Beyond the Timescape

Chapter 1303: Historian Chen Mo

Space-time transformed as the jasper cicada’s wings fluttered.

Within one of the other glittering motes of light was another space-time, where there was a vast continent called Heavensign. In the Great Spirit imperial dynasty, it was autumn, and the night was deep.

Outside of the Office of Historians, Chen Mo held an ink pen above a bamboo slip. On the ink stone, the pooled ink rippled as if with waves. Outside the window, the autumn cicadas buzzed. At the end of the desk was a bronze lamp that illuminated piles of ancient records everywhere, as yellow as old tea soaked in time itself.[1]

Chen Mo looked down at the Record of Rivers and Canals which he had just received. He was currently making some annotations for that book, but his pen had stopped atop a certain line.

“In the 9th year of Original Light, Levee Overseer Wang Yan recruited commoners to fill a bottleneck in the river….”

A drop of ink slipped off Chen Mo’s brush, landing on the bamboo slip. It created a big black spot. Chen Mo’s thoughts were equally unclear. This was the thirty-fifth time in recent years that he had found something suspicious in the records.

The bamboo slip clearly said, “In the 9th year of Original Light, Levee Overseer Wang Yan recruited commoners to fill a bottleneck in the river.” And yet, just a year ago, Chen Mo had personally made an etching of a monument erected by the commoners. And that monument said, “In the 9th year of Original Light, River Management Officer Li Ping dug a canal to guide the flow of the river.”

The two names had appeared so closely connected in two different historical records that they were like foam piling up on the surface of a river. It was so frustrating that Chen Mo felt a headache building behind his eyes.

Even stranger were the water level records of the Spirit River back in the third year of Original Light. In Documents of the Grand Historian and Old Rituals of the Han, there was a water level discrepancy of about three feet. It was as if one river had been split into two completely different rivers in the historical record.

“Sir, are you back to critiquing the water records?” One of the clerks on night duty entered with a pile of new bamboo slips. The smudges of ink on the cuffs of his sleeves were clearly visible in the light of the lamp. “Just yesterday the Minister of the Household said that the Department of Water Management is in charge of rivers and canals, and that we historians should focus on keeping records of court documents.”

Chen Mo didn’t look up. He just reached down and rubbed the bamboo slip as if lost in thought.

Chuckling, the clerk put down the records and left.

Chen Mo watched him leave. And then… he prepared to continue with his work, only to find that he just couldn’t start writing. He finally sighed. Turning to a mountainous pile of historical records, he found a specific roll of parchment.

It was Treatise of Great Spiritual Disasters. Chen Mo unrolled the parchment and examined the arcing lines of written text, until he found a specific passage written in cinnabar-colored ink.

“In the 79th year of Spirit Mansion, the Sparkling Deluder remained introverted, and the crimson star fell to the earth.”[7]

Chen Mo stared at the passage. This was another of the recent anomalies he had discovered in the historical records. The 79th year of Spirit Mansion was more than 500 years in the past. However, after examining other historical books, he had confirmed that no such event occurred in that year.

The parchment smelled faintly of mold and ink. At the same time, the ticking of the copper clocks in the Office of Historians made it seem to Chen Mo like time itself was crumbling. He suddenly found himself thinking back to the very first anomaly he had encountered, over in the Scripture Pavilion. He had been compiling a copy of The Legend of King Mu of Zhou, but had found a scrap of silk stuck between the bamboo slips which dated back to the Summer Winter period. Written upon it in tadpole script was the line: “In the year of Quail Fire, the rivers dried up and the mountains crumbled, and the ancestors were buried by heaven and earth.”[2][3]

In an even older tortoise shell inscription, Records of the Lingluo Clan, the same disaster was mentioned nine different times. It was like the lyrics of a song passed down through multiple generations, in which the lyrics slowly changed over time.

And yet, there was definitely a link among those different historical records, all of them mentioning a disaster that never occurred. It almost seemed like the ancients were trying to pull a prank on their descendants.

Chen Mo’s thoughts wandered. Eventually, he kneaded the bridge of his nose as he walked over to the window. Looking out at the snow beginning to fall, he murmured, “What is the truth about history?”

In the blink of an eye, ten years passed. During that time, Chen Mo continued his work as a historian. Though he wasn’t actually very old, his hair was much whiter than his colleagues of the same age, and he had a lot more wrinkles. The reason was that, in the decade that had passed, he had been constantly searching through the vast library of historical records, hoping to find an answer to his question.

Eventually, in Secrets of the Mortal Warrior, he found a passage that read, “The Imperial Mother gifted a longevity elixir made from a fantastic plant that blooms once every 3,300 years.” And then, in Geographical Chronicles of the Peaceful Jin Era the same story was recounted, except it was changed slightly to “King Father of the East taught a longevity incantation that took five hundred years to bear fruit.”[4]

In Commentary on the Water Classic from the Southeastern Dynasties as well as Description Encompassing Earth from the Nineteen Generations of Earth and Heaven, a mountain was mentioned. However, there was a discrepancy of 500 kilometers in its specific location between the two texts. And yet, both texts mention that, buried deep beneath the mountain was a stone box containing inscriptions with 10,000 years of history.[5]

What shocked him most was his discovery that, when he analyzed the collapse of successive dynasties based on the sixty-year-cycle, he found that every 1,800 years, “the five planets would align, and the imperial aura would end in demise.” He informed his colleagues about this, but when he did, they reacted as if they had been possessed by evil spirits, and then accused him of being possessed.

The dean of the Office of Historians even angrily pointed at the historical chart he had created and shouted, “Historical records are designed to give insights into the past! How dare you frighten people with your fear-mongering nonsense!”

Late that night, when his wife was adjusting his clothing to keep him warm, she looked at the documents piled on his desk and whispered, “I saw that oracle bone you found in that abandoned courtyard. The crack marks are exactly the same as those on the jade ornament we saw in the imperial mausoleum last year. Maybe the stories about our world are just old stories being told again. I understand what you’re trying to do. Don’t give up. I support you.”

Her words made him think back to the wooden hairpin she had been wearing when they met. The pattern in that hairpin was exactly the same as the growth rings in an old tree he had seen as a youth.

Chen Mo just kept getting more confused. Even he was starting to think that he was crazy.

In the deep night, Chen Mo lay on his bed, unable to sleep, looking up at the dark ceiling. In his mind, he was thinking about what his teacher had told him twenty years ago when he was first accepted into the Office of Historians.

“The brush of the historian is like a lamp on a river, illuminating the rocks sticking out of the mud.”

Back then, he didn’t understand. But now, as he thought about all the contradictions in the ancient records, he realized that underneath those rocks in the water were layer upon layer of water plants that got tangled up in the light of the lamp.

At the end of the year, Chen Mo resigned from his post. Packing up a case of rubbings from various tablets, he started traveling the world. It was something he had been wanting to do for years.

Years of suspicions, the advice from his teacher, and the support of his wife finally ended with him making a decision. Ancient history was like a song that seemed to circle around on itself over and over.

As that song played, Chen Mo found a crumbling fresco on the wall of a cave in Mount Kunlun. It depicted an image of a great flood, which perfectly matched the description of Emperor Spiritsage controlling the flood waters in Later Records.[6]

In the genealogies of a fishing village on the North Sea, he found a legend of a time when the eye of the sea became inverted, and the ancestor escaped on a huge boat. However, that event occurred 3,000 years after the same event as recorded in Classic of the Great Spirit. Legends of catastrophes, rebirth, and destruction, though incomplete, all seem connected in various ways. And Chen Mo kept clear records of all of them.

In the shifted sands of the south, he uncovered half of a stone stele. After translating the text, he realized that it was almost exactly the same as the common prayer used in sacrifices to the Great Spirit. That was when Chen Mo suddenly realized something.

If different civilizations were destroyed at the same time, and under the same starry sky, then they would all have similar songs about the past.

After traveling the world for thirteen years, Chen Mo decided to go home. Unfortunately, he had long begun to age more rapidly than was normal, and on the way back, he fell ill. It didn’t seem he would be able to make it back to the capital city.

At a hostel on the road, he lay on a simple wooden cot coughing up blood and glancing weakly at the book he had written on his journeys.

The Cycle of Civilization.

1. Chen Mo: Chen is #5 on the list of top 100 surnames and Mo means “ink.” In this very paragraph, when it talks about the ink on the brush, it uses the same character as his name. Madam Deathblade said it sounds like a “hard worker.” ☜

2. King Mu of Zhou was a real historical figure who is also a character in certain mythological/legendary stories. For the real version, check this wiki entry, and for the fantasy version, check this one. ☜

3. Tadpole script is a variety of ancient Chinese seal script. The name comes from the way the script resembles tadpoles. Here are a few examples of what it looks like. ☜

4. The King Father of the East is a “real” figure from Daoist mythology. More info here. ☜

5. The two texts mentioned here, Commentary on the Water Classic and Description Encompassing Earth are both real-life texts from ancient times. Obviously, the versions here are fictional. ☜

6. Kunlun is a very important place in Chinese mythology. It has been mentioned before in previous Er Gen works, but this is not supposed to be a connection point. It’s mentioned here because of its common use in Chinese mythology stories. ☜

7. The Sparkling Deluder is a poetic name for Mars. ☜