Huixing & Empress Dowager Cixi

Written and drawn by baturu

In 1917, when the First World War was in its 3rd year, February Revolution started in Russia, Tzar abdicated, the Russian army was defeated on the Eastern front; on April 6 the USA declared war on Germany, increasing the pressure on its army on the West front. At the other end of Euro-Asia, in China people were immersed in a happy atmosphere of the National Day celebration. The de facto authority Empress Dowager Cixi near the Hall of Supreme Harmony is raising her head to look at a parade of airships.

Huixing and other girls rush to the throne of Cixi, give her a petition, and are immediately captured by the guards. Cixi is asking Huixing, you throw the flag out of the airship like this, aren’t you afraid that it will hurt me?

When they return to the Summer Palace, the Chief of the guard (female) reports that they followed the assassin to his place, broke into it, but the assassin is very good at martial arts and managed to escape, having inspected his place they found a notebook, it's a list of the heads of the organization, on the top of each page, a job title is written, but no name, just three geometric figures with numbers.

With such a magnificent ceremony in front of her eyes, Cixi is not happy, as there have been growing rumors of an assassination attempt on her; it is because she has been consistently opposing the participation of China in WWI, both Germans and Russians want to kill her, the party of young royalists and the Chinese Revolution Party also want to kill her to seize the power under the pretext of entering the war.

Huixing uses a picture with vector components of velocity to explain her plan. Cixi doesn’t blame them, on the contrary she is happy to see that they study with diligence, and their knowledge is practical. The officials ask to punish the girls but Cixi praises them and let them return to school, so they grow up and become the pillars of the nation.

Suddenly a 2-meter flagpole falls out of one of the airships, and lands right in front of the throne of Cixi, it cuts into the granite to stand vertically; a yellow flag with a phoenix is fluttering in the wind.  Chinese and foreign reporters are capturing this moment; guards have stirred up, they thought there is an assassin.

The ceremony comes to an end, Cixi Empress Dowager invites Huixing to take a ride with her through the Xizhimen Gate to the Summer Palace. When they pass Tsinghua Park, someone from the crowd throws a bomb, it explodes near the car, but the car is bulletproof, a near miss.

Huixing says, “I know, this is a telegraph code,” then she deciphers the characters behind the code, the answer to geometric puzzles correspond to Chinese characters, three characters form a name.