impact this finding will have on her work: it is central to proving her theory that the ancient Chinese had possessed seafaring abilities far surpassing the conclusions of all contemporary historians and archaeologists. Sure, popular theory recognises the Chinese as the inventors of the magnetic compass around 210 BCE, but most believe it was used solely for the purpose of divination and feng shui, and was only adopted for navigation during the eleventh century. Finding seafaring maps in a tomb dated around the 200 BCE period proves the Chinese were widely navigating the seas much earlier than most people thought.

  She flexes her fist by her side at the triumph of the moment. Over the past decade, many of her writings and lectures have promoted her belief in this hypothesis, and it’s one she has been criticised and sometimes ridiculed for. Today is the day she will prove all of those sceptics wrong.

  “Wow,” Sarah says, yet her voice lacks her usual enthusiasm. “That’s fantastic, Georgia.”

  Georgia frowns. “What’s wrong?”

  She hears Sarah exhale a long sigh, and the back of her neck prickles in anticipation of the bad news.

  “Listen, Georgia. I think you better get your arse back here. We’ve got a problem.”

  1

  Two months later, Sydney

  Georgia has no idea why she is here. Really, she should be back at her office, catching up on the mounting paperwork.

  Driving her car through the gates of Lambert Estate, she takes a deep breath as she absorbs the sheer immensity of the property. Sprawling grass plains stretch as far as the eye can see, and beyond the horizon a blazing scarlet sun is about to set over the majestic Blue Mountains. A two-storey mansion looms some hundred metres ahead, brooding and ominous with its dark grey masonry walls. It’s a hot day, unseasonably so for April, and it’s been warmer still because the air conditioning in her ailing Ford Festiva decided to fail during her two-hour drive from Sydney.

  After receiving Sarah’s call on the day they opened the tomb in China, Georgia dropped everything at the dig, reluctantly leaving Kate and Michael to document the findings with the Peking University team, their joint venture partner in the excavation project. Two days later, she arrived back in Sydney to find out she’d lost all of her project grants for the next year.

  The newly elected government has been making major cuts to education, especially in areas they deem less essential to the economy. As devastating as it is, everyone at the university has seen this coming. But to have lost all of her private grants too? Georgia can hardly believe that within two months of making one of the most significant archaeological discoveries in the past decade, she and Sarah are now scrambling around, searching for all possible avenues of funding.

  So far, they’ve come up with nothing. Who knows, she’ll probably be out of a job at the university too by the time her department decides how to allocate what dismally little money there is left.

  As her car advances towards the mansion, Georgia wonders about the host who has invited her to dinner tonight. A self-made man, the English-born, fifty-two year old billionaire first made his fortune in the pharmaceutical industry in England and the United States, later expanding his investments to a broad range of other business ventures.

  Sarah had a glint in her eyes after receiving the phone call from Lambert’s personal assistant the previous week. “Did you know,” she gushed in her accented English, “he was listed as one of the most eligible bachelors in TIME magazine?”

  Georgia rolled her eyes at the celebrity gossip. “But he isn’t even on our list of sponsors, and we didn’t call them… Did you ask what the meeting is for?”

  “Nope.” Sarah shrugged. “But after all the bad luck we’ve been having, this could be the break we need!”

  “I don’t know.” Georgia shook her head, not liking the idea at all. “I really have better things to do right now than entertain some rich—”

  “Georgia.” Sarah lowered her tone, folding her arms across her chest, and Georgia swallowed her argument. “What can you possibly achieve over one night in the office? We’ve submitted every grant application, called all the funding bodies in the country. It’s likely we’ll be forced to pull out of the China dig in two months. And I’ll probably have to look for a new job soon! Even if Lambert’s not interested in giving us money for the project, at least get a decent meal in your belly before we’re all thrown out on the streets begging for work. You are going to meet this man, and I don’t want to hear any more about it.”

  Georgia sighs in aggravation at the memory of their conversation. Sometimes she really doesn’t know who the boss is in their relationship. The
se kinds of social engagements are a pet peeve of Georgia’s, and Sarah once pointed out that it’s precisely this kind of attitude which ensures that Georgia will always remain a lowly research professor, and never have a shot at climbing the bureaucratic ladders of university administration.

  At this, Georgia scoffed in reply: That was a future she’d happily settle on.

  Now, crawling to a stop before the enormous house, the little Ford splutters and complains audibly as she shuts off the engine. She exits her car, its door protesting with a groan as she pushes it shut. At the foot of the over-sized double doors, she takes a fortifying breath before pressing the doorbell.