Chapter 556: Spying Upon the Heavens

Though the purity of the hand-picked crystal lenses fell far short of the industrial glass of later ages, they were still a cut above the cloudy glass produced by the Privy Treasury workshops. When Diwu Lun held the Crown Prince and let him peer through the "Thousand-Mile Lens" at the city of Luoyang, things previously invisible to the naked eye were all taken in at a glance.

The Crown Prince saw inside some neighborhood lanes, whole families properly dressed and lined up to offer sacrifices to the ancestral gods in their main halls, celebrating the new spring. He saw them offer pepper-and-cypress wine by seniority, drink peach-soup water, and children forced by adults to eat the five-pungent-herb dish with bitter faces, yet grinning happily when eating jaw-sticking candy — it made one's mouth water just watching. He even spotted a man with a big beard, following some strange first-month custom from who-knows-where, swallow a raw egg in one gulp.

This sight made him giggle out loud.

More households were busy painting chickens and pasting them outside their doors, hanging reed ropes, and swapping old peach-wood charms for new ones — just as, in the span of a few short years, they had already swapped through four courts...

The Crown Prince watched with rapt delight, and Diwu Lun let him be.

"Looking more at the outside world is no bad thing. When you are a little older, you may well go and walk among the common folk, even live among them for a spell."

Outside the palace grounds — that was the real world, not the hothouse within the palace where everyone treated him like a little ancestor.

In a child's eyes, this Thousand-Mile Lens was just a gorgeous kaleidoscope, but in the eyes of others, it was something else entirely.

Zang Nu, the Guard Commandant charged with protecting the palace quarters, once he grasped the device's capabilities, and recalling that the Emperor had ordered the Privy Treasury to produce glassware resembling crystal — which was far cheaper than crystal lenses — he worried that if this thing spread, someone might use it to spy on the palace.

As for the court writer Du Du, his head was full of romantic literary fancies. After taking a look through the Thousand-Mile Lens, he decided it was the "vertical eyes" of the ancient Shu king Cancong, who could see a hundred li, and then extended the allusion to the Book of Changes, exclaiming with deep feeling: "Your Majesty can already observe the kingdom's splendors — this is using the guest's advantage to serve the king."

With Huan Tan, however, after the initial shock came a deeper curiosity. He began examining the telescope from top to bottom, most likely trying to figure out the principle behind it.

The sun rose higher, and the Crown Prince had tired of playing. Diwu Lun had someone take him to the Empress, dismissed everyone else, and sat for a while with Huan Tan atop the city wall. He did not immediately explain, leaving Huan Tan ample time to explore on his own.

Who would have guessed that Huan Tan would boldly venture: "Your Majesty, might this object be disassembled?"

The Privy Treasury artisan-officials attending nearby instantly widened their eyes. This was a precious toy they had spent months researching under imperial decree, wasting half the crystal stockpile to craft. They were about to object and stop Huan Tan from this audacious notion.

Yet Diwu Lun only smiled and said: "Five were made in the first batch. One each was sent to Cen Peng, Geng Bozhao, and Ma Wenyuan. Two remain — one in the Privy Treasury, one with the imperial house, which is the lens now in your hands. Since it is a private gift, if Junshan wishes to take it apart, go ahead. But do be gentle, and don't drop those priceless crystal lenses."

No sooner said than done. With the reluctant assistance of the Privy Treasury artisan-officials, Huan Tan divided the Thousand-Mile Lens — designed to separate into sections — into four parts. Inside were merely two simple bronze tubes, cleverly crafted into a structure that could extend and retract. At each end was a crystal lens, but the difference was this: the end placed against the eye was a plano-concave lens, while the end aimed at the object was a plano-convex lens.

And it was this device, so simple in apparent structure, that made things a hundred paces away seem as if they were right before one's eyes?

After a moment's thought, Huan Tan stacked the two lenses together and aimed them at a guard standing watch not far away. When the distance between his hands reached a certain spacing, a smile broke across his face.

Huan Tan was a learned and brilliant scholar, and his interests leaned toward "miscellaneous writings" — that is, the Hundred Schools beyond the Six Classics. He quickly recalled a book that old Yang Xiong had dug out for him to read in some dust-choked corner of the Tianlu Pavilion.

"Your Majesty, the principle of this object — could it be what the Upper and Lower Canons of the Mozi say... 'The mirror: within the center. If the mirrored object is near the center, then what is mirrored is large, and the image is also large!'"

Seeing that Huan Tan had reached this step in barely a couple of hours, Diwu Lun felt he had indeed not misjudged the man. He clapped in praise: "Exactly so. It is precisely related to what Mozi called the eight principles of light and mirrors."

Diwu Lun had also learned from Yang Xiong back then that Mozi had studied light. After eagerly consulting the texts as if discovering a treasure, he found that Mozi had not only discovered the pinhole imaging principle but had also summarized certain laws for plane mirrors, concave mirrors, convex mirrors, and the like. One must realize that in the Warring States period, let alone glass, even crystal was possessed only by feudal kings. That Mozi could have painstakingly deduced these principles most likely while peering into bronze mirrors was truly fearsome.

After briefly describing these principles to Huan Tan, and even working out a small formula for the telescope's principle on the spot, Diwu Lun, out of reverence for the ancient sage, did not stint in attributing the "inspiration" for the telescope to the Mo Jing.

Having said this, Diwu Lun did not forget to dig a pit for Huan Tan: "The decline and fall of the Hundred Schools cannot be blamed entirely on the tyranny of Qin. Emperor Wu of Han's abolition of the Hundred Schools and sole veneration of Confucianism merely gave the final push to the learning of the various masters. They were like a hundred rivers merging into one — an irresistible trend of the times. By today, there have long been no later followers of the various masters; only Confucian scholars like Junshan who have a taste for 'miscellaneous learning' remain."

"However, in my view, the nine streams and ten schools of the various masters, and Confucian learning alike, are all the lost teachings of past sages. Over the last two hundred years, Confucians have re-expounded the Six Classics, with dozens of schools of study for each classic, producing annotations and commentaries totaling millions of words — one could study until white-haired and still not master them."

"By contrast, the study of the masters is rarely inquired into, left to gather dust on high shelves — truly a pity."

Diwu Lun gently stroked the Thousand-Mile Lens and said: "Since a mere eight principles from Mozi on light can produce such a weapon of state and war, if scholar-officials could thoroughly study Mohist learning, and then have skilled artisans learn and apply it, who knows how many more such ingenious devices — beneficial to the state and the people, weighty instruments of the nation — might appear in this world!"

Having said this, he looked at Huan Tan with earnest expectation: "The men of the world are mostly vulgar Confucians. Only Junshan is broadly learned, not shackled by the confines of the Six Classics. To collate the study of the masters, especially the Mozi — if not you, then who?"

These words stirred Huan Tan's heart as well. He already had a strong interest in the learning of the various masters. As a man who did not even believe in ghosts, spirits, or the soul, Diwu Lun's line of reasoning truly suited old Huan Tan's taste. So he boldly and readily agreed, never realizing that he had already stepped onto the carriage door that Diwu Lun had opened wide.

Folk legends about Mozi and Gongshu Ban were already numerous; many believed they had once crafted countless black technologies, told in tales of miraculous wonder. In a place like Luoyang, where crafts and commerce flourished, if an artisan made an ordinary object and merely labeled it a relic of Mozi or Gongshu, he could swindle crowds into flocking after it.

Diwu Lun also went with the flow, deciding to pull a backdoor listing — borrowing the study of the masters to promote true knowledge of later ages. If it succeeded, this would be a sort of "renaissance" in its own way!

Although Diwu Lun had a grand plan to "open the intellect of the scholars and common people," he adhered to the principle of gradual progress. Today's topic stopped at the right point and did not reach the final step in one go.

But he had still underestimated Huan Tan.

That night, after the small banquet in the palace ended, Huan Tan, well-fed and well-drunk, was on his way home from the imperial palace. Sitting in the jolting carriage, as he closed his eyes to rest, he kept recalling what he had seen while using the "Thousand-Mile Lens" during the day — and suddenly his eyes snapped open!

"Stop the carriage!"

The New Year's Eve curfew was lifted, and the driver was traveling along the most bustling street. The young men and women of Luoyang were thronging outside, some watching the exorcism masks, others enjoying the hundred entertainments.

But in Huan Tan's ears, all the clamor seemed to fall silent. He just stared blankly upward, looking at the by-no-means-narrow night sky above Luoyang. As if feeling he was still too far away, he disregarded his wide robes and large sleeves, stepped onto a greasy butcher's table by the roadside that sold cooked meat, then clambered up a temporarily erected shed for selling malt sugar — and in this way, made his way onto the roof of a two-story building.

"Grandee Huan!"

The driver's gaping astonishment, the furious cursing of the small peddlers, the pointing and gawking of the nearby gentry and commoners, even the police patrol officers in the distance rushing over at the news — Huan Tan cared for none of it!

The cloth shoes on his feet slipped a little on the roof tiles. The wind on the first day of the new year was cold, stirring his beard — though perhaps Huan Tan himself was trembling.

His eyes were fixed solely on the stars filling the sky!

"Today, during the day, His Majesty said that with the Thousand-Mile Lens, if one suddenly encounters the upheavals of war, whether by day, or by night using firelight, one can see from afar the enemy's camp, tents, men, horses, weapons, equipment, and supplies, and thus know whether they are prepared or not. And we can make preparations in advance. Whether to fight or defend, no greater merit exists."

"No — the Emperor's thinking is far too small!"

Huan Tan suddenly burst into wild laughter as if deranged, spreading his arms wide as if wanting to sprout wings and fly, or as if yearning to gather the whole skyful of stars into his embrace!

"To use the Thousand-Mile Lens to spy upon the heavens — would that not be an achievement far greater still!"

Huan Tan's interests were simply too broad, and his achievements in astronomy were no small matter. He was, since the Han, the orthodox successor of the "Celestial Sphere" school, which held that all fixed stars were arrayed upon a "celestial sphere," while the sun, moon, and five planets adhered to and moved upon this "celestial sphere."

In years past, Diwu Lun's teacher, old Yang Xiong, had firmly believed in the traditional "Canopy Heavens" theory. Yet one winter's day, as Yang Xiong and Huan Tan waited in the palace for an imperial audience, they sat together beneath the eaves of the White Tiger Hall. Huan Tan, with irrefutable and brilliant argumentation, convinced even the learned Yang Xiong.

From then on, Yang Xiong abandoned the Canopy Heavens theory and joined the ranks of the Celestial Sphere school. Together with Huan Tan, he in turn raised eight questions to challenge the Canopy Heavens theory — the so-called "Eight Difficulties for the Canopy Heavens" — routing the conservative court astronomers.

Now, the Celestial Sphere theory flourished and the Canopy Heavens declined. Yet Huan Tan was still not satisfied. Although he believed the Celestial Sphere was the truth, it was still not perfect enough. Many questions left by the ancients, they still could not answer.

"To what are the sun and moon tethered? In what are the ranked stars arrayed?"

"They rise from the Valley of the Sun and rest by the Meng River."

"From dawn to darkness, how many li do they travel?"

"By what virtue does the night-light, when it dies, then come to life again?"

Huan Tan recited Qu Yuan's "Heavenly Questions," and for a moment, on that rooftop, his eyes brimmed with hot tears.

"Master Qu — soon, there will be answers!"

"Since the Thousand-Mile Lens can magnify objects tenfold or twentyfold, if used to observe the sun, moon, and stars, would not everything that the mortal eye could never reach before become crystal clear!?"

At this thought, he could no longer care about going home. Right before the hundreds of onlookers, he slid down from the rooftop, jumped straight off, and fell flat on his face in a sprawling tumble. Then he struggled to his feet, ignored his scrapes, stood upon the carriage, and urgently ordered the driver: "Quickly, back to the palace!"

Huan Tan was an impatient man. He was not willing to wait a single moment. He had to go right now and ask Diwu Lun for that remaining Thousand-Mile Lens kept by the imperial house. This very night, atop the palace's star observation platform, he would explore the mysteries of the stars!

As Huan Tan's carriage hurriedly turned back, the crowd gathered nearby had swelled to over a thousand. Someone recognized Huan Junshan. The tale of him laughing wildly at the stars, gesticulating in ecstasy, spread from one to ten to a hundred through Luoyang. This New Year's Eve was destined to leave behind a legendary story, etched into the history of astronomy:

The short-sighted and mundane Emperor Diwu Lun spent a fortune to craft a telescope, yet used it only for military purposes — a fight over snail's horns. But the wise great scholar Huan Tan aimed it at the moon and stars in the sky, thereby bringing humanity one step closer to the truth of this world...

A perfect scientific tale, is it not?

Yet at this very moment, atop the stargazing platform in Luoyang's Southern Palace, Diwu Lun was also raising a telescope, training it on star after star. He watched with rapt delight, and in the bleak, biting wind, he too cut a solitary figure.

Until he heard a palace attendant relay the news: Huan Tan had returned!

"Come back to borrow the telescope?"

Diwu Lun spun around, startled at first. After the Embroidered Uniform Guard rushed in ahead of Huan Tan to report the commotion in the Luoyang marketplace, the Emperor immediately caught on and burst out laughing, as elated as Huan Tan had been, dancing and flailing on that rooftop.

Diwu Lun was deeply gratified — as if watching his little Crown Prince finally go from crawling to standing, slowly bracing himself against the wall, tottering forward step by step.

In Diwu Lun's view, opening the minds of the ancient scholars was much the same as raising a child. You could do the homework for the child entirely, but you could also stay by their side, patiently guiding them. Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime!

"Open the palace gates. Let Grand Master Huan enter."

Diwu Lun said with a smile: "Let him look!"

……

In the first month of the third year of Wude, let us shift our gaze south. Cen Peng, stationed in Wancheng, had also received the Emperor's "gift."

His opponent, Feng Yi, had the fortune of a famous general for an Emperor — Liu Xiu, though personally in Yang Province, had orchestrated the entire theater, even down to how each column should advance, where the critical points lay, and how to fight upon reaching a given location.

With Cen Peng, however, Diwu Lun was rather hands-off, offering virtually no meddling. Diwu Lun's interference at the front was a classic case of sizing up the dish before adding the sauce. With fierce generals like Wu Han, a bit more micromanagement was necessary, but with Cen Peng, Diwu Lun was exceptionally at ease.

Before the telescope arrived, Diwu Lun had essentially handed all of Yu Province to Cen Peng. The manpower and resources of several commanderies were his to utilize, allowing him to mobilize civilian laborers at his own discretion. What's more, a steady stream of grain flowed south from the Three He region to meet the needs of Cen Peng's tens of thousands of troops.

At most, Diwu Lun merely pointed out that Xiangyang was the paramount objective, and then stopped there, leaving General Cen free to act on his own judgment.

Cen Peng could feel the Emperor's trust in him. Now, having received the telescope and tried it out, he too was utterly captivated: "When two armies face off, using this divine far-seeing mirror to gauge their numbers and discern their true strength, one can anticipate the enemy in advance!"

Information on the battlefield is critically important. In the past, when Cen Peng fought, he too had to climb high and gaze far, first surveying the terrain and scrutinizing the enemy's true and false dispositions, concentrating on exploiting their chaos. But relying on the naked eye alone, one could neither see far, nor always see clearly. Especially in the heat of battle, a hair's breadth of error could lead a thousand miles astray.

Now, with the telescope in hand, Cen Peng could well declare…

"The enemy — lies within my sight!"

Yet good and bad news always come in equal measure. Just as Cen Peng was provisioning his troops and sharpening his weapons, ready at any moment to advance on Xiangyang, dire tidings also reached his desk…

"Bandits from Greenwood Mountain, in league with remnants of the Liu clan of Chongling, have incited the gentry and commoners of several counties, wreaking havoc in the southern reaches of Nanyang!"