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(2x11) Shadow of the Foundation: Part 1, Episode 2

After Long Xian and his robot army have taken Beijing and seized nominal power over Xiania, he begins to turn their power against neighboring states as well, seeking to consolidate the "rightful territories" of Xiania under his rule. In response, a counter-revolution spring up within the forces of Long's own leadership council, the "Ba Xian" – Long's wartime advisory council, plus rebel leaders Li and Lan, and Lu and Her – who expected to rule their home country alongside Long, not to be cast aside as useless once he had an unstoppable automated military working at his behest.

Li and Lan take the most strident opposition to Long, Lu and He follow with them. But Zhoung supports Long for turning the country around from the brink of collapse, and Zhang believes this turn of events will be most profitable and sides with Long as well. Long's own brother Cao is of course implicitly at his side, but continues to advise Long against his present course of action. "Han" (Xio), realizing the danger to all of humanity that a fully automated robot army poses in the wrong hands, pretends to maintain loyalty to Long, so as to keep a closer eye on him, but then secretly informs and aids the counter-revolution in their attempts to stop him.

This new revolution cannot proceed by traditional arms against a robot army, however; it will require cyber-warfare to take control of the automatons. To that end, Lu enlists the aid of his daughter Ki-lin, a skilled hacker, and she in turn enlists the aid of a trusted colleague, Gui. With the aid of some documentation pilfered from the now-abandoned Kun-lin mountain base, they are able to make some progress toward seizing control of the automatons, but ultimately fail. They learn along the way, however, that it is not really Long who they need to defeat, because the automatons are only nominally in his control in the first place, and only for the time being. They robots turn out to have been all along a secret ploy by Auei to subtly seize more direct control of Asia than the mere socioeconomic dominance it has enjoyed for a century.

Next: Shadow of the Foundation: Part 1, Episode 3