My hotel is full of emperors throughout history.

Beijing. State Administration of Cultural Heritage.

It's 4:30 PM on Friday.

Deputy Director Zhang was packing up to leave work when his phone rang.

He glanced at the caller ID—an old friend from Shaanxi, surnamed Zhou, the deputy director of the archaeological institute.

"Hey Zhou, what's up?"

Deputy Director Zhang held the phone between his fingers and stuffed a thermos into his bag with one hand.

The voice on the other end of the phone sounded a little unsteady.

"Old Zhang, there's something I need to tell you. Something's been unearthed over in Lintong."

"You dug something up?" Deputy Director Zhang laughed. "When in Shaanxi don't you dig something up every day? Another terracotta general?"

"no……"

"What's that? A cavalry terracotta warrior? A civil official terracotta warrior?"

"Old Zhang," Old Zhou's voice deepened, "Sit tight and listen to me."

Deputy Director Zhang was stunned for a moment, his thermos cup hanging in mid-air.

"A terracotta warrior was unearthed in Lintong," Lao Zhou said, emphasizing each word. "That terracotta warrior is holding an AK-47."

The thermos fell into the bag with a "thud".

Deputy Director Zhang was stunned for three seconds.

Then--

"Pfft."

He smiled.

"Old Zhou, when did you learn to joke around?" Deputy Director Zhang shook his head with a laugh. "Are your terracotta warriors armed with AKs? If that's the case, then did Qin Shi Huang also have aircraft carriers?"

He laughed heartily, waiting for laughter to come from the other end of the phone.

But there was only silence on the other end of the phone.

Dead silence.

Deputy Director Zhang's smile slowly froze on his face.

"Old Zhou?"

"...Old Zhang."

Old Zhou's soft voice drifted over.

Why are you laughing?

Deputy Director Zhang opened his mouth, wanting to say something, but found that he couldn't say anything at all.

He suddenly realized a problem—

Old Zhou didn't laugh.

Old Zhou didn't laugh once from beginning to end.

"I..." He heard his own voice, hoarse and unlike his own, "I thought of something funny..."

There was a moment of silence on the other end of the phone.

two seconds.

three seconds.

"What's so funny?"

My wife is pregnant.

"Didn't your wife run off with someone else a while ago?"

"Oh, I misremembered... my daughter-in-law is pregnant..."

"Where did you get a son from?"

"..."

Old Zhang fell silent.

Yup!

He has neither a son nor a wife...

"Stop talking about that. Are you sure the terracotta warriors with AKs are real?"

Old Zhou's incredulous voice rang out.

"Both carbon-14 and thermoluminescence dating were done. That figurine is genuine. It's from the Qin Dynasty."

Deputy Director Zhang slowly sat down in the chair.

He suddenly felt thirsty and reached for the teacup on the table, but his hand trembled so badly that the lid of the teacup fell onto the table with a clatter.

"That AK," Old Zhou continued, "is also made of terracotta. It was fired together with the terracotta figurine. It wasn't glued on later."

Deputy Director Zhang remained silent.

He just sat there, holding the phone, staring straight ahead.

Outside the window, Beijing's evening rush hour had just begun, with cars rolling in and people bustling about.

In the office, the second hand of the wall clock ticked away, each tick feeling like a blow to the heart.

a long time.

He spoke, his voice hoarse:

"Old Zhou."

"Um?"

"You just asked me why I was laughing?"

"Um."

Deputy Director Zhang was silent for a moment, then he spoke softly.

"I can't laugh anymore."

That night, a team of experts with specialized equipment flew from Beijing to Xi'an.

On the fifth day, astonishing news spread within the archaeological community—

That terracotta figurine is real.

Carbon-14 dating indicates that it was fired around 210 BC, with an error margin of no more than eight years.

The thermoluminescence dating results are consistent with this.

It is indeed a terracotta army from the Qin Dynasty.

And the thing it was holding in its hand—the AK-47 shape that anyone could recognize at a glance—

It is also made of pottery.

It was fired together with the terracotta figurines.

It is 2,200 years ago.

The day the news broke, the entire archaeological community was in an uproar.

Soon, at an archaeological conference, the crowd was arguing fiercely.

"They're even forging documents about Qin Shi Huang? Have these people gone mad?"

"If the Qin Dynasty had AK47s, should we have wormholes by now?"

"If the Qin Dynasty had AK-47s... then how did Jing Ke succeed in his assassination attempt on the King of Qin?"

"What did Jing Ke use to assassinate the King of Qin? A three-edged military bayonet?"

"And then there's Xiang Yu. If the Qin army had AKs, what would Liu Bang and Xiang Yu's men use to rebel against Qin? Their heads?"

"Could it be some kind of...sacrificial item? Or symbol? Like the pottery pavilions and animal figurines unearthed from Han Dynasty tombs?"

"You mean, the Qin Dynasty people used the AK as some kind of... funerary object?"

"That's possible! Just like how they made terracotta figures of chariots and weapons to be buried with them, they might have known about a 'divine artifact,' so they made terracotta models of it and put them inside..."

"How did they find out about AK?"

"..."

Silence fell over the meeting room.

No one can answer this question.

Until an old expert who studied the history of the Qin and Han dynasties put forward his own idea.

"Regarding Jing Ke's assassination attempt on the King of Qin, the Records of the Grand Historian states: Jing Ke chased after the King of Qin, who dodged around a pillar, and finally drew his long sword and wounded Jing Ke."

He paused, his gaze complex.

"But what if the King of Qin had an AK at that time..."

He didn't finish his sentence, but everyone present imagined the scene.

Someone muttered to themselves.

"Jing Ke probably couldn't even touch the edge of the pillar."

"And there's no need to unfold that scroll of map."

"The true colors were revealed at the last minute? The map was just pulled out, and the person was gone."

"Could it be that Wang Fujian is actually Wang Fujian?"

As soon as he finished speaking, everyone in the conference room turned to look at him.

He gave an awkward laugh.

"Could it be... that the Qin Palace is actually a space carrier?"

A few suppressed laughs rang out in the conference room, but quickly disappeared.

Mr. Qian continued.

"As for Xiang Yu..."

He was silent for a moment, then suddenly asked a question:

"If the Qin Dynasty really had AKs, why did it collapse after only a little over a decade?"

The entire room fell silent.

Yes. If they had AKs and tanks, how could the Qin Dynasty have collapsed so quickly?

"Was Xiang Yu a cyborg?"

"If that's the case, then what was the Great Wall meant to protect against? Extraterrestrial beings?"

"Hiss~! Does my brother Zheng have an entire galactic fleet?"

"Bullshit! If the Galactic Fleet really had any weapons, they'd be using laser guns, not AKs!"

Mr. Qian slowly stood up, walked to the big screen, and pointed to the terracotta figure holding an AK.

"Perhaps these things were not made by the Qin Dynasty itself."

"Where did it come from?"

"I don't know," Old Qian shook his head. "Maybe it came from... somewhere else."

His gaze deepened, as if he were looking at something far away.

"Do you still remember those alchemists recorded in the Records of the Grand Historian? Xu Fu, Lu Sheng, Hou Sheng... Qin Shi Huang sent them to sea to search for immortals and seek the elixir of immortality."

"You mean...?"

"I didn't say anything," Old Qian waved his hand. "I was just thinking, what if those alchemists really brought back something..."

He didn't continue.

But a bizarre thought arose in everyone's mind—

What if those alchemists brought back not the elixir of immortality from some "immortal mountain," but...

AK47?

If that's the case, where did they bring them from?

Silence fell over the meeting room once again.

After a long silence, Deputy Director Zhang finally spoke, his voice hoarse.

"Old Qian, you've spent your whole life studying Qin and Han history. How do you think Xiang Yu and his group succeeded in overthrowing the Qin?"

Mr. Qian remained silent for a long time.

Then he gave a wry smile:

"Maybe……"

He paused, as if considering his words.

"Perhaps the Qin Dynasty had AKs, but they ran out of bullets."

The entire audience was stunned for a second.

Then--

"puff--"

Someone couldn't hold it in.

Immediately afterwards, the entire conference room erupted in a very complex burst of laughter.

"We're out of bullets..."

"Haha, that's a good explanation..."

"Weren't Liu Bang and Xiang Yu incredibly lucky?"

"It wasn't good luck, it was just perfect timing..."

Suddenly, a phone call came in.

Deputy Director Zhang, who was sitting at the head of the table, answered a phone call and went outside.

"It's me..."

After a while, he came in, his expression complicated.

"We've unearthed something new in Lintong; this time it's a machine gun."

Qian Lao: ? ? ?

The archaeologists: ???