Embers of the Broken River

Chapter 11 The Grand Hall of the Chongtian Division

The roof tiles in the main hall of Chongtiansi have been loose for two years, and no one has repaired them.

Rainwater poured in from the northwest corner, flowing down the beams and pillars, forming a thin stream on the blue bricks of the ground. Water seeped out from the cracks in the bricks, making a squelching sound when stepped on. The bronze instruments crackled from the water droplets, and the ink on the dials spread like wounds.

The oil lamp flickered in the draft, making the hall dim and damp, with only a few dim yellow halos trembling in the wind. This was not the result of a single day's rain, but the accumulation of thirty years of decay. Since the reign of the late emperor, the Ministry of Works had submitted documents for repairs, and each successive official had marked the documents "understood" before pressing them into the bottom drawer.

The sounds of rain, dripping water, and the metallic clang of bronze instruments being struck blended together, like the breathing of this government office itself—unable to catch its breath, yet unwilling to stop.

Jia Xian knelt in the rain to pick up the manuscript paper.

The calculations bound with hemp rope were blown away by the wind, and the pages scattered everywhere. Some were soaked in puddles, the ink stains spreading into a black mist; some were trampled with footprints, the mud from the soles of shoes embedding itself into the paper's texture; some still floated in mid-air, swirling in the draft, like birds unwilling to land.

He reached out to scoop it up, his fingers numb with cold. His kneecap, broken three years ago by the Bian River, hadn't healed properly, and the cold water aggravated the old injury, sending sharp pains up his thigh. Each step he took felt like a shard of broken porcelain beneath his knee. But he couldn't care less.

His entire attention was focused on those papers, each page painstakingly calculated by counting rods one by one during his night shifts, a process that took him three years. This page contained the method for calculating the sun's orbit, that page the method for calculating the difference between lunar orbital errors, and the page with footprints on it contained the method for extracting square roots, the precursor to trigonometric diagrams.

The last page was retrieved from outside the threshold.

He lay on the ground, stretching out his arm, his fingertips barely reaching the corner of the paper. When he squeezed it out of the puddle, the paper was half wet. The number in the lower right corner of the triangle diagram had blotted out in ink, and "fifty-six" had become a wet, black scar on the paper, like a bleeding wound.

The official stood under the eaves, his official boots remaining completely dry.

His surname was Huang, and he was a sixth-rank official in the Chongtian Division, in charge of all the clerks in this government office. At this moment, he stood with his hands behind his back, watching Jia Xian kneeling in the rain picking up paper, his brows slightly furrowed.

This expression wasn't anger, but annoyance. He had just finished dealing with the theft case in the west corridor this morning, and now he had to face a crazy official kneeling in the rain picking up scraps of paper.

Jia Xian pressed the manuscript paper to his chest, trying to warm the soaked pages with his body heat.

His hand was pressed against his chest, not his heart, but the paper. Through his damp clothes, he could feel the texture of the paper—rough, swollen, and translucent. This was a person's center of gravity. When his father taught him to write, he pointed to this spot with his fingertip and said, "This is a person's center of gravity. As long as the center of gravity is there, a person won't fall."

He had never said those words to anyone. His father died on a snowy night in the first year of the Zongning era. Before he died, he pressed his hand to his chest and said, "Remember, center of gravity." Then his hand loosened, and the last bit of warmth from his fingertips slid off his wrist like snow sliding off a roof tile.

From then on, he placed all his calculations in this location.

"What's the use of these few pages?"

The superior spoke. It wasn't a question, but a statement. His tone carried the impatience of someone in a superior position, and a faint boast of his control—not a deliberate display, but a habit. He didn't need to, nor was he malicious; he simply found the sight of the mad official kneeling in the rain picking up scraps of paper unsightly and offensive.

As he said this, his right hand rested casually on the jade belt at his waist, his fingertips lightly tapping the jade clasp twice. It was as if he was passing the time, waiting for the mad official to burst into tears.

The sound echoed in the leaky hall, drowning out the dripping of the bronze vessel.

His colleagues instinctively took a half-step back, forming an empty circle. Some sympathized but dared not speak up. Last year, a clerk spoke up for Jia Xian, and the following month he was transferred to Junyi County to manage horse feed, which was the hardest job in all of Bianjing.

Some people secretly rejoiced that it wasn't them. Some bowed their heads, not out of shame, but because they didn't want to see. It was the kind of bowing that said, "I didn't do anything wrong, but I don't want to see," like quickening your pace unconsciously when walking past an old person who has fallen to the ground. Jia Xian is a true island in this circle.

He didn't look up.

He didn't refute. He pressed the soaked manuscript paper to his chest, feeling his heartbeat as he pressed down, the heartbeat vibrating through the paper. He didn't look at his superiors, nor at his colleagues around him, only at the ink stains spreading on the paper. Those numbers were ones he had painstakingly derived, one by one, over three years. His superiors said it was useless, but he didn't believe them.

He didn't know if these numbers would be useful later. He only knew that his father had said the center of gravity couldn't be lost; losing a person would be like snow sliding off a roof tile, leaving no trace. He didn't want to leave no trace. At least he didn't want these numbers to leave no trace.

The rain intensified again, pouring in through the loose tiles like water being poured down from the sky. The water overflowed the threshold, flowed up the steps, and filled the cracks between the burnt bricks. The fire in the west corridor had just been extinguished last night; the ruins were still scorching hot, and now, with the rain, white steam hissed up from the cracks in the embers.

Shangguan waited a few moments but received no response. He looked at the mad official kneeling in the rain, his clothes still bearing the soot of the previous night, half of his sleeves charred, and the blisters on the back of his neck whitened by the rain. A man who had been burned once and then soaked to the bone, yet still guarding a pile of waste paper. This was no longer stubbornness; this was madness.

He was about to speak again.

At that moment, he heard someone gently tap the object in his hand behind him.

That's Wang Shi.

He was a menial servant in the Chongtian Division, someone who didn't even make it onto the roster. He stood a few steps behind Shangguan in the corridor, holding the tea tray steadily in his hands, the cold tea in the celadon cup rippled with a very fine circle.

He dared not look Shangguan in the eye, focusing only on the porcelain cups on the tea tray, as if he were intently tidying them up. His body blocked Shangguan and Jia Xian, having circled around through the side door to this spot. This position was directly in line with Jia Xian's gaze, and Jia Xian's only shield at this moment.

He held the tea tray steadily, but his fingers trembled. His movements were slow, each step like the rhythm of sweeping the floor, neither hurried nor slow, as if he were merely passing by by chance. But this "chance" was a precise calculation of the route from the water boiler room to the superior's seat. He knew he could only hold them off for this short time, a few breaths, not even enough for a cup of tea. But he still held them off.

Shangguan's gaze fell on the tea tray.

He was taken aback at first, wondering who was so ignorant of the rules. Recognizing Wang Shi, he snorted coldly. Getting angry at a lowly servant would only lower his own standing. He turned away, tossing out, "This moldy waste paper isn't a waste to burn." With that, he walked through the side door. His official boots splashed mud into the puddles, landing on Jia Xian's calculations.

The crowd dispersed. Colleagues lowered their heads and returned to their desks, their footsteps light and soft. Someone glanced in Jia Xian's direction and noticed that the handyman Wang Shi had somehow retreated to the corridor behind the hall, leaning against a pillar with the tea tray against his chest.

Wang Shi's hands were still trembling. On the tea tray sat an empty cup he hadn't had time to put down; it was the tea he had prepared for Shangguan, now completely cold. He stood in the back hall corridor, the sunlight slanting down from above the arched window, cutting his shadow in two.

On the other side of the hall, Jia Xian was still kneeling in the rain, while the spot where he stood was dry. He suddenly felt that the distance between the two rooms wasn't a brick wall, but the distance between stars. He couldn't have blocked it a second time. But today he blocked it this time.

A draft swept through the main hall of the Chongtian Division, stirring the spiderwebs in the corners of the walls. A sparrow, startled by the fire, flew from the roof beam, its wings shaking off a string of raindrops as it flew into the ruins of the west corridor that had burned down the previous night. White steam still hissed upwards above the ruins, indistinguishable in the rain and mist.

Jia Xian was still kneeling in the rain, the paper in his arms warmed by his body heat, his fingers still trembling. Wang Shi carried the tea tray into the back room, his hands also still trembling. The two men, in the same government office, were both trembling, for different reasons, but with the same frequency.

Outside the yamen, the rain was still falling. A donkey cart carrying miscellaneous items from the relocation of the yamen rolled over the bluestone slabs at the alley entrance, its wheels stirring up muddy yellow mud, like silt kicked up from the bottom of a river.