Chapter 4 The Dragon's Bloodline

The coffin groaned open like a mouth gasping its first breath in centuries.

Li Mei stood frozen, the jade dagger trembling in her grip. The glow from within the tomb cast flickering shadows on the stone walls ghosts of forgotten emperors, curses carved into silk, and fates rewritten by a single drop of blood.

Inside the coffin was not a corpse.

It was a boy no older than Zhou Wen with skin like pale bronze and silver-threaded hair that spilled over the velvet interior. He lay in stillness, as if sleeping beneath the weight of dynasties. But his chest... it rose. Barely. Slowly. As though he breathed in memories, not air.

Li Mei reached out and the moment her fingers brushed the boy's skin, the tomb screamed.

Not with sound, but with visions.

She saw a dragon, coiled around a mountain, its eyes bleeding fire. A battle in the clouds. A woman with tear-streaked cheeks placing a baby in a golden cradle, chanting spells older than time. And a bloodline-one tethered to the Celestial Throne, cursed by betrayal, sanctified by vengeance.

The boy in the coffin was a royal.

And so was Zhou Wen.

She now understand that this wasn't Zhou wen but another person that looks exactly like him.

Li Mei staggered back, the truth unraveling inside her like silk torn from a scroll. This wasn't just about saving a life. This was about restoring an empire. Zhou Wen wasn't just the protagonist of the novel he was the last living heir of the Dragon Throne, his lineage hidden after the massacre of the Crimson Night, when the imperial family was betrayed from within.

And this boy this sleeping prince was his twin. Separated at birth. One raised in shadow, the other in light. One meant to live. The other... sacrificed.

But fate, the greedy mistress that she was, had written a new chapter. And Li Mei, poor girl, had dared to read it aloud.

The boy stirred. His eyes fluttered.

Not brown. Not black.

Gold.

Just like Zhou Wen's when he bled.

Outside the tomb, the sky darkened unnaturally. Thunder cracked across a cloudless horizon. Something ancient had shifted in the balance.

And miles away, Zhou Wen collapsed to his knees, clutching his chest, gasping as if a part of him had been ripped open.

The scroll on Li Mei's chest burned again. And this time... it didn't give her answers.

It gave her a name.

"Zhou Yao Long - The Sealed Prince."

She didn't have time to react.

Because the boy's eyes snapped open.

And he spoke.

"Sister... why have you come so late?"

Lightning struck the tomb's entrance, sealing it shut in a spray of stone and ancient magic. Li Mei turned back to the boy, but his body was gone vanished into mist. And in his place stood a ghostly woman in imperial robes, her face twisted in sorrow.

"The blood of the dragon awakens," she whispered, "but the crown must choose only one."

Suddenly, Li Mei realized only one brother could survive the awakening.

And she had just condemned the other.

Immediately Zhen wan Came to her mind!

One but be condemned? What have I done??