Chapter 1311: Historian Chen Mo

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

And within one of those flickering points of light, the Tianqi Continent in another time and space was reflected.

The Great Spirit Dynasty.

Outside the Historiography Office, it was deep night, the autumn air thick.

Inside the Historiography Office, Chen Mo held his brush suspended above the bamboo slips, ink pooling in the inkstone forming tiny ripples.

Outside the window, the autumn cicadas' chirping was fragmented, the light from the bronze lamp on the desk casting over the room's classics, giving them an aged yellow hue, like old tea steeped in time.

He stared at the newly delivered *Records of Rivers and Canals*, engaged in annotation, yet now his brush tip paused on a line of record.

"In the ninth year of Yuan Guang, the Commandant of River Dikes, Wang Yan, recruited the people to block the Huzi..."

As Chen Mo's brush paused, ink dropped, spreading into a blot on the bamboo slip.

Like his current state of mind.

This was already the thirty-fifth time in recent years that he had discovered a doubtful record.

The bamboo slip clearly read "In the ninth year of Yuan Guang, the Commandant of River Dikes, Wang Yan, recruited the people to block the Huzi," yet last year when he made rubbings of a fragmentary stele in Chenliu Commandery, he saw it carved as "In the ninth year of Yuan Guang, the River Management Clerk Li Ping dug channels to divert water."

Two names alternated in different historical records, like overlapping foam on river water, stirring his eyes to ache.

Even more strangely, the Spirit River water level records for the third year of Yuan Guang in the *Records of the Grand Historian* and the *Han Old Rituals* actually differed by three chi, as if the same river in the annals had split into two parallel waterways.

"My lord, are you again examining river matters?"

The night-duty clerk entered, holding newly received slips, candlelight flickering over the ink stain on his sleeve.

"The Minister of Finance said the other day that river affairs are naturally handled by the water officials; we historians need only record court documents." Chen Mo did not lift his head, his fingertips rubbing the uneven grooves on the bamboo slip.

The clerk smiled, set down the slips, and left.

Watching the other's retreating back, after a long while... Chen Mo was about to continue, but the brush in his hand could not be set down again, and he finally let out a soft sigh.

Turning from the mountain-like piles of historical records, he took out a scroll of parchment.

It was the *Great Spirit Records of Anomalies*.

After unrolling it, Chen Mo gazed at the parchment where ink had seeped into the fibers, forming a skewed arc, and finally his gaze stopped on a line of characters.

"In the seventy-ninth year of Lingdi, Yinghuo guarded the heart, the red star fell to earth."

Gazing at these vermilion characters, Chen Mo fell into contemplation.

This was the last place he had discovered an error in historical records.

The seventy-ninth year of Lingdi was over five hundred years ago from now, and he had searched through all historical records, finding no such event recorded in that year.

The musty smell of the parchment mixed with pine-soot ink fragrance, entering his nostrils, while the Historiography Office's copper clepsydra dripped, seeming to slice time into equal fragments.

Chen Mo suddenly recalled another strange matter he had discovered three years ago in the Buddhist Canon Pavilion.

At that time he was proofreading the *Biography of King Mu of Zhou*, yet he found half a piece of silk from the summer and winter seasons tucked in the bamboo slip seams, on which tadpole script was written:

"In the year of the Chun Fire, the river dried and mountains collapsed, the ancients all perished in the Xuan Huang."

And in the even earlier *Genealogy of the Lingluo Clan* turtle-shell inscriptions, the same anomaly was actually repeated nine times in different characters.

It was as if the same folk song had been passed down by people of different eras, yet the lyrics had mutated over the years.

But in many more historical records, it was continuous, with no anomaly present at all.

It was as if someone had played a joke on posterity within history.

Thoughts rose and fell.

After a long while, Chen Mo rubbed his brow, rose, and walked to the window, gazing at the first snow outside, murmuring softly.

"What, after all, is the truth of history?"

Chen Mo, silent.

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

In these ten years, Chen Mo remained a historiographer, and not being old, his white hair and wrinkles had already far surpassed those of his peers.

Because in these ten years, he could not help but, amidst the vast sea of classics, seek answers.

Thus he discovered in the *Inner Transmission of Dust and Martial* the record "The Heavenly Emperor Mother bestows the elixir of longevity, blooming once every three thousand three hundred years," while in the *Jin Taikang Geography* the same story became "The Eastern King Prince imparts the secret of longevity, bearing fruit once every five hundred years."

The *Commentary on the Waterways* of the Southeast Dynasty and the *Gazetteer of the Earth* of the nineteenth generation of Di Tian, regarding the location of the same mountain, differed by a thousand li, yet both mentioned that within the mountain's belly lay a stone casket engraved with a ten-thousand-year calendar.

Most astonishingly, when he arranged the fall dates of each dynasty by the sexagenary cycle, he actually discovered that every 1,800 years, a conjunction of "Five Stars Linked in a Line while Royal Qi is Extinguished" would occur.

He had also once informed his colleagues, but they seemed to have been possessed by evil, saying he was possessed.

Even the Director of the Academy slapped the historical charts he had organized and rebuked him angrily.

"Historical records are the mirror of dynasties; how can you be allowed to confuse the senses with demonic and false talk!"

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

"I once saw you pick up half an oracle bone in the abandoned garden, whose cracks actually matched the pattern of the jade pendant unearthed from the imperial mausoleum last year."

"Perhaps the stories of this world are merely old tunes played again."

"I know your aspirations; if you have made up your mind, I too will support you."

Her words made Chen Mo recall their first meeting, when she had inserted that wooden hairpin at her temple, its grain seeming to have become exactly like the tree rings he had seen in his youth.

Thus Chen Mo fell into bewilderment.

He also believed that he himself had become disordered.

So in the deep night, lying on the bed, unable to sleep, he gazed at the night, at the roof, and in his mind appeared the scene from twenty years ago when he first entered the Historiography Office, his teacher saying:

"The historian's brush should be like a river lamp, illuminating the stones in the mire."

At that time he did not understand, but now, recalling the flickering contradictions among the bookshelves, he knew that beneath the stone lay layer upon layer of waterweeds, entwining the lamp that illuminated the river.

Thus, in this deep winter, Chen Mo resigned his office, carrying a box of rubbings, and set out on his journey of travel.

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

Years of doubt, his teacher's words, his wife's support—these let him make up his mind.

Time flows like a song, even this song, playing in cycles.

And in the song, Chen Mo once discovered, in a cave at the foot of Kunlun Mountain, a mural on the verge of fading, whose flood totem was exactly like the water-control of the Holy Emperor of Spirits in the 《Later Book》.

In the genealogy of the fishing village by the North Sea, he also saw records that this place, in the year when the sea eye hung upside down, had ancestors who fled aboard a great vessel.

Yet this differs from the account in the 《Great Spirit Canon》 by a full three thousand years.

Though fragmented, the theories of destruction, of reincarnation, of disaster, he nonetheless pieced together in his travel records by countless threads.

Until, in the quicksands of the Southern Region, he unearthed half a stone tablet, whose inscription, when translated, bore near-identical resemblance to the Heaven-Sacrificing Litany of the Great Spirit.

At this moment, Chen Mo gained some insight.

"If different civilizations truly met their end, then they too, beneath the same starry sky, wrote similar elegies."

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

But he, already prematurely aged and now grown old, fell ill along the way and could not return to the capital.

He could only lie in a post station, on a simple wooden cot, coughing up blood while weakly gazing at the books he had drawn and compiled along this road.

《Civilization Cycle Diagram》

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And still