The Emperor's Long Game

At two in the afternoon, Rong Qian sat in the café, chin in hand, staring listlessly out the window. She stirred her long-cold coffee with a spoon, feeling an urge to yawn.

The man sitting across from her had been talking nonstop, trying to capture her attention, but he had already exhausted all the usual topics, and the woman opposite him remained unresponsive.

The man chuckled and shook his head, asking her directly, "Miss Rong, you don't want to talk to me?"

Hearing this, Rong Qian finally turned to look at him and said bluntly, "Mr. Xu, when you asked me out, I made it clear that I have no intention of getting married right now, nor do I want to be on a blind date. I only reluctantly came because you said you didn't mind."

A bitter smile touched Xu Yang's lips. He had thought she was just being polite, but he hadn't expected her to be so genuinely unwilling to accept him.

"Miss Rong, it seems I was indeed mistaken. I have a very good impression of you, and I thought you might feel the same about me." Xu Yang, after all, was an elite who had returned from overseas. His speech was refined, and his manners were impeccable.

Logically, with his looks and status, no woman would easily refuse him.

Especially not Rong Qian, who spent her days working with a squad of gruff men. She should have had even less resistance to him.

But Rong Qian simply wasn't interested. She rejected him cleanly and decisively, leaving no room for ambiguity.

Xu Yang gave up, but his curiosity got the better of him. "Miss Rong, are you already in love with someone?" he asked.

"No, what makes you think that?" Rong Qian scooped up a large spoonful of strawberry mousse and stuffed it into her mouth, unconcerned with her image. She ate with relish.

Xu Yang gazed at her for a moment before saying, "You seem to have something on your mind, especially when you're staring off into space. It's like you're thinking about someone."

"Really?" Rong Qian frowned. This wasn't the first time she had heard that.Whenever she was sitting idly, someone would invariably ask if she was heartbroken. Rong Qian wanted to roll her eyes every time.

She had been single since birth, without even a crush. How could she be heartbroken?

At most, she just felt an emptiness in her heart from time to time...

Xu Yang wanted to chat a little longer, but Rong Qian took a call, said there was a case at the station, and hurried off.

Watching her retreating figure, Xu Yang could only sigh with regret.

When Rong Qian arrived at the police station, she learned about a very unusual case. A real estate company had been developing a piece of land for a new villa complex.

During construction, workers had discovered a car buried underground, with what appeared to be a human skeleton inside.

The construction site immediately called the police. With police assistance, they carefully used an excavator to lift the car out of the ground.

Upon inspection, it was identified as an old Shanghai-brand sedan, a model from over thirty years ago. This meant the car's owner had been buried for more than three decades.

Initially, they suspected murder, but after geological experts studied the land and its history, they concluded it was most likely an accident.

Over thirty years ago, that land was at the foot of a mountain. Due to the loose soil, a heavy rainstorm could easily trigger a mudslide.

If a car had been passing by at that moment, it was certainly possible for it to have been buried.

Rong Qian left this theory to the experts and focused on the skeleton in the car. After being buried for so many years, it was nothing more than a frame of bones.

From the skeletal structure, the deceased was male. Further detailed examination determined the individual was male, around 30 years old, with no signs of trauma to the bones, preliminarily ruling out homicide.

Some of the deceased's personal belongings were also recovered from the car, though not many. There wasn't even an ID to prove his identity.

There was only a rotten wallet, a rusty set of keys, a CD album of a pop star popular at the time, and a few photographs. Buried for too long, they had decomposed and couldn't be restored.

Once all aspects of the case were clarified, confirming the deceased had died in a mudslide accident over thirty years ago, the media was notified to report on the story.

The main hope was that a family member with knowledge of the case would come forward to claim the remains. The day the news broke, Rong Qian glanced at her phone and couldn't help but frown.

When the reporters took photos, they had managed to get her in the shot?

It wasn't obvious, but you could still see her on the phone in the background. Since it was already published, there was nothing Rong Qian could do but pretend she hadn't seen it.

A few days later, just before she was about to get off work for the evening, she received a call from the evidence room. They said they had found something interesting and asked her to come take a look.

When Rong Qian arrived, a police officer handed her an old photograph. "This was found inside that CD album case, tucked away. We didn't notice it before. See if you notice anything unusual about this photo."

Rong Qian took it. The photo was in a transparent bag, yellowed with age, but the image was still clear.

The background was an interior with a European style from the last century. A man in a white shirt sat on a vintage sofa, legs crossed, holding a white cat.

He wore a pair of gold-rimmed glasses, his gaze gentle. His features were picturesque, exuding an air of nobility and refinement.

And standing behind him was a woman.

She wore a sharp trench coat, standing like a bodyguard, with her arms crossed and a smug, playful smile on her lips. Her eyes were bright, shining brilliantly.

Rong Qian blinked. She wasn't sure if it was her imagination, but she felt that the woman looked very familiar, as if she'd seen her somewhere before.

Seeing her lack of reaction, the male officer smiled. "Officer Rong, don't you think that woman looks a lot like you?"

"Huh? My God! She really does!" Rong Qian took a closer look and was instantly shocked. They were identical!

The male officer told her, "Officer Rong, take this photo and investigate. Maybe it will lead to the identity of the deceased."

Rong Qian stared at the photo for a long time, her brow furrowing deeper and deeper.

Of course, she wasn't naive enough to think the person in the photo was actually her. She was just puzzled. How could someone look so much like her?

If this woman were still alive, she'd be an old lady by now, wouldn't she?

After thanking the officer, Rong Qian took the photo, got in her car, and drove home from the station.

Rong Qian currently lived with her parents, whose main daily concern was her marriage. They were always asking when she planned to get married, a topic that endlessly frustrated her.

Although she was indeed 27 this year and had never been in a relationship, she wasn't missing any limbs and wasn't bad-looking. Were they really afraid she wouldn't be able to get married?

Every time she said this, her parents would express their understanding, and then immediately ask, "So when do you want to get married? We can start arranging things for you."

Rong Qian: "..."

She surrendered. Couldn't they just drop the subject?

That night, after her shower, she lay in bed staring at the photo for a long time. The more she looked, the more she felt the woman in the picture was her. The expression, the posture—it was a mirror image of herself!

She even owned similar clothes. The thought had barely crossed her mind when Rong Qian shot up, rummaging through her closet to find a trench coat and jeans identical to those in the photo.

She compared them. Aside from the fact that the old, yellowed photo obscured details, everything else was remarkably similar.

The situation was so bizarre that Rong Qian stared at the photo until she fell asleep.

In the middle of the night, she was woken by the sound of the television. Rong Qian sat up, drowsy.

She went out of her room and downstairs to see the living room TV on, with no one around.

It was already two in the morning. Who would be watching TV at this hour?

Rong Qian walked over, bewildered, thinking her dad must have forgotten to turn it off. She was about to switch it off and go back to bed when she saw what was playing. She froze for a moment, then slowly backed up and sat down on the sofa.

It was a very old modern war film, in black and white, with a date at the bottom noting it was from 1975.

The filming techniques back then weren't like today's; the camera was a bit shaky, but it felt intensely real. Every shot was an authentic image.

Rong Qian watched for a bit. Although there were no subtitles, the actors' Mandarin was standard and articulate.

Perhaps because she had never seen it before, Rong Qian found herself engrossed. She poured herself a glass of water and curled up on the sofa to continue watching.

As she took a sip of water, something in her peripheral vision made her spit it out with a "Pfft!"

"Cough, cough!"

Forgetting to grab a tissue, Rong Qian coughed a few times, covering her mouth, before scrambling closer to the TV.

A man in a military uniform, the kind with a cape, had appeared in the movie. He had a commanding presence. But that wasn't the point. The point was, this man in the movie looked exactly like the man in the photograph she had been looking at!

At first, Rong Qian thought she was mistaken, but when she ran to her room, grabbed the photo for comparison, there was no doubt—it was the same person!

This actor was the kind that audiences would never forget after a single glance. He was handsome, for one thing, but the natural, refined elegance he possessed was uncommon.

Especially in modern times, it was as rare as a phoenix feather.

Rong Qian sat on the floor, legs crossed, eyes glued to the screen, not wanting to miss a single one of his scenes.

In the movie, he seemed to be playing a villain, morally ambiguous and hard to read. Yet, a single look in his eyes could tell you whether his next action would be good or bad.

But his screen time was short. When the movie ended, Rong Qian rewound it to watch his face again.

Sometimes she would even pause it, her eyes locked on the screen, reluctant to even blink, as if possessed.

By the time she finished, the sky was already light.

Rong