Chapter 700: To You, Two Thousand Years Hence (Grand Finale)

The first adversary Diwu Lun faced was called "Heavenly Disaster."

As a student of Yang Xiong, over the years, the unlearned and unskilled Diwu Lun had at least flipped through the Five Classics once. He saw that the "Book of Documents, Zhou Documents, Great Declaration I" says: "Man is the most intelligent of all things." And another important classic, the Classic of Filial Piety, quotes Confucius as saying: "Of all that Heaven and Earth produce, man is the noblest." After civilization and the state were created, man became even more formidable. The Son of Heaven grandiosely proclaimed, "Within the borders, what land is not the sovereign's? Of those who eat the land's produce, who is not the sovereign's subject?" and eagerly sought to domesticate all things under Heaven and Earth.

But even the most stable and enduring Chinese dynasty, when encountering major cyclical climate shifts, was just as fragile.

The events of the past few decades were proof enough. Thanks to the tireless records of successive generations of celestial officials on phenological changes, frost dates, first snows, and calamities, Huan Tan, using these materials, confirmed Diwu Lun's conjecture: since the reigns of Emperors Yuan and Cheng of the Former Han, the climate had indeed been cooling bit by bit.

The cause was unknown. Diwu Lun guessed that perhaps a volcano on some island tens of thousands of li away had erupted violently, sending sky-filling ash into the stratosphere and reducing direct sunlight; or perhaps during the previous warm period, melting polar ice caps caused some ocean current to stop flowing, or to shift from warm to cold, directly altering the climate of Asia's east coast...

As disasters erupted frequently and grain harvests fluctuated, the mighty Han, which had once reached the zenith of classical history, inevitably declined. Wang Mang took power, proclaiming himself a son of destiny, but the climate did not become favorable because of it; instead, it worsened steadily.

Now, the realm had been taken over by Diwu Lun, yet Heaven still gave the transmigrator no face: the rice that could be grown in the Shuofang commanderies during Emperor Wu of Han's time could no longer produce grain; the border areas of Bing Province could not sustain large numbers of garrison troops and immigrants, and the dividing line between agriculture and pastoralism pushed southward day by day; large swaths of bamboo in the Guanzhong region withered and died, and pandas migrated from the northern foothills of the Qinling Mountains toward Ba-Shu; the coast of Bohai in You Province began to freeze over year after year, the Wuhuan frequently raided the borders, and the Xianbei far in the Greater Khingan Range, unable to endure the cold, began to appear within the empire's field of vision, while the once-flourishing Fuyu kingdom in the northeast entered the countdown to extinction; in the once-scorching Jiangdong region, one winter it suddenly began to snow heavily, and the Huai River, which had never frozen before, saw ice floes...

"Winter is coming." This was the reality Diwu Lun had to face. His dynasty had collided head-on with the historical "Eastern Han, Three Kingdoms, Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties Cold Period."

Fortunately, Diwu Lun had already found a solution. Apart from continuing to vigorously promote inventions to boost productivity and make up for the grain shortfall caused by climate change, the answer was: southward!

"The Former Han Emperor Wu expanded into Shuofang, Hexi, and the Western Regions. Times have changed, the climate has changed. The Wei dynasty cannot follow the old path of the Former Han. The future can only be exerted toward the south!"

Today, the realm's population is dense in the north and sparse in the south, the exact opposite of two thousand years later. South of the Yangtze and Huai Rivers, there is still a vast amount of virgin land. Even if the economic center cannot be shifted south prematurely, if after a hundred years the north and south can advance side by side, Diwu Lun will have fulfilled his historical mission.

Moving toward warmer places is human nature. The obstacles are merely forests and swamps, poisonous miasma and fierce beasts, and the custom of being attached to one's homeland and reluctant to move. So Diwu Lun truly had to thank Liu Xiu.

"Xiu'er has already been developing the south for me for over ten years!"

Now, it was time to take over. Even if Liu Xiu fled to Jiaozhou—the later Liangguang region—to resist stubbornly, the vast middle and lower Yangtze basin was enough for Diwu Lun to digest for ten or twenty years. He could also use the southern campaign as a pretext to send large numbers of troops to garrison and cultivate the land.

And his second adversary was named "Earthly Calamity."

In truth, it was not the earth, but the water upon it—the water of the Yellow River.

From its first breach during Emperor Wu of Han's reign, to its increasing rampancy under Emperors Yuan, Cheng, and Ai, to yet another breach and course change under Wang Mang, in Diwu Lun's view, the Yellow River's loss of control was inevitable.

After all, this is a great river whose sediment content is the highest in the world. According to the estimate of river-control officials under Wang Mang—"one dan of water, six dou of mud"—it was as high as 60%. Even with every conceivable defense, across a watershed stretching ten thousand li, it is nearly impossible to prevent silt from clogging the riverbed. The levees rise higher and higher, and the moment there is the slightest slackening, a breach and flood follow.

Diwu Lun ordered the Commandant of Water and Parks, Du Shi, to use a hundred thousand laborers and expend millions in grain to construct levees along the Yellow River's new course. Key weir sluice gates were even cast with a cement called "Living Soil." From then on, Ji Province, Yan Province, and Qing Province were no longer subject to being scoured by great floods at any moment. The Red Eyebrows of the great river gradually returned to their homeland and once more became registered households. Coupled with the successful construction of the Bian River Canal, the lands of several dozen counties near Yu Province were transformed into fertile fields.

But Diwu Lun felt that the Yellow River would only remain calm for a time. He was firmly convinced: "Localized control is futile. I absolutely will not be a paperhanger making patch after patch."

The Yellow River must be controlled from head to tail by a unified regime. To make the "Yellow River run clear," the fundamental solution is still to manage its upper reaches. After all, the Yellow River's sediment comes mainly from the Loess Plateau. From the Zhou and Qin dynasties to the Han, this land of abundance had been overexploited. Diwu Lun decided that in the future, the administrative center would be moved away from Chang'an, east to Luoyang, to reduce the population-siphoning effect of the Five Tombs, and to encourage tree planting, allowing the vegetation of the upper reaches to recover somewhat.

"In this way, perhaps we can make the Yellow River behave for a few more centuries..."

And the final adversary Diwu Lun faced was "Human Calamity."

When the State of Wei was just taking shape, the original civil and military followers under Diwu Lun were all utterly focused. There was not a single matter they did not attend to with all their hearts, not a single person who did not exert themselves fully. Perhaps in those times of hardship and peril, survival could only be wrested from certain death. Then, as Diwu Lun proclaimed himself emperor and the realm gradually stabilized—Wang Mang executed, the north swept clean—the environment gradually improved, and the spirits of some officials gradually slackened.

Within the imperial clan, led by Diqi Biao, there were cases of arrogance, extravagance, and debauchery. Diwu Lun had him beaten with the fire tongs left by his grandfather and ordered him to reflect on his faults at home. Among the Nine Ministers, led by the Grand Minister of Agriculture Ren Guang, there were cases of faction-forming, though the traces were not obvious, so Diwu Lun had not yet dealt with him. Among the territorial magnates, exemplified by the Intendant of Henan, Ouyang Xi, there were cases of corruption and bribe-taking. This man was a great Confucian scholar, and a native of Di County in Qiansheng—practically half a fellow townsman of Diwu Lun, and elevated for that reason. Yet when Ouyang was ordered to survey the land, he colluded with local powerful families and embezzled over ten million cash, causing a great scandal, and was thus imprisoned and sentenced to death.

As for commandery and county officials using their authority to collude with merchants, invent pretexts, purchase fields and land, and privately keep excessive numbers of slaves—as long as Diwu Lun dared to investigate, such cases were everywhere.

Seeing more and more such incidents, with laws, inspectors, and censors unable to prohibit or oversee them all, at times he practically wanted to stage a "Diwu Lun's Stern Rebuke of the Ministers."

"When I first raised troops, I thought the greatest enemy was Wang Mang."

"After driving out Wang Mang, I thought the greatest enemy was the Red Eyebrow Army."

"After I pacified the Red Eyebrows, Wu and Shu again carved out their own territories."

"After destroying Shu and pressuring Wu, I am now increasingly clear."

"The great Wei's heartland trouble is not outside, but in the court, right here in Weiyang Palace!"

"Right among my imperial clan, beloved generals, and great ministers."

"Where we rot a little, the great Wei rots a patch. If you all rot completely, every part of the great Wei will rise up in revolt. The Greenwood and the Red Eyebrows will borrow corpses to resurrect their souls, and you will die without a burial place!"

"Think about it. Wang Mang lost his head at the Blue Dragon Gate. How many years has it been? Forgotten?!"

"That executioner's block is still stored behind the palace, as a great treasure of our dynasty, staring at the heads upon your necks every single day!"

In the end, Diwu Lun would not curse like this. Relying on his mouth alone, how many people could he scold awake? Restraint still had to come from institutions. Coupled with the imperial examinations continuously replenishing fresh blood from humble families, it should be no problem to endure for several decades or a century.

But no matter how good the institutions, they are ultimately executed by people, and human desire is endless. Having one, one thinks of two; having a hundred, one thinks of ten thousand. The wealthy are never satisfied with their vast stores of goods, and the local elites always fantasize that the poor still have room to be squeezed. While Diwu Lun is alive, he can curb it. But what will happen after he is gone and his policies cease?

Standing by the Yangtze River, Diwu Lun knew that his dynasty was newly established, full of vitality. Though there was slight slackening, the flaws ultimately did not obscure the jade.

But the clock called the "Historical Cycle" was already ticking, and had long since begun to move.

He, and even his dynasty, could certainly not leap out of the historical cycle. After all, in the two thousand years to come, whether a single person, a single family, a single group, a single locality, or even a single state—who could leap out of this pattern of rising with vigor and perishing with suddenness?

"But I believe that in the future, someone will eventually leap out, and realize the true 'Rule of the Three Dynasties'!"

Diwu Lun suddenly recalled that before Wang Mang mounted the executioner's block, he had been convinced that Diwu Lun also wanted to be a sage and bring about great peace. The old man, quite displeased with Diwu Lun's inexplicable self-confidence, had once asked in grief and indignation: "Diwu Lun, what virtue and ability do you possess to be so certain that you can accomplish, one by one, the unfinished work that I could not?!"

And Diwu Lun's answer had left Wang Mang even more baffled.

"Of course I can."

"Because I have seen the 'Three Dynasties'!"

What Diwu Lun referred to was not Wang Mang's and the Confucian scholars' fanciful imaginings of the ancient Yao and Shun, but a tangible, real reality: it was two thousand years later, the direction from which he had come!

This was the greatest source of confidence that allowed Diwu Lun, a mere ordinary man, to dare to contend with the realm's heroes, and in the end not even regard them as adversaries!

He knew the direction of the river's flow. It was not to turn back and yearn for the illusory Yao, Shun, King Wen, and King Wu, but to walk toward the future.

Diwu Lun also wanted to make the scholars of the world reverse their past reveries about high antiquity, and believe that the Three Dynasties lay not behind them, but ahead. Otherwise, when they encountered bottlenecks in the future, they would only be like Wang Mang and Liu Xin, their heads full of intelligence and wisdom, yet using it all on textual exegesis of ancient records, seeking solutions from the fragmentary words of past sages—which would inevitably be putting the cart before the horse.

To instill this in the people of the world, Diwu Lun had to work even harder. Only in an era of rising living standards, an era where the majority could see hope for tomorrow, would people yearn for a better future, rather than muttering about the "end of history"...

"And what I can do is halt the regressive steps of the Xin dynasty era, and before I die, strive to walk a few more steps forward on this dark spiral staircase, so that those who come after are just a little closer to the light."

"In this way, success need not be achieved by me, but success will surely have my mark upon it!"

Look, with these three great enemies—Heavenly Disaster, Earthly Calamity, and Human Calamity—even without Xiu'er as an adversary, could he still be lonely?

Thinking of this, Diwu Lun suddenly became cheerful. He laughed to the sky and said: "Struggling with Heaven—boundless joy! Struggling with Earth—boundless joy! Struggling with Man—boundless joy!"

Then, Diwu Lun suddenly hurled the Nine-Ear Jade Pendant in his hand with force, letting it fall into the murky Yangtze River below Chaotian Gate, to drift eastward with the current.

It was not thrown to Liu Xiu downstream.

Rather, it was thrown into the river water that flows like time—time flowing on like this, never ceasing—thrown toward the place he came from, tossed to some person two thousand years later?

On the day of the Dragon Boat Festival in the twelfth year of Wude (AD 36), Diwu Lun, who usually disliked copying poems, was suddenly seized by a surge of inspiration and "composed" several stanzas, ordering them to be carved into the river stones at Chaotian Gate.

The verse went: "On and on the Yangtze eastward flows, its waves washing away heroes..."

Success and failure, right and wrong, all turn to nothing in the blink of an eye.

The green hills remain as ever; how many sunsets have stained them red?

White-haired fishermen and woodcutters on the river isles, long accustomed to autumn moons and spring breezes.

A jug of unstrained wine, a happy chance to meet.

So many affairs of ancient and modern times — all consigned to laughter and idle talk!"

………………

It passes on like this, never ceasing day or night.

The ancient sages compared time to flowing water. Can we then suppose that when the stream of time encounters certain variables, it can still maintain its former course? For instance, a little butterfly fluttering in from the future, beating its wings, unleashing immense energy, altering the fates of countless people, severing the history of the past — its impact so vast that the stream of time bursts its banks with a roar, even changing its course, surging toward a wholly new and unknown direction!

Yet the old river has not vanished; it still flows on in a parallel space-time, following its former channel, as if no change had ever occurred…

Or perhaps, in some inconspicuous corner, one more tiny "butterfly" has appeared.

This is our era: the year 2021 AD, the seventy-second year of the Republic.

In a third-tier city in the southwest, inside a cramped rented room in an urban village, a middle-aged man with a half-bald head sat kneeling with meticulous posture before a low table. His small eyes were fixed with rapt attention on an old computer screen playing a TV drama — the classic Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

When the ending theme — "The flash of blades and swords has dimmed, the beat of drums and blare of horns has faded" — began to play and the credits appeared, he finally let out a long, deep sigh, wagged his head, and delivered his verdict.

"In my survey of the Three Kingdoms, only Cao Mengde truly deserves to be called a villainous hero in chaotic times and an able minister in times of order. Posterity often speaks of 'Cao and Mang' in the same breath — though this stems from contemporaries misunderstanding our sincere hearts to save the world, it is still fitting!"

He stroked the beard he had painstakingly grown and said with a smile, "This fellow is like me!"

But as his fingers twirled the longest strand of his beard, he sank into thought. "Wait — by all reason, I came first, and Cao Cao later. Perhaps 'Mang and Cao' would be more appropriate?"

Then he shook his head again and remarked, "Liu Bei, though a man of talent and outstanding bearing, was constrained by his surname. He did not realize that the virtue of Han had already been exhausted as early as the time of Emperor Ai of the Former Han — otherwise I would never have had cause to take its place. A pity."

After watching the final episode, he grew even more furious and began cursing Sima Yi.

"Sima Zhongda! It was your house that ruined the good name of abdication which I had carried forward and made glorious!"

But there was another reason he detested the Sima clan — because they were too alike…

"A hawk-eyed, wolf-glancing schemer who plots against his master — the very image of that Diwu Lun!"

The rented rooms in the urban village had no soundproofing. His impassioned shouting and raving disturbed a fellow laborer living with him. Someone pounded the wall violently from the other side. "Goddammit, Wang Mang, you not sleeping? No need to haul bricks tomorrow?"

Only then did he rein himself in a little, though he still muttered under his breath, "Were this the Great Xin, who would dare speak to me so…" and so on.

Everyone who lived with him knew he was an odd character. Ever since a car accident in 2017 that left him hospitalized and unconscious for several days, his personality had changed completely. When he woke, he did not recognize his own father and mother, spoke words no one could understand, and his mouth was full of classical particles and archaisms.

Later, when he gradually became able to communicate and relatives and friends asked his name, he would always declare with pride: "Wang Mang, Wang Jujun!"

Decent people don't read history, so naturally no one knew who that was. Add to that his eccentric behavior — he was like someone who had come out of the deep mountains, utterly ignorant of city life, and caused quite a few ridiculous scenes in the hospital. For instance, when a nurse gave him an injection and the cold needle pierced his flesh, he cried out "Save the emperor!" and so on — the examples were too many to count.

So tactful relatives and friends said, "Probably amnesia from the crash — just take it slow and recover." The less tactful ones said, "Such a pity — a fine young man, how did he turn stupid?"

The man who called himself "Wang Mang" felt deeply wronged too. All he remembered was that he had just finished speaking with Diwu Lun atop the Azure Dragon Tower of Weiyang Palace in Chang'an when Wei soldiers pushed him onto the execution platform, and he faced death with composure…

But the moment his breath stopped, everything seemed to halt — and yet it did not. Before his eyes stretched an expanse of darkness.

The first thing that sounded was a heartbeat — his own heartbeat, thump-thump, thump-thump, as if a life long dormant was struggling to revive.

Then came a jumble of noise flooding his ears: all around him were languages he could not understand, strange sounds ticking and beeping, and in his nostrils an indescribable acrid smell. Later, Wang Mang learned that these were machines like electrocardiographs, and that he was in a hospital.

When he gradually regained consciousness, he found he was not beneath the eastern tower, under the executioner's blade, but lying flat on a hospital bed. Above his head was a blinding light source — a colossal, dazzling "candle" that gave off light like the sun.

Later, Wang Mang also learned that this thing was called an electric light.

Every single thing in the modern world — even the most ordinary glass bottle, medicine, hospital bed, door, window, even a pair of slippers — struck him as utterly novel. But what jolted Wang Mang most was being helped to the toilet and catching a glimpse of his own face in the glass mirror…

The man in the mirror was a complete stranger to Wang Mang. Overnight, he had become another person, and had grown younger by several decades…

In that instant, Wang Mang recalled a debate that Grandee Huan Tan had once held with someone: the metaphor of form, spirit, candle, and flame.

Liu Xin's nephew, Liu Erudite, had said: "The spirit dwells within the physical form, just as a flame burns upon a candle. When the candle is consumed, the fire cannot travel alone through the void."

And Huan Tan had said: "Indeed. The ash of a spent candle is like the aging of a person — teeth fall out, hair turns white, flesh withers. By then, the spirit can no longer be nourished by blood and breath. When the body's breath ceases in death, the spirit, too, is extinguished like fire and candle together, vanishing utterly."

But Liu Erudite raised yet another possibility.

"When a lamp burns dry, you can add oil to keep it going. When a candle burns out, you can replace it with another. So long as the transmission of the flame is not interrupted, the fire does not die. Then, when a person nears death, could the spirit likewise exchange one body for another and continue to endure?"

The two men's debate reached no conclusion, but when word of it reached Wang Mang's ears, he inclined toward the latter view…

As it now appears, was Huan Tan wrong, and Liu Erudite right?

He had no time to figure out what was going on. After he recovered and was discharged from the hospital, even greater shocks from the modern world awaited Wang Mang: forests of hundred-story towers, cars threading through interchanges, airplanes streaking across the tiny patch of sky overhead, and the riot of neon colors. To Wang Mang, who came from the classical age, every single thing was a divine artifact beyond the reach of his imagination!

What has happened to this world? What has happened to me? Wang Mang was dizzy and utterly unable to adapt. In the end, his "parents" took him home for a full half-year of quiet recuperation. He shut himself away, never leaving the house, eating and sleeping and sleeping and eating, his gaze growing duller by the day. He would rather have returned to the execution platform and calmly accepted his fate.

His parents tried countless methods, but Wang Mang remained unmoved — until one day, a "middle-school classmate" came to visit him. When the classmate heard that he called himself "Wang Mang," he burst out laughing.

"Bro, you've been reading too many web novels."

"Wang Mang? What, are you a transmigrator too? Did Liu Xiu, Child of the Plane, come along with you?"

"Transmigrator" — this was the first time Wang Mang had ever heard this term. As if he had found the key to solving the riddle of how he had come to this era, he desperately fired off questions. But after grasping its meaning, Wang Mang was even more confused.

"What? My Great Xin fell again?"

No, no — the key point was not that it had fallen again, but that, according to the classmate, the person who destroyed the Xin Dynasty was not Diwu Lun, but Liu Xiu. (This classmate's historical knowledge had probably also been gleaned from novels.)

Wang Mang knew of two Liu Xius. One was his former close friend Liu Xin, who had betrayed him. The other was the Greenwood general who had routed Wang Yi at Kunyang — later known as "King Xiu of Wu." Come to think of it, Diwu Lun had also seemed to take King Xiu of Wu very seriously and had even emphasized him in Wang Mang's presence.

But according to the classmate, that Liu Xiu later founded the Eastern Han, and after that came the Three Kingdoms.

"I know the Three Kingdoms inside out!" The classmate excitedly recommended several Three Kingdoms novels to him.

The classmate, with his half-baked historical knowledge, could not resolve Wang Mang's confusion, and Wang Mang had no time to "decode" the mystery for the moment, because he had to survive.

The family he found himself in was just an ordinary household. To pay for his recovery, they had nearly bankrupted themselves and gone into debt. Later, his "father" fell ill and could no longer work, adding frost to the snow of an already struggling family. Wang Mang could hardly keep living off them forever, so he had no choice but to try going out to earn a living. Knowing nothing of modern life, he could only start with the most basic manual labor — commonly known as hauling bricks…

Fortunately, in his previous life, Wang Mang had been cast out among the common folk and endured several years of hardship, so he somehow gritted his teeth and pulled through. Before he knew it, four whole years had passed.

During this time, Wang Mang saved a little money and moved out to live on his own, to avoid the awkwardness of being around his "parents" day and night. Of course, Wang Mang, who placed extreme importance on filial piety, still visited them every few days. He even bought a second-hand computer and learned to go online — albeit with a two-finger typing method — and learned to search, though only via Baidu Baike.

But at last, he could rely on himself and conduct a detailed investigation into that period of history!

As he searched those familiar names on Baidu again and again, Wang Mang discovered with shock that everyone's fate was indeed utterly different from what he knew!

For example, Baidu Baike said that Liu Xin plotted to assassinate Wang Mang, and when the plot was exposed, he committed suicide. But Wang Mang remembered: didn't he flee to Longyou, set up the child Liu Ruzi Ying as emperor, and establish the "Western Han"? Later, he even met Wang Mang one last time in Luoyang.

And his own pitiable daughter, the Princess of Huanghuang, had actually taken her own life in the flames…

When he saw the encyclopedia's description of his own end, Wang Mang was so furious that smoke practically poured from every orifice of his head.

The wailing to Heaven and such — those all matched. But it was the Greenwood Army that stormed Chang'an. Wang Mang retreated onto the Jian Terrace. Amid his ranting, "Heaven has begotten virtue in me; what can the Han soldiers do to me?", he was actually killed by a complete nobody. After his death, his corpse was brutally dismembered. His head was passed to Wancheng, where people kicked it around like a shuttlecock, and his tongue was cut out and eaten raw by the people of Wan…

Wang Mang could not possibly accept that. He would rather die under Diwu Lun's guillotine! At least that would be grand and earth-shaking!

And the Red Eyebrow Army, toward whom he had always felt a guilty debt before his death — in the history of this plane, they actually fought their way into Chang'an and destroyed the Greenwood Gengshi regime. Then they began a rapid decline, until they were finally defeated and absorbed by Liu Xiu. Ah, Fan the Giant, Fan the Giant, you thick-browed fellow, how could you too…

What struck Wang Mang as most baffling of all, though, was "Diwu Lun."

In the encyclopedia, phrases like "upright and outspoken in character, valuing loyalty" — was that the hidden-virtue youth he knew? This Diwu Lun built fortified walls and strongholds at Changling to resist the Red Eyebrows, later became a subject of Liu Xiu, served as Governor of several commanderies, and ultimately became Grand Minister of Works, ranking among the Three Excellencies. Truly no ordinary man, but…

"This is absolutely not the Diwu Lun I knew!"

Through repeated bouts of two-finger typing, Wang Mang solidified this conviction. Yes, he had long sensed it dimly: the reason everyone's fate, including his own, differed so drastically from the encyclopedia was that they had all been influenced by a certain person, their lives changed. That person had even, by the strength of one man alone, altered the course of history!

"Diwu Lun — you are that anomaly!"

At this point, the trail went cold. Wang Mang could only set the matter aside for the time being. He gradually began to care about what happened after the Xin Dynasty and the Eastern Han. That was what led to his recent late nights reading Romance of the Three Kingdoms…

You don't know until you look, and once you look, it startles you. Only then did Wang Mang understand that the "Xin Dynasty" he knew belonged to the era around the turn of the Common Era, and now it was the year 2022 CE!

Though he had learned to take strange things in stride, it still took Wang Mang a long effort to accept this fact.

"Even by the metaphor of the candle flame of form and spirit, I have merely changed to a different candle, while my soul continues to burn upon this body."

But this — this was a candle from two thousand years later! The flame had been passed far too far!

In a flash of lightning, Wang Mang suddenly recalled something.

Wang Mang had once seen Diwu Lun tinker out many novel inventions, such as honeycomb briquettes, which looked much like the ones he still saw people using in the urban village. And during his time in Luoyang, Liu Xin had mentioned the new numerals Diwu Lun created — from 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, to the unprecedented 0. These were now called Arabic numerals, seen everywhere in daily life.

A bold conjecture formed in Wang Mang's mind: "Diwu Lun — could it be that you, like me, are also a 'transmigrator'?"

But not from ancient times to the present — rather, the reverse! No one could answer his question. Life went on. To survive, Wang Mang still had to rise early and toil late, doing dull, tedious work, dragging his exhausted body back to his dwelling, and collapsing into sleep. But Wang Mang was, after all, Wang Mang. Once he fixed his direction, he would not, of course, fall into confusion again. In his occasional free time, he would change into clean clothes, go to the city library, and borrow some traditional-character books. Once, when a certain history major was frowning over his arduous reading of the Zuo Commentary, Wang Mang coolly pointed out an error in his analysis. For a moment, the whole library regarded him as a man of unearthly genius.

After all, Wang Mang was a great Confucian scholar!

Though he gradually adapted to modern life, Wang Mang still could not accept a history so utterly different from his own memories. What he found most unbearable was that Diwu Lun — who had burst into his life out of nowhere, changed everything, yet was completely invisible in this history!

wWW ¤Tтkā n ¤c○

Until one day, Wang Mang decided to do something.

Still kneeling before his old computer, still using two-finger typing, Wang Mang began, little by little, to write down his story in Word.

From his youth, binding up his hair and seeking learning, to witnessing the political darkness under Emperor Cheng of the Former Han, when the resolve to change the era was born in his heart, to the invitation he extended to Liu Xin: "Yingshu, are you willing to join me in restoring the rule of the Three Dynasties?"

The political struggles, the regency, the abdication, the proclamation of empire that followed, and even the confident reforms, the setbacks, the failures — Wang Mang wrote it all down truthfully, one by one. He was now able to look upon all of that with an impartial eye.

And further on, the protagonist seemed no longer to be him, but that youth named Diwu Lun. He rose with sudden vigor from the wreckage of the Xin Dynasty, turned his blade against Wang Mang, and startled him from his deluded dream. It also sent Wang Mang wandering among the common folk, where he saw the most agonizing reality of that world!

The living hell that he himself had helped to create!

As he wrote, Wang Mang grew emotional. He wept. How to describe his state of mind? Perhaps it was like that ending theme from Three Kingdoms playing by his ear.

Faded now, the flash and clash of blades.

Gone far away, the drumbeats and clanging gongs.

Before my eyes, drifting one by one,

Those vivid, living faces.

Buried deep, the ancient roads of yellow dust.

Fallen to ruin, the beacon-lit frontier towns.

Oh, passing years, you cannot take away

That string of names, each one so familiar.

And those names and stories, at last, came to an abrupt halt at the moment Wang Mang mounted the guillotine…

In reality, that day was the year 2022, the early hours of the sixth day of the Tiger Year's first lunar month.

Wang Mang wrote down the final conversation he had once had with Diwu Lun.

"Diwu Lun, what virtue do you possess, what ability, that you can be so certain you will surely accomplish, one by one, the unfinished work that I left behind!?"

Diwu Lun said some rather baffling words: "My ideals are the same as yours, Old Master Wang, but our methods differ. In the final analysis, it is because the scope of your vision and mine are not the same."

"Your 'Three Dynasties,' Old Master Wang, are the fanciful imaginings of Confucian scholars about high antiquity — formless, elusive, and groundless. To apply such fabrications to a degenerate age will only compound chaos upon chaos."

"But I — I have truly, vividly, seen the Three Dynasties!"

At the time, Wang Mang did not understand those words. But now…

"I understand."

Wang Mang rose to his feet and looked out at the city's brilliant lights. Even if you added the entire starry sky to them, they would not match a ten-thousandth of it.

And there were splendid fireworks, too, rising and bursting in the distance.

By the standards of an "ancient man," Wang Mang certainly felt this was the best of eras, a thousand times, a hundred times better than the Former Han or the Xin Dynasty. For instance, he was now a commoner of no rank, practically at the bottom of society, yet he still had no worries about food or clothing, and the dazzling entertainments he encountered every day surpassed even those of an emperor.

But precisely because he dwelt at the bottom, he could not say that this era was perfect in every way.

Yet many people, and many things, were indeed inching forward, bit by bit, toward an ideal. The era and the nation were moving upward.

Wang Mang stood in silence for a long time. He murmured to himself, "Diwu Lun, is this moment, here and now, the Three Dynasties that you saw?"

Still, no one answered. Only the ending theme of Three Kingdoms continued to echo by his ear:

Who decides the rise and fall?

Can flourishing and decline have no cause?

Undertake the deeds of your lifetime.

Why care for judgments after your death?

Yes — undertake the deeds of your lifetime; why care for judgments after your death? Even if this was not the Three Dynasties, it was very close to them, was it not? But the one thing Wang Mang regretted was…

"My final wish as I departed was the hope that Diwu Lun could truly, on my behalf, mend those great errors and bring peace to all under Heaven…"

Wang Mang wiped away his tears. "I wonder how Diwu Lun is doing over there? Did he defeat Liu Xiu? Does he still remember the dream — to restore the Three Dynasties and bring about the Great Peace?"

Still no one answered — only the song lingered in the air:

A page of wind and cloud scatters.

Transforming time and space.

Gathering and parting are all fate.

Meeting and separation always stir the heart.

Listening to this song on repeat like that, he sat dazed until daybreak, when Wang Mang finally returned to the computer.

His story with Diwu Lun — finished.

But what should it be called?

Wang Mang closed his eyes, red from staying up all night, thought for a long while, then broke into a smile. He opened his eyes and, using his standard two-finger typing, tapped out two characters.

The New Book.

Canon's music rang out — the alarm he'd set yesterday went off. The New Year holiday was over; it was time to head out and haul bricks. Wang Mang let out a long breath, closed the laptop, put on his dirt-yellow down jacket, wrapped a red scarf around his neck, stepped out the door, and went down into the bustling, smoke-veined urban village thick with the breath of life.

He walked into the sea of people, merging into the crowd of you and me.

Vanished from sight.

……

PS: Wrote this in one breath — my hands are still shaking. The afterword will come later, once I've calmed down.

Oh, and The New Book's main story is complete. Extras will be posted on the WeChat official account: July Old Foreigner.