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Chapter 1250

~8 min read 1,590 words

Time and space were changing, like the wings of that jasper cicada, flickering uncertainly.

And within one flickering light spot, what was reflected was the Tianqi Continent located in another time and space.

Great Ling Dynasty.

Outside the History Museum, it was late at night, and autumn was deep.

Inside the History Museum, Chen Mo's hand holding the brush was suspended above the bamboo slip, and the ink condensed into tiny ripples in the inkstone.

Outside the window, the sound of autumn cicadas was broken, and the light of the bronze lamp on the desk reflected the old books in the room, which were yellow and old, like old tea soup soaked in time.

He stared at the newly delivered "River and Canal Records," making annotations, but now the brush tip stopped at a record line.

"In the ninth year of Yuanguang, River Dike Commandant Wang Yan recruited people to plug Huzi..."

With the pause of Chen Mo's brush, the ink fell, spreading into a blob of ink on the bamboo slip.

Like his mind at this moment.

This was the thirty-fifth time he had discovered questionable records in these years.

The bamboo slip clearly wrote "In the ninth year of Yuanguang, River Dike Commandant Wang Yan recruited people to plug Huzi," but last year he saw on a folk remnant stele in Chenliu County, it was carved "In the ninth year of Yuanguang, River Management Official Li Ping dug a canal to divert the flow."

The two names appeared alternately in different history books, like floating foam overlapping in the river, stirring his eyes with pain.

What was even stranger was that the Ling River water level record in the third year of Yuanguang differed by three feet between the "Taishigong Shu" and the "Han Jiuyi," as if the same river had split into two parallel waterways in the historical pen.

"Is the official examining river affairs again?"

The night-duty petty official came in holding newly received bamboo slips, the candlelight shaking over the ink marks on his cuffs.

"The Taifu Minister said the day before yesterday that river and canal affairs are managed by water officials, and we historians only need to record the court's documents." Chen Mo didn't look up, his fingertips rubbing the uneven carvings on the bamboo slip.

The petty official smiled and put down the slips and left.

Looking at the other party's back, after a while... Chen Mo was about to continue, but the brush in his hand could not be put down again, and finally he sighed softly.

He turned and found a piece of sheepskin paper from the mountain of historical records.

That was the "Great Ling Disaster Records."

After unfolding it, Chen Mo looked at the crooked arcs formed by the ink penetrating the texture on the sheepskin paper, and finally his gaze stopped on a line of handwriting.

"In the seventy-ninth year of Lingdi, Mars guarded the heart, and the red star fell to the ground."

Looking at these cinnabar characters, Chen Mo fell into contemplation.

This was the last place he discovered a historical record error.

The seventy-ninth year of Lingdi, from now, was more than five hundred years ago, and he had checked all the history books, and in the seventy-ninth year of Lingdi, no such thing appeared.

The moldy smell of the sheepskin paper mixed with the pine smoke ink fragrance drilled into his nostrils, and the copper water clock in the history museum ticked, seeming to cut time into equal fragments.

Chen Mo suddenly remembered another strange thing he discovered in the Library three years ago.

At that time, he was collating the "Biography of King Mu of Zhou," but found half a piece of silk from the Xia and Winter periods in the gap of the bamboo slips, on which it was written in tadpole script:

"In the year of Chunhuo, the river dried up and the mountains collapsed, and the ancestors were all submerged in Xuanhuang."

And in the earlier "Lingluo Clan Chronicles" tortoise shell inscriptions, the same disaster was repeated nine times in different scripts.

It was as if the same song had been sung by people of different eras, but the lyrics had deformed in the years.

But unexpectedly, in more historical records, it was coherent, and there was no disaster at all.

It was as if someone had played a joke on later generations in history.

Thoughts rose and fell.

After a long while, Chen Mo rubbed his brows, got up and walked to the window, looking at the first snow outside, whispering softly.

"What is the truth of history?"

Chen Mo was silent.

Time passed, in the blink of an eye, ten years.

In these ten years, Chen Mo was still a historian, and he was not old, but his white hair and wrinkles had far exceeded those of his peers.

Because in these ten years, he could not help but look for answers in the vast sea of books.

Thus, in the "Chenwu Inner Biography," he discovered the record of "The Heavenly Emperor Mother gave the elixir of immortality, which blooms every 3,300 years," while the same story in the "Jin Taikang Geography" became "Dong Wang Gong taught the immortality formula, which bears fruit every 500 years."

The "Water Classic Annotation" of the Southeast Dynasty and the "Geography Records" of the nineteenth generation of the Earth Heaven differed by thousands of miles in the record of the orientation of the same mountain, but both mentioned that the mountain belly contained a stone box engraved with the ten-thousand-year calendar.

The most astonishing thing was that when he arranged the time of the fall of each dynasty by the sixty-year cycle, he discovered that every 1,800 years, there would be a coincidence of "five stars in a row and the king's aura is cut off."

He had also told his colleagues, but his colleagues seemed to be possessed themselves, saying he was possessed.

Even the Dean Scholar patted the historical map he organized and scolded him.

"History books are the mirror of the dynasty, how can you allow you to confuse the public with demonic and false statements!"

Only his wife, when adding clothes for him late at night, would look at the layered timelines on his desk and whisper.

"I once saw you pick up half a piece of oracle bone in the abandoned garden, and the cracks on it were exactly the same as the patterns of the jade pendant unearthed from the imperial mausoleum last year."

"Perhaps the stories in this world are just old tunes played again."

"I know your ideals, if you have the determination, I will also support you."

Her words reminded Chen Mo of the wooden hairpin she wore on her temple when they first met; the texture seemed to be exactly the same as the annual rings of the dead tree he had seen in his childhood.

Thus Chen Mo was confused.

He also thought that he was disordered.

So late at night, lying on the bed, unable to sleep, he looked at the dark night, looked at the roof, and his mind recalled a sentence his teacher said when he first entered the History Museum twenty years ago.

"The historical pen should be like a river lamp, illuminating the stones in the silt."

At that time he didn't understand, but now recalling the contradictions flashing in the full shelf of books, he realized that there were layers of water grass buried under the stones, entangling the lamp illuminating the river.

Thus, in the deep winter of this year, Chen Mo resigned from his post and embarked on a journey with a box of rubbings.

This was the thought that had always existed in his heart these years.

Years of doubts, the teacher's words, and his wife's support made him determined.

Years are like songs, even if this song is played in a loop.

And in the singing, Chen Mo had discovered fading murals in a cave at the foot of the Kunlun Mountains, and the flood totem on it was exactly the same as the Ling Sheng Emperor's flood control in the "Later Book."

In the genealogy of a fishing village in the North Sea, he also saw the legend recorded that ancestors escaped by riding a giant boat in the year when the sea eye was overturned.

But this was separated by a full three thousand years from the records in the "Great Ling Sutra."

The theory of destruction, the theory of reincarnation, and the theory of disaster, although incomplete, were organized by him in his accompanying records in thousands of ways.

Until in the quicksand of the Southern Region, he dug up half a stone tablet, and after the text on it was translated, it was almost the same as the Great Ling Heaven Sacrifice Prayer.

At this moment, Chen Mo had some realization.

"If there really is the destruction of different civilizations, then they are all similar elegies written under the same starry sky."

Thus, in the thirteenth year of his travels, Chen Mo ended his journey and started his return journey.

It was just that he was already prematurely old, and now he was old, and he finally fell ill on the way, making it difficult to return to the capital.

He could only lie on a simple wooden couch in the post station, coughing blood while weakly looking at the books he had drawn and organized along the way.

"Civilization Reincarnation Map"

——

There is more

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End of Chapter

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