Chapter 1303: Historian Chen Mo
Space-time transformed as the jasper cicada’s wings fluttered.
Within one of the other glittering motes of light was another space-time, where there was a vast continent called Heavensign. In the Great Spirit imperial dynasty, it was autumn, and the night was deep.
Outside of the Office of Historians, Chen Mo held an ink pen above a bamboo slip. On the ink stone, the pooled ink rippled as if with waves. Outside the window, the autumn cicadas buzzed. At the end of the desk was a bronze lamp that illuminated piles of ancient records everywhere, as yellow as old tea soaked in time itself.[1]
Chen Mo looked down at the Record of Rivers and Canals which he had just received. He was currently making some annotations for that book, but his pen had stopped atop a certain line.
“In the 9th year of Original Light, Levee Overseer Wang Yan recruited commoners to fill a bottleneck in the river....”
A drop of ink slipped off Chen Mo’s brush, landing on the bamboo slip. It created a big black spot. Chen Mo’s thoughts were equally unclear. This was the thirty-fifth time in recent years that he had found something suspicious in the records.
The bamboo slip clearly said, “In the 9th year of Original Light, Levee Overseer Wang Yan recruited commoners to fill a bottleneck in the river.” And yet, just a year ago, Chen Mo had personally made an etching of a monument erected by the commoners. And that monument said, “In the 9th year of Original Light, River Management Officer Li Ping dug a canal to guide the flow of the river.”
The two names had appeared so closely connected in two different historical records that they were like foam piling up on the surface of a river. It was so frustrating that Chen Mo felt a headache building behind his eyes.
Even stranger were the water level records of the Spirit River back in the third year of Original Light. In Documents of the Grand Historian and Old Rituals of the Han, there was a water level discrepancy of about three feet. It was as if one river had been split into two completely different rivers in the historical record.
“Sir, are you back to critiquing the water records?” One of the clerks on night duty entered with a pile of new bamboo slips. The smudges of ink on the cuffs of his sleeves were clearly visible in the light of the lamp. “Just yesterday the Minister of the Household said that the Department of Water Management is in charge of rivers and canals, and that we historians should focus on keeping records of court documents.”
Chen Mo didn’t look up. He just reached down and rubbed the bamboo slip as if lost in thought.
Chuckling, the clerk put down the records and left.