Qin Beiyang was immersed in a warm ball of amniotic fluid.

He went from a tomb beast to a fetus. He hugged his shoulders, delicate hands and legs, lotus-like arms, and a bright red womb. Some force tore him apart violently. Irresistible. He was dragged out of his hometown, where he spent ten months in peace. He crawled through a tunnel. The tunnel I saw before I died in my last life. Meng Po soup was scattered all over the ground. Thick, fishy, piping hot. Whose cries he heard. He saw another glimmer of light. The world is condensed into this light, slowly unfolding in front of your eyes, like a drama, like a script, and an endless picture.

He saw it.

Seeing countless lights, tasting warm blood, hearing the cries of maidens, smelling the tenderness of ambergris, and feeling the fingers of mothers. He was a small baby, wrapped in a scypress coat and with an umbilical cord attached to him.

"The Prince......"

The ladies of the palace cheered and jumped up and sent him to his mother's arms. He saw a beautiful face, full of tears, followed by a brief moment of joy. The mother first looked at the back of the baby's neck, and there was a pink antler-shaped birthmark, like a flame that had just been burned, and it was already soaring into the sky.

Here is Chang'an, Daming Palace, Taiye Pond, cranes flying, 1,200 years ago, the end of the seventh century AD.

His father was Li Dan, who had just abdicated Tang Ruizong, and his mother was the Qin family, who was not named in the history books.

The newly enthroned empress Wu Zetian came to Chang'an, Xijing, from Luoyang, the capital of the gods. This noble lady with boundless power, surrounded by countless people, picked up the crying baby. When she saw the antler-shaped birthmark on the back of the child's neck, she was shocked that this was the appearance of the emperor, so she took the wolf pen from Shangguan Wan'er, a native of the inner house, and named her grandson - Li Longqi.

The empress put down her pen, and when she turned around, she saw two crested ibises standing outside the window, one male and one female. Wu Zetian said that this was not a ruizhao, but a great disrespect, and he wanted to kill the pair of crested ibis. How can an emperor in the world control a divine bird? The crested ibis flutters its wings and flies, submerging into the sky of time.

After the birth of the little prince Li Longqi, he left Chang'an Daming Palace with his parents and moved to Luoyang Ziwei Palace, the capital of God.

Li Longqi's father, Li Dan, is the grandson of Li Shimin, Taizong of the Tang Dynasty, the eighth son of Li Zhi of Gaozong of Tang, the fourth son of Empress Wu Zetian, and the younger brother of Li Xian of Zhongzong of Tang. He was originally the emperor of the Tang Dynasty, inherited the throne passed down by his father and brother, and was forced to give up the throne to his mother. In the year Li Longqi was born, Wu Zetian became the "Emperor of the Great Zhou", and Li Dan changed from the emperor to the prince of the East Palace.

Li Longqi also has half-brothers and sisters, not as beautiful as his brother Li Longji, his sister Princess Jinxian, and Princess Yuzhen.

Many of the princes of the East Palace in the Tang Dynasty did not end well, just like Li Longqi's many uncles - Li Zhong, Li Xian, Li Xian, and Li Xian...... What's more, Li Dan was the emperor of the Tang Dynasty, and now he has become the prince of the Great Zhou, suffering day and night. Without the permission of the empress, if a courtier pays homage to the prince privately, he will be put to death.

Wu Zetian has a favorite palace maid Wei Tuan'er by his side, who secretly seduces and tempts Li Dan. Wei Tuan'er was rejected by Li Dan, so he falsely accused Li Dan's Concubine Liu and Concubine Dou of cursing the empress with witchcraft - commonly known as "Piercing the villain". Wu Zetian was furious, Concubine Liu and Concubine Dou were secretly executed, and there were no bones. Among them, Concubine Dou was the biological mother of Li Longji, the later Tang Xuanzong.

Soon, the crown prince Li Dan was falsely accused of rebellion, and the cool official came to Junchen to be in charge of the trial, and tortured everyone in the East Palace, and Le Gong An Jinzang was disemboweled to prove the innocence of the master. Li Dan survived, but the concubine Qin was implicated in the "witch case" and executed.

When his mother died, Li Longqi was only five years old, and he was expelled from the palace by his grandmother Wu Zetian, exiled to Zhongnanshan, and lived in the Louguantai, the head of the 72 blessed lands of Taoism.

He is like a small sapling in the mountains and wilderness, and like a stray beast cub, sleeping in the open air, leaning on the Qinling Mountains, overlooking Guanzhong, absorbing the essence of the sun and the moon to grow. Except for the Taoist chief of Loutaiguan, no one knew his identity as a prince, and only regarded him as an orphan from Luoyang. He followed the old Taoist to study "Laozi" and "Zhuangzi", but unfortunately there are only Taoist classics in the Louguantai, where are the classics of Confucianism and Shakya? The kid always sneaked out of the Taoist temple, climbed the mountains, burrowed into deep valleys, and chased butterflies and cranes.

In the mountains of Zhongnan, there are hermits who escape from the world. Some live in settlements, some live in caves, and some come from the Qin and Han dynasties for more than a thousand years. At a young age, Li Longqi did not hesitate to climb the cliff of ten thousand people, and followed the hermits to study the "Book of Songs", "Spring and Autumn", "Zuo Chuan", "Chu Ci", "Historical Records", "Book of Han", and "Three Kingdoms......

When it snowed heavily, Li Longqi happened to meet an ascetic, who was actually the close disciple of Master Xuanzang. After practicing in the mountains for a year, the monk taught this destined boy the "Great Prajnaparamita Sutra", "Yoga Treatise", and "The Legend of the Western Regions of the Tang Dynasty".

At the age of twelve, Li Longqi had already practiced the three schools of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism, and he had read more than 100 kinds of classics in his mind, and he also memorized the poems of the three hundred, the Han Le Fu, the Six Dynasties, and the four masterpieces of the early Tang Dynasty "Wang Yang Lu Luo".

On this day, the young Li Longqi went deep into the Qinling Mountains alone to collect medicine for the old Taoist of Louguantai, and heard that there was a tiger roaring in the mountains. When ordinary people heard the roar of the tiger, they had already run away, but Li Longqi carried the hunter's bow and arrow and knife, and went to the tiger mountain. He saw a tiger intercepting a fawn in the middle of a ravine. But the fawn looks strange, has nine colors of patterns all over its body, and has snow-white antlers that only adult deer have, and it is by no means the sika deer, red deer or elk that Orion has seen. When the lone deer met the tiger, it made a tiger's mouth, but the nine-colored deer was not afraid, and held the tiger with sharp antlers, so that the white-fronted tiger with hanging eyes was injured in many places, and the blood stained was unable to help. It was the middle of winter, the tiger was hungry, in addition to the male tiger attacking head-on, a female tiger suddenly attacked from behind and bit the back of the nine-colored deer. The juvenile fawn makes a painful deer chirping. Li Longqi remembered his upheaval childhood, his innocent mother, took pity on this little deer, opened his bow and arrow, pierced through the yang in a hundred steps, and immediately shot through the eyes of the female tiger, and then another arrow hit the butt of the male tiger. A male and a female, two fierce tigers, screaming and spilling blood, fled. Li Longqi will not rush to kill them all, just let the nine-colored divine deer get out of trouble. When the young deer saw the young man in the mountains, he pestered him and stretched out his neck to play with him.

Li Longqi brought the deer back to the Taoist temple and treated it with medicine every day. The old Taoist said that this deer is an extraordinary thing, which has been recorded in ancient times, and is still young, and it is estimated that it enjoys tens of thousands of years of longevity. Shenlu recovered from his injuries, but he was reluctant to leave and became the unabandonable partner of the young Li Longqi.

Since then, the deer has a name, and it is called Nine Colors.

This year, in order to calm the conflict between the Li family and the Wu family, Wu Zetian summoned the children of both sides to swear an oath in Luoyang Mingtang, and Li Xian, Li Dan brothers and Princess Taiping participated. The empress ordered the exiled prince to be recalled, and the famous minister Di Renjie was ordered to go out of Beijing and find Li Longqi at the viewing platform of Zhongnan Mountain Tower.

Di Renjie was surprised by the intelligence and early wisdom of the little prince, and happily escorted him back to Beijing, and praised the empress vigorously. Wu Zetian canonized Li Longqi as the king of Zhongnan County, and invited Di Renjie to teach Confucianism and statecraft, and the national teacher Li Chunfeng to teach Taoism and the art of yin and yang.

Two years later, the Turkic Mosi Khan invaded the south, and Li Dan was appointed generalissimo. Li Dan, who was born weak, how could he have the strength to fight on horses? Li Longqi, the king of Zhongnan County, volunteered to go on behalf of his father, but he left the Yellow River and went to the head of Montenegro at dusk. The fourteen-year-old young prince, with the nine-colored divine deer, led the Tang Dynasty Iron Cavalry and crossed the vast Gobi. The moon black geese flew high, and fled in the night. This battle defeated the 200,000 Turkic army, and the king of Zhongnan County returned triumphantly, and the people of Luoyang watched onlookers, and the civil and military officials praised it.

Di Renjie entered Wu Zetian, Li Longqi was familiar with the classics of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism, cultivated Wenzhi internally, and had martial arts outside, so he could fight the world immediately and govern the world on the case.

After all, the empress is old, and she must consider the question of succession. She also loves this grandson very much, and always feels that Li Longqi's heroic spirit is quite similar to her great-grandfather Tang Taizong Li Shimin, who is also her first man.

Wu Zetian is even more fond of Li Longqi. It coincided with the Anxi Protectorate paying tribute to a piece of priceless Kunlun warm jade - at that time, Hetian was still called Khotan, and there was no name for "Hetian jade". The empress gave this piece of warm jade to Li Longqi, the king of Zhongnan County, which made other princes quite jealous, especially the half-brother Li Longji.

Li Longqi can't put down this piece of warm jade, the color is like mutton fat, and every time it encounters a major event, it glows with heat. Wu Daozi, who was a young painter at the time, once painted a portrait of the king of Zhongnan County, which is the image of a young man wearing warm jade.