Embers of the Broken River

Chapter 3 Stand Up

Chen Wangqiu stood up from under the locust tree. Leaning against the trunk, it looked as if he had taken a nap. When he opened his eyes, the night wind was still blowing, dry and cold, carrying fragments of yellow earth and locust shells. The windows of the thatched cottage were still lit, the lamp was still on, and Aheng's needlework had not stopped.

He looked down at his hands. They weren't his hands. No, they were his hands. The calluses on his knuckles were from typing on a keyboard, not from holding a carving knife. He wasn't Chen Tongfu anymore. He was Chen Wangqiu.

He reached into his robes. Empty. The wooden plaque wasn't there. The dull tinge of the carving knife cutting into the wood still lingered in his hand, but the plaque was gone. It lay on the desk in the thatched cottage, beside Chen Tongfu, with three characters carved on it.

Ask about the ultimate skills.

Chen Wangqiu stood under the locust tree, staring at the hole in the window. He remembered the view from Chen Tongfu's perspective: the lamplight reflected on the window paper, the needlework of Aheng mending the paper, and the back of a figure hunched over, carving bamboo slips with all her might. Those images were still in his mind, but he could no longer enter them. He could only stand outside the window and watch.

The images of the imagined world crashed into his mind, and the thatched cottage was packed with people. It wasn't the quiet of last night. Today was lecture day. Chen Tongfu stood in the hall. Lu Mingyuan sat in the fifth row, clutching a bamboo slip with a question written on it.

This was the day that Chen Tongfu's most valued student stood up to refute him.

Chen Wangqiu closed his eyes under the locust tree. When he opened them again, he was standing on the edge of the world he was simulating, an observer. He could not interfere, he could not speak. But he could see.

The thatched cottage was full of people.

Unlike yesterday's young disciples kneeling on prayer mats, today, being a lecture day, even more people have come. There are elderly scholars who have come from neighboring villages, officials who have taken leave from the county government to sit in on the lecture, and students who have brought bamboo slips to copy books. They crowd the hall, and those who cannot sit spread out a mat outside the threshold, their knees pressed against the backs of the people in front of them.

Chen Tongfu stood in the hall.

Today he lectured on the "Hong Fan" chapter of the Book of Documents. He discussed the order of the Five Elements, why Yu placed water first, and why Gun failed in his flood control efforts because he only blocked the water and didn't dredge it. His voice was unhurried, occasionally pausing to draw diagrams on the ground with a bamboo stick—the bends of the Yellow River, the cross-sections of the dams, and the distribution of force as the water rushed through the breaches. He said, "Gun's problem wasn't that he didn't block the water well; it was that he didn't know where the water was flowing. Those who control floods must first ask the water itself."

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The disciples bowed their heads and wrote on the bamboo slips. Some wrote "asking about water," some wrote "dredging and blocking," and one young disciple drew a river on the back of the bamboo slip with a question mark next to it.

A breeze blew in from outside. The window that Ah Heng had patched countless times bulged, the dense stitches on the patches blocking half of the wind, while the other half squeezed in, stirring the bamboo scrolls hanging on the wall.

Lu Mingyuan sat in the fifth row.

Chen Wangqiu saw him. He was seventeen or eighteen years old, wearing a clean gray cloth robe with no patches on the cuffs; it was new. His eyebrows were furrowed, and there was a vertical line between them.

Chen Wangqiu knew how he got that mark. On the day his mother entrusted him to her care, the boy knelt before her sickbed. His mother held his hand and said, "Follow your uncle and study hard." She added, "Your father died in the army; you must protect yourself." His mother closed her eyes and never opened them again. He was twelve years old that year. That mark was left from that day; the twelve-year-old boy's features hadn't even fully developed yet, but a wrinkle had already appeared between his brows.

He studied with his uncle for five years. His uncle taught him to read, to do arithmetic, and to "learning is about asking questions." His uncle said: Reading the classics is not about memorizing their words, but about continuing to ask the questions the sages didn't finish. He believed it. He believed it for five years.

Until yesterday. Yesterday, Zheng Anmin, the middle school administrator of Guanzhong, sent someone to talk to him. Chen Wangqiu knew what they talked about. The world was laid bare before him: your uncle is heretical, and the seven academies of Guanzhong are about to jointly refute him. You are his nephew, don't be implicated. Your father died in the military, and you are a descendant of a military family; you have to decide what to do.

Lu Mingyuan didn't say anything at the time. He walked back to the thatched cottage and closed the door. On the table were his uncle's lecture notes from the day before yesterday, with the words "Keep asking" engraved on the bamboo slips. He stared at those three words for a long time. Then he blew out the lamp.

Today he sat in the fifth row, clutching the bamboo slip he had prepared to ask a question. The slip had a question written on it, one he had thought about for a long time last night before writing it down. His hand was trembling.

Chen Tongfu finished explaining the Hong Fan chapter. He placed the bamboo stick on the corner of the table, dusted off his hands, and said to his disciples, "Any questions you have, please ask."

Someone raised their hand to ask a question about the dikes. Someone else asked a question about land taxes. Chen Tongfu answered them one by one. His answers did not quote classical texts; he cited data he had measured while squatting on the riverbank, and figures he had calculated by poring over the land tax archives of various counties. He said, "If the answer isn't in the books, ask the people involved. If they're dead, ask the traces they left behind."

Lu Mingyuan stood up.

He stood up slowly, not as if to refute, but more as if to pull himself out of his seat. His knee bumped against the bamboo slip in front of him, which slid off the table and fell to the ground with a thud, rolling a few times before unfolding. The words on it, facing the crack in the ceiling, were the words "Continue to ask." He didn't bend down to pick them up.

"Sir." His voice wasn't loud, but everyone in the thatched cottage heard it. The wind outside the window paused for a moment, and the needle in Ah Heng's hand stopped in mid-air.

Chen Tongfu looked at him. He noticed that Lu Mingyuan's cuffs were trembling. He had always paid attention to his nephew's cuffs: the boy's cuffs would tremble when he was nervous, and he used to clench his fists inside his robe for a long time every time he went up to the podium to recite. Now Lu Mingyuan's cuffs were trembling violently.

"Sir," Lu Mingyuan repeated, this time in a louder voice, "you just said that there are errors in the books, which should be verified by actual testing; the other day you also said that the teachings of the sages are not beyond questioning, and should be 'asked further.' This disciple dares to ask you a question: are the teachings of the sages inferior to your questions?"

A moment of silence fell over the hall. Someone stopped carving, ink dripping onto the bamboo strip. Someone looked up, staring wide-eyed at Lu Mingyuan's back. Someone else lowered their head, unable to look Chen Tongfu in the eye.

The roof was leaking. Spring rains in Guanzhong come suddenly; dark clouds pressed in from the Qinling Mountains, raindrops pounding on the roof of the thatched cottage, first a drop or two, then growing heavier. Three drops fell from the cracks in the roof, landing precisely on Lu Mingyuan's shoulders. The first drop hit his left shoulder, the second his right, and the third right on the top of his head. Water trickled down his hair, dripping onto his clenched fist. He didn't wipe it away.

"My teacher taught me for five years." Lu Mingyuan's voice trembled, but he continued, "My teacher said 'keep asking questions,' and I believed him. But now I think, 'keep asking questions,' who are we asking? Are we asking the words of the sage? Or the sage himself? My teacher changed 'to continue the lost learning of the past sages' to 'keep asking questions.' Does that mean that lost learning is no longer what we should continue? That our ancestors are no longer what we should follow?"

Chen Tongfu did not interrupt him. He stood there, slowly lowering his hand from the edge of the table. His eyes never left Lu Mingyuan's face.

"Disciple Lu Mingyuan." Lu Mingyuan knelt down, his knees striking the blue bricks with a thud. "May I ask, sir, is this betraying the scriptures, or straying from the Way?"

A deathly silence fell over the hall. The rain poured down harder. Three leaks merged into three thin streams, drenching Lu Mingyuan's back. His robe was soaked through, clinging to his shoulder blades, and you could see the bones trembling—not from the cold, but from every single bone shaking.

Chen Tongfu looked at the boy kneeling before him. He remembered the night his sister entrusted her son to him. His sister lay on her sickbed, her face ashen, her hands so thin they were just bones. She held his hand and said, "His father died in the military; you must protect him." That year, Lu Mingyuan was twelve years old, kneeling before the sickbed, without crying.

He protected him for five years. He taught him for five years. During those five years, Lu Mingyuan never called him "father" once; he called him "teacher." But he knew that in his heart, the teacher was his father. Every morning, Lu Mingyuan was the first to arrive at the school, wiping the dust off the desk and neatly stacking the bamboo slips. He was the last to leave at night, refilling the lamp oil and closing the windows. When his fellow students argued heatedly over math problems, he would silently ponder them, and once he understood, he would write it on the back of the bamboo slips. His handwriting was beautiful; he had been taught stroke by stroke by the teacher.

Now the child kneels before him, his back soaked by rain, and asks him: Is it betraying the scriptures, or straying from the Way?

Chen Tongfu knew that Lu Mingyuan hadn't come up with those words himself. He heard Zheng Anmin's voice, the fellow student sitting in the education office, the one who had slept on the same straw mat with him in their youth. He knew that Lu Mingyuan hadn't slept all night, revising the questions on the bamboo slips under the lamp, filling the entire slip with writing, until finally, the carving knife slipped and cut his own hand. He bandaged his finger himself and continued carving.

But he didn't ask, "Did someone tell you to ask?" He just looked at Lu Mingyuan's face. There was water on that face, and it was hard to tell if it was rain or tears.

He said, "You can leave now."

He turned his face away. He didn't want his nephew to see his eyes.

Lu Mingyuan remained kneeling, motionless. The rain continued to pour. Three leaks lashed against him, like three fingers poking his spine. His lips parted slightly, as if he wanted to say something, but no words came out. He wasn't waiting for "Go away," he was waiting for "Mingyuan, come back."

I didn't wait.

Lu Mingyuan got up and turned to walk towards the door. He stopped abruptly at the door. He wasn't waiting for his uncle to call his name; he knew his uncle wouldn't. He stepped onto the threshold, the soles of his old cloth shoes damp with the accumulated rainwater. The water had flowed out from inside the hall and into from outside; the puddle split in two the moment he stepped on it. The wind whipped open the window paper, and rainwater poured in through the holes, drenching the Yellow River bend Chen Tongfu had just drawn on the ground. The force of the water rushing through the gaps slowly washed away the drawing Chen had made with bamboo twigs.

The footsteps faded into the distance. Each step felt like a blow to Chen Wangqiu's eardrums, sinking deeper and deeper into the earth.

He stood under the locust tree. The rain poured down on him, not the spring rain of Guanzhong, but his own. He was still standing outside that window, the wind still blowing through the holes in the window paper. He saw Chen Tongfu still standing there, his hand never raised again after he lowered it from the edge of the table.

He wanted to go inside. He wanted to go to the child kneeling in the rain and put his hand on his shoulder. He wanted to go to the middle-aged man who had turned his face away and say those words for him, "Mingyuan, come back."

But he couldn't. He was someone standing on the edge of the world of deduction. He could see it all, he could hear every raindrop hitting someone, but he couldn't speak. He could only stand there, watching Lu Mingyuan's figure disappear into the rain.

The rain was still falling. The wind rattled the windows of the thatched cottage. Aheng sat by the window, her needlework stopped. She watched her husband's back, but didn't go to him. She smoothed out the mended window paper; it was her seventeenth year of marriage, and she had grown accustomed to reading him from his back. That back seemed to say: Don't come closer.

Chen Wangqiu closed his eyes.