Chapter 44: Seas Into Mulberry Fields: The Loess of the Daming Palace Ruins

Xiao Sizi did not answer.

She rose on tiptoe, more than half her body draped over the desk.

Her cheek nearly pressed against the curved screen.

Her gaze darted wildly between towers of high-rises and ribbons of road.

She saw the square, regular outline of a city wall left behind.

"Lin Xuan, the bricks of that city wall don't look right." She pointed at the outline of the Ming city wall in the center of the screen. "The city bricks of the Great Tang weren't laid this way."

"And the wall is too small—it can't hold all these towers and pavilions in the city."

Lin Xuan took a closer look, then explained, "That was built in the Ming Dynasty, and renovated again later. It's several hundred years after your Great Tang."

"The old Great Tang city wall has long vanished without a trace."

Lin Xuan dragged the image. The Mouse clicked on a little yellow figure icon in the lower right corner.

"Can't see clearly from up high—let me take you down to street level."

He held down the left button and dragged the little yellow figure onto a street near the Bell Tower.

The image plunged once more.

The Personal Computer screen switched into 3D panoramic street-view mode.

The viewpoint instantly leveled out, landing in the middle of the road.

Towering commercial skyscrapers rose from the ground, the Glass curtain walls throwing back blinding reflections.

Huge electronic GG signs hung on the building facades.

On the eight-lane dual carriageway, cars stretched into a long queue.

Pedestrians on the roadside wore short sleeves of every color, heads down over their Mobile Phones as they hurried along.

Lin Xuan held down the left Mouse button and slid it left and right.

The viewpoint rotated a full three hundred and sixty degrees.

"Look, this is Chang'an fourteen hundred years later. It's called Xi'an now."

"At night when the lights come on along this street, they're ten thousand times brighter than the Great Tang's Lantern Festival."

Xiao Sizi remained silent.

The scene on the screen was dazzlingly prosperous.

Such material wealth and financial power far surpassed the Zhenguan Prosperous Age her father boasted of.

But panic rose in her heart. She let go of the desk edge and stepped back.

A mist of tears gathered in her big eyes.

No drumbeats from the market wards, no stalls selling Hu cakes, no common folk in hemp garments greeting each other with folded-hand salutes.

"Lin Xuan." Xiao Sizi's voice took on a sob.

"What's wrong? Feeling dizzy?"

"This is Chang'an. But this is not my home." Xiao Sizi pointed at the screen, her finger trembling slightly. "I don't know the people in this city, I don't know these buildings."

"Standing here, I couldn't even find my way back to the palace."

She stepped forward urgently, grabbed Lin Xuan's arm, and shook it twice.

"You said just now that this machine can peer into everything under heaven—help me look!"

Xiao Sizi raised her face, her eyes full of pleading.

"Look for Taiji Palace! If Taiji Palace is gone, then Daming Palace will do too! Father said he would build Daming Palace for Grandfather on Longshou Plain—I even saw the blueprints."

"There must be traces of my Great Tang there!"

She wanted to grasp a single thread of familiar, blood-tied belonging within this strange forest of steel.

So long as the palace still stood, the Great Tang still stood.

Lin Xuan looked at her reddened eye sockets. He sighed.

A four-year-old child, facing the shifts of seas into mulberry fields, could not bear such a vast sense of severance.

"Alright, I'll find it for you."

Lin Xuan turned back around.

The Mouse clicked the search box in the upper left of the screen; the cursor blinked.

The Keyboard gave crisp tapping sounds as three Chinese characters were entered into the search box.

"Daming Palace"—the Enter key was pressed.

On the thirty-two-inch curved monitor, the image suddenly jerked upward, breaking away from the traffic around the Bell Tower business district.

The satellite map pushed steadily northward along the city's central axis.

Grey-white building clusters flew backward at the bottom of the screen.

Xiao Sizi rose on tiptoe, her chin resting on the back of her hand.

She softened her breathing; her heartbeat gradually quickened.

Longshou Plain was the feng shui treasure spot her father had chosen.

On those unrolled sheepskin blueprints, she had seen the plans for that place.

The triple-eaved hip-roof Hanyuan Hall, soaring into the clouds.

The Penglai Pavilion, channeling water from Taiyechi, with winding streams for floating wine cups.

The supreme majesty and royal grandeur of the Great Tang—all of it had been sketched into those lines by the draftsmen.

She waited in anticipation.

Within this iron box of later ages that could probe the heavens and see for ten thousand li, to glimpse the completed royal palace halls.

She wanted to see the golden Glazed Ware tiles, she wanted to see the vermilion palace gates. Those were the only ties to home she could grasp in this strange world.

The image slows, then hovers.

In the lower-right corner of the screen, the little yellow figure representing Street View is dragged out by Lin Xuan.

It drops onto a broad patch of green.

The image plunges sharply, the view pushing forward.

In an instant, the Personal Computer screen is filled with a gloomy rain scene.

Xiao Sizi's eyes go wide as she tries to spot the familiar flying eaves and dougong brackets in the frame.

A flat boardwalk of preserved wooden planks stretches into the distance.

On either side of the boardwalk lie broad stretches of manicured green lawn.

In the middle of the lawn, a few bare yellow earthen platforms jut up abruptly.

The platforms have been eroded by a thousand years of wind and rain, exposing the layers of rammed earth, their edges overgrown with tangled wild grass.

The camera pans.

A massive landscape stone stands by the path.

A few red characters in modern simplified script are carved into its surface.

Daming Palace National Heritage Park.

At the end of the boardwalk, a few modern tourists in transparent rain capes hold colorful umbrellas.

They step along the planks, wandering lazily beside the earthen platforms. One stops, pulls out a Mobile Phone, and snaps a picture of the dirt mound.

The gaze passes over the platforms.

A few broken, crumbling stone column bases sit enclosed in square, transparent Glass cases.

Rainwater streams down the outer surface of the Glass.

Rainwater streams down the outer surface of the Glass.

On the empty ground beside them stands a bronze miniature of a palace, as tall as a person.

Wind and rain have weathered the bronze, bringing up a patina of green.

"We're here. This is the Daming Palace you were looking for."

……

Above the Sky Screen, the rain murmurs on.

The great square of Taiji Palace in the Tang Dynasty falls into a suffocating dead silence.

Wind sweeps past the white marble railings, lifting a few dead leaves.

Li Shimin's body sways violently.

He takes half a step back; the sole of his boot slips on the rainwater-slicked bluestone paving.

Zhangsun Wuji lunges forward, reaching out to steady him.

Li Shimin raises a hand and slaps Zhangsun Wuji's arm aside.

The emperor's eyes are shot through with red veins.

His gaze is nailed to those large characters on the Sky Screen.

Daming Palace National Heritage Park.

Since his accession, he had conscripted a hundred thousand craftsmen and convicts, spent half the reserves of the National Treasury, to build on Longshou Plain a palace of audience unlike any in history.

It was the totem by which he would subdue the four barbarians and proclaim the majesty of the Heavenly Khan.

The blueprints were revised more than a dozen times.

The stone chosen was the hardest bluestone; the timber was century-old golden nanmu shipped down from Jiangnan.

He wanted this palace to endure for ten thousand generations, this empire to stand forever.

Fourteen hundred years later.

The royal totem he had taken such pride in is nothing but a heap of mud overgrown with weeds.

Those foundation stones that once embodied the imperial dignity are sealed in Glass, pointed at and discussed at will by common folk.

The grandest palace of the Tang Dynasty has become a casual spot for later generations to stroll through in the rain.

Empress Zhangsun stands to one side.

She raises her wide silk sleeve and presses it hard against her lips.

She forces herself not to let out a single sob, but her shoulders tremble faintly.

This is no warning of regional warlords splitting the realm, no spoiler of a traitorous minister seizing the throne.

This is the butcher's blade dropped by time itself. Absolute annihilation on the physical plane.

Not one of the full court of civil and military officials speaks; even their breathing is deliberately suppressed.

They gaze at that stretch of desolate yellow earth.

It is the future of the Tang Dynasty, and the final resting place of every one of them.

The supreme imperial authority of the Tang, crushed flat into a patch of weeds for people to mourn over.