The old man's hair and beard were pure white. He wore a faded blue linen robe, washed so many times it had lost its color, and clasped his hands behind his back.
A young scholar followed slightly behind and to the side, clutching a thread-bound book in his arms, treading carefully as if afraid that a heavy step might disturb the old man.
These two were none other than Li Siye, a director of the Imperial Academy, and his student Zhao Xuan.
At this hour, the Eastern Market was bustling under the climbing sun. Vendors on both sides of the street were hawking their wares at the top of their lungs.
A farmer carrying firewood gruffly shouted for people to make way, the pole across his shoulder bending under the weight.
A woman with a bamboo basket stood stubbornly in front of a meat stall, arguing fiercely over half a coin with a butcher whose apron was stained with grease.
Li Siye walked through the noise, his lecture enthusiasm undisturbed by the clamor around him.
Zhao Xuan quickened his pace to catch up, leaning in to humbly seek guidance.
“Director Li, the ‘Great Learning’ says: ‘To cultivate one’s person, one must first rectify the mind.’ I have studied the meaning of ‘rectifying the mind’ for days, but I still feel as if there is a paper window separating me from true understanding. How should I truly grasp it?”
Li Siye stopped in his tracks.
He lowered his hands from behind his back and slowly, deliberately smoothed the wide sleeves of his robe.
“Rectifying the mind means eliminating human desires and preserving heavenly principles.
All things in the world have their constant order—sovereign and subject, father and son, husband and wife, elder and younger. This is the ordained sequence of heaven. We, as scholars, must first understand these heavenly principles and constant order, regard them as our guiding standard, and never overstep even half a step.”
Li Siye raised a hand and pointed at a passing porter.
“He carries his load with all his might—that is his duty. You and I study and enter officialdom—that is our duty. This is principle.
If the mind is beguiled by external things and disturbed by selfish desires, the heavenly principle becomes obscured. Therefore, one must sit in quiet meditation day after day, restrain oneself and restore propriety, and avoid delving into strange crafts or cunning tricks—only then can the mind be rectified.”
Zhao Xuan nodded repeatedly.
He opened the ink-and-brush case tucked under his arm, pulled out a charcoal stick, flipped open his book, and recorded Li Siye’s teachings verbatim in the margins.
“This student is deeply grateful! Your words, Director Li, get straight to the subtle essence of the sages’ teachings.”
Li Siye stroked his white beard, looking quite pleased with himself.
“To study is to read the books of the sages. Do not let heretical doctrines disturb your mind! The academic atmosphere in the empire today is frivolous. There are always those who try to forge a new path, but it is all rootless.”
The two continued walking and happened to stop in front of Granny Zhang’s nut stall.
In a large iron pan, spiced sunflower seeds were being stir-fried. Steam mixed with the aroma of spices wafted through the street.
Zhao Xuan put away his writing case and casually brought up the latest gossip buzzing through the Imperial Academy.
“What you say, Director Li, is absolutely correct.
Yesterday at the Spring Breeze Pavilion, Senior Brother Lu Huaijin improvised an essay titled ‘The Scolding of Water,’ tearing Xu Ziqin, the retainer of the Xu residence, to shreds and leaving him utterly disgraced.”
Zhao Xuan’s tone dripped with undisguised contempt.
“That Xu Ziqin had the audacity to utter such vulgar drivel as ‘Water flows downward because it has principle,’
a saying so crude it’s an insult to scholarship! Mere street talk, the kind of gossip that village housewives and country bumpkins bandy about—and he dares to present it as some great truth!”
Zhao Xuan shook his head as he recited a line from Lu Huaijin’s essay:
“‘Marketplace chatter, paraded as high principle. The scribbling of a commoner, daring to debate the Way.’ Senior Brother Lu wrote so well.
‘Water’s nature is to seek low ground—that is the mandate of heaven, an act of dragon’s grace. That Xu Ziqin can’t even grasp the basics of tonal meter and rhyme; he only resorts to plain speech to sensationalize and grab attention.
Such a man is utterly unworthy to speak of the great heavenly principle of the Dagan Empire.”
Li Siye snorted coldly and clasped his hands behind his back again.
“A mere clown. That pack of military brutes from the Xu family—what kind of learned retainers could they possibly raise? A bunch of thugs who haven’t even read thoroughly through the Four Books—how dare they speak of ‘principle’?”
Zhao Xuan fished two copper coins, stained with green patina, from his sleeve and slapped them onto the wooden plank of Granny Zhang’s stall.
“Granny, give me two coins’ worth of spiced sunflower seeds.”
Granny Zhang, wielding a large iron spatula to stir the pan, shouted back a reply.
She leaned the spatula against the edge of the wok, thrust her rough hand into a hemp sack behind the counter,
and pulled out a crumpled sheet of Huizhou raw paper.
The paper was densely covered in black handwriting, with several thick, dark ink strokes running through the middle.
Without even glancing at it, Granny Zhang began to fold—this way and that—quickly shaping the paper into a cone.
She grabbed a fistful of steaming hot spiced sunflower seeds, filled the paper cone to the brim, and handed it over.
“Be careful, young master, it’s hot!”
The paper was smudged with dirt from the seed shells and bore greasy pork lard stains along the edges—traces of her breakfast that her unwashed hands had left behind.
Zhao Xuan took it, pleased with the warmth of the paper.
The teacher and student continued along the long street.
Zhao Xuan popped a sunflower seed into his mouth.
“Ptooey.”
The shell fell onto the flagstones.
He held the paper cone in one hand and reached for another seed with the other.
“If that Xu Ziqin dares to take the Autumn Examinations, he probably won’t even make it through the door of the examination cubicle. With his vulgar speech, the examiners would take one look at his paper and toss it straight into the wastebasket.”
The sun climbed higher. Sunlight filtered through the willow branches by the roadside, dappling the two figures.
A strong beam of light happened to strike the outside of the paper cone in Zhao Xuan’s hand.
The paper was already thin and translucent, and once soaked through by heat and grease, the heavy ink on the inside bled straight through to the outside.
The black characters were glaringly harsh under the sunlight.
Li Siye walked along the side, turning his head to make a comment.
His line of sight swept across that paper funnel without any warning.
Four boldly inked characters, piercing through the grease and melon seed dust, slammed directly into his field of vision.
"Investigation of Things and Rectification of the Mind."
Li Siye's feet were nailed to the blue flagstones; he could not move an inch.
He stared fixedly at the funnel, a breath trapped in his chest, unable to exhale for a long time.
Zhao Xuan, completely unaware, walked a couple more steps ahead and popped another melon seed into his mouth.
"Your Excellency?"
Zhao Xuan turned around, his face full of confusion.
Li Siye did not answer.
He suddenly thrust out his right hand, like a hungry tiger protecting its food.
He snatched the paper funnel right out of Zhao Xuan's hand.
In his loss of restraint, his broad sleeve swung out heavily, and his elbow struck squarely into the ribs of a nearby woman passing by.
The woman let out a scream, and the bamboo basket in her hand dropped to the ground.
Cabbage, radishes, and a few eggs smashed onto the ground, egg yolk spilling everywhere.
The woman pointed at Li Siye and shouted curses.
"You blind old fool! Pay me back for my eggs!"
Li Siye acted as if he heard nothing.
He only cared about pouring everything—the full packet of piping hot five-spice melon seeds—out onto the blue flagstones with a clatter.
The seeds bounced everywhere, rolling all over the ground.
Vendors and passersby nearby all turned their heads, pointing and whispering.
A porter carrying two baskets of fresh fish could not dodge in time and stepped right onto the rolling seeds, his feet slipping.
The porter staggered, his pole tilting, and half a basket of water sloshed out.
"Looking for death! Don't watch where you're walking!" the porter cursed loudly.
Zhao Xuan stood there, staring at the mess on the ground, stomping his feet in frustration.
He pointed at the ground and complained loudly.
"Your Excellency! What are you doing! This food cost good copper coins to buy!"
Li Siye could not hear Zhao Xuan's complaints at all, nor the curses around him.
He slowly smoothed out that scrap of paper, stained with grease and still reeking of spices.
The old man's dry fingers trembled violently, the paper fluttering in mid-air.
Li Siye brought the paper up close to his eyes, nearly pressing it against the tip of his nose.
At the very top, the five characters "Treatise on the Investigation of Things and the Rectification of the Mind" were written with forceful brushstrokes.
He looked down.
"A hundred years of classical studies, focusing on externals while neglecting the inner, breaking up meanings to flee from difficulties—the rectified mind grows ever more distant."
Li Siye's fingers clenched tightly.
These sixteen characters were a heavy hammer blow, striking the very foundation of the classical learning he had studied his entire life.
He continued reading.
In the middle section was a large area blacked out by thick ink.
Li Siye held the paper up to the sunlight.
The strong light shone through, revealing the faint outlines of the crossed-out characters beneath the black ink.
"Nature is principle itself; the common people use it daily without knowing."
Li Siye choked on his breath.
His gaze moved rapidly downward, landing on the last line of this paper.
It was a newly added conclusion.
The handwriting was wild, the strokes harsh and sharp, carrying a ruthlessness that seemed determined to smash every rule in the world.
"The principle is one, but its manifestations are many; even common men and women can partake in knowing and understanding."
These fifteen characters were like a rusty, blunt knife, forcibly prying open the top of his skull.
Li Siye's old face went deathly pale like paper of a corpse, trembling from flesh to bone.
His chest rose and fell heavily; every breath of air he drew in came with a stabbing pain.
Common men and women can partake in knowing and understanding!
If heavenly principle was no longer the lofty, subtle words of the sages.
If heavenly principle was right here in the streets and markets, in the work of blacksmiths and farmers.
If any common peddler or carrier could understand the constant way of heaven and earth's workings.
Then what was the Imperial Academy?
What were the civil and military officials of the court?
Wouldn't they, a bunch of old Confucians who had spent their lives studying the classics, be nothing but a horde of frauds who relied on monopolizing the interpretation? Was that to cheat the world and steal fame?
This is subversion!
This is a new school of thought that could completely snap the backbone of the Great Qian scholars!
The common people around couldn't care less what scrap paper this old man was staring at.
Several ragged beggars and children playing nearby rushed over.
They crawled across the blue flagstones, filthy with mud and water, pushing and shoving each other to snatch up the fallen five-spice melon seeds.
"I saw these first!"
"Get lost! Don't steal my melon seeds!"
A child was pushed to the ground, wailing loudly.
The porter, cursing and grumbling, hoisted his fish baskets again.
In the midst of this noisy, vulgar market scene,
Li Siye found himself in another world entirely, a violent sense of dislocation tearing apart his sanity.
"You brat! You're still worrying about a few pennies' worth of cheap goods? Do you know what's written on this paper... what's written..."
