The cold rain of late autumn had been falling for half a day, and the waterside pavilion behind the Imperial Academy was steeped in damp mist.
The pavilion was a relic from the previous dynasty, built upon a stretch of flowing water, with moss clinging to the four upturned eaves.
On ordinary days, the venerable old Confucian scholars of the capital would gather here to play chess, sip tea, and discuss the subtle profundities of the classics.
But today, only two men had come.
Kong Zongyun sat in a round-backed chair by the water, wearing a half-worn silk straight robe beneath a dark crane-feather cloak.
He was over sixty, with graying hair and beard, recognized throughout the realm as a master of classical scholarship. His former students and protégés filled the Six Ministries and the Three Judicial Bureaus.
In his hand was a Jian ware tea cup, its dark glaze deep and somber, but the tea within had long since gone cold.
Between his two fingers, he pinched a sheet of coarse paper.
It was the cheapest kind—rough enough to abrade a fingertip.
The ink characters on it still exuded a pungent, unset oil-and-ink smell, sharp and irritating.
Gu Zongming stood where the wind came through.
He was two years older than Kong Zongyun, gaunt and frail.
A washed-out gray cloak hung loosely on his shoulders, the lower half already soaked through by the slanting rain, plastered to his legs—yet he seemed unaware.
In his hand, he also clutched a similar handbill, half wet, the ink smudged into a blurry mess.
The two old men stood and sat across the rain-streaked ground, neither breaking the silence.
Water dripped from the eaves—one drop, then another—landing on the bluestone steps, splashing into tiny blooms.
After a long while, Kong Zongyun set the cold tea back on the purple sandalwood table.
The tea sloshed out, soaking the edge of the open copy of the Book of Rites.
He raised his hand, and a bony index finger tapped the line on the paper: "Principle resides in vessels, in that which cannot be falsified by measures."
"’That which cannot be falsified by measures’…" Kong Zongyun repeated each word, grinding them out through clenched teeth. "Tell me, Elder Gu, is this something a man could write?"
Those seven words fell between the two men, piercing their eardrums like shards.
Gu Zongming did not turn around. Facing the cold rain, he slowly moved his withered finger over his own wet sheet, stopping at the line that read, "Abandon the sun and moon to talk of lamps and candles."
"This line is even worse." Gu Zongming’s voice was dry and rasping. "Elder Kong, we have read the sages’ books all our lives and preached the cardinal teachings of human relations all our careers. With one stroke, this essay strips away the painted skin our clans have worn for a century—flesh and blood laid bare."
Kong Zongyun closed his eyes.
Beneath his eyelids, the muscle twitched uncontrollably.
The scene before the Imperial Academy gate flooded back into his mind.
A hundred scholars had brawled into a mess—robes torn, square caps trampled into the mud. A poor student’s blood from a gash on his forehead splashed up the base of the stone statue of Confucius, smearing into the carved eye sockets, blood-red and horrifying.
Learning had been brought low.
In sixty years of studying the sages, never had he witnessed such a day. He had truly seen a ghost of disorder.
"Treasonous words," Kong Zongyun snarled, forcing the words from the back of his throat.
"This is chaos-inciting heresy! ‘Principle resides in vessels, measures as the proof’—what place does that leave for the bond of ruler and subject, father and son? What place for the hierarchy of human relationships and ethics? Once this essay spreads, the scholars of the realm will go off investigating water, fire, metal, and stone—who will still cultivate self, regulate the family, govern the state, and bring peace to the world? This realm cannot afford to have its order overturned!"
But at that moment, Gu Zongming turned.
A startling light flickered in his clouded, aged eyes.
"Chaos-inciting heresy?" Gu Zongming took half a step forward, his purple-bamboo staff sinking into a shallow puddle on the wet ground. "Elder Kong, as I see it, this is a steel knife for scraping the bone."
"The body of Great Qian is rotten to the marrow. The grain-and-tribute transport is rotten, the military is rotten, the land tax is rotten—and the bureaucracy is even worse. The ministers and officials in court talk nothing but benevolence, righteousness, and virtue, but once they leave the hall, they can’t even calculate how many bushels of grain an acre yields. This deep-seated illness—can it be cured by a few sutras chanted from our mouths?"
Kong Zongyun’s eyes snapped open.
"You!"
Gu Zongming paid no heed to his fury and lowered his head to look again at the paper.
"Look again at the skeleton hidden between these lines," he said, his bony finger tracing across the page. "It first establishes natural principle, then refutes the prejudices of the Confucian scholars, and finally settles on the utility of instruments and measurements. This structure—chain linked to chain—is watertight."
He raised his head and fixed his gaze on Kong Zongyun.
"That failed rural scholar, Lu Changying—could he have written this?"
Kong Zongyun fell silent.
He was well aware. The very bone structure of this essay was beyond the reach of a poverty-stricken scholar who had failed the imperial examinations repeatedly; couldn’t even afford medicine for his mother.
This was a complete, self-consistent system of thought, writing through Lu Changying’s hand and spilling into the cauldron of boiling oil that was the capital.
"It’s the Xu family." Kong Zongyun spat out these words, his voice low. "A retainer of that princess’s household: Xu Zijin."
"Not just Xu Zijin," Gu Zongming followed up swiftly. "It’s the entire framework of the Xu family’s theory of the investigation of things. Elder Kong, we are both old, but our eyes are not yet blind. This is not an essay for statecraft. This is a foundation stone able to support ten thousand generations. What it seeks to move is the very root of the state."
The pavilion fell silent.
Only the rain sounded—a steady, unending drizzle.
Gu Zongming leaned on his staff and shuffled, step by step, toward the center of the pavilion.
He paused before the cold table, the glint in his eyes burning even brighter.
"The person who could write this essay," Gu Zongming's voice suddenly rose, then dropped low, "deserves to have a shrine built in their honor, to receive incense offerings for eternity. This is genius that reshapes heaven and earth."
He paused, his throat bobbing.
"But unfortunately, there are those who would throw such a person, along with his scholarship, into the mud. Allowing the vulgar thugs of the streets to trample it, letting those fools hurl bricks and tiles at it."
"A pity, truly a pity!"
Kong Zongyun shot to his feet.
The wide sleeves of his Confucian robe knocked over the chess box on the table.
Black and white stones scattered across the floor, rolling in all directions.
He didn't even glance at them.
"You said someone wants to throw it into the mud," Kong Zongyun said, his chest heaving. "Elder Gu, do you know who that 'someone' is?"
Gu Zongming did not answer.
"Men from the Five City Military Command waited from dawn until noon, waiting an entire morning for word from the Grand Secretariat," Kong Zongyun said, each word deliberate. "Inside the Cangshu Pavilion, Grand Secretary Xu didn't lift a single finger. When blood stained the Confucian statue in front of the Imperial Academy, he sat still. When scholars turned on each other, he sat still."
"Do you think this was negligence?"
"He means to sit on the mountain and watch the tigers fight, using this fire to refine true gold!"
At these words, the air in the waterside pavilion seemed to freeze.
Gu Zongming tapped his walking stick once on the floor.
Kong Zongyun grew more agitated as he spoke, his graying beard and hair trembling.
"This man Xu Jie intends to use the blood of scholars across the realm to test whether this new learning can withstand the counterattack of the old clans! If it withstands, it's true gold, and he'll go along with the tide, using imperial power to promote it. If it crumbles to ash, he'll stand by with folded arms, having no connection to the court at all!"
"This is gambling with the fate of the Great Qian Dynasty! Gambling with the lives of every scholar in the land!"
Kong Zongyun pointed at the gray curtain of rain outside the window, his hand shaking.
"Elder Gu, you just praised this essay as a steel blade that scrapes to the bone. But have you considered that this blade is now in Xu Jie's hands? What he intends to scrape is the very backbone of this dynasty, two centuries old!"
After listening, Gu Zongming was silent for a long moment, then laughed.
The laughter was soft, but it carried something Kong Zongyun had never seen on his old friend's face before.
A kind of near-mad, death-defying resolve.
"Excellent—a fire to refine gold." Gu Zongming leaned on his cane and walked step by step to stand before Kong Zongyun, meeting his eyes. "Elder Kong, I see through Xu Jie's scheme. But far from fearing it, I intend to add fuel to the fire."
Kong Zongyun froze.
"Have you lost your mind?"
"The old order is already rotten through," Gu Zongming said, with the weariness and saintly detachment of an old man. "Rotten to the marrow. For such rotting, patching it up here and there, letting old bones like us paper over the cracks—how many years would that hold? What we need is this great blaze, to burn it all clean."
"Once it's burned, there will be new soil. Only then can new seedlings grow."
Kong Zongyun, furious, let out a bitter laugh instead.
"Burn it all clean?" He stepped closer. "Gu Zongming, I ask you this."
"If this new learning truly uproots the foundation, what becomes of the sacred texts we've studied our whole lives? The classics and histories we've memorized? Will all our learning become nothing but funeral pyre paper?"
He gasped for breath, his chest heaving violently.
"I've spent my whole life reading Confucius and Mencius. This orthodoxy is my very lifeline. I'll say it plainly today—I will stand guard at this old order's gate. Even if I'm ground to powder, even if my guts spill on the ground, I will defend it!"
Gu Zongming listened quietly.
Rainwater dripped down his graying temples, and he didn't wipe it away.
After a long while, he spoke, his voice nearly drowned by the rain.
"Elder Kong, keep your gate."
"But I would rather tear open the foundation with my own hands, tamp it down anew, and start over."
"I will not go down with that hollow, worm-eaten palace, brick by brick, waiting for it to collapse and bury us all together."
The two old men faced each other.
Between them lay the scattered black and white pieces of the unfinished game.
The chessboard with its abandoned match, stones rolling everywhere—black, white, no longer distinguishable, whose formation belonged to whom.
Decades of friendship, decades of mutual understanding, decades of playing chess in this waterside pavilion across so many springs and autumns.
In that moment, sliced clean through by that single sheet of rough paper and coarse ink.
Kong Zongyun stared at him, stared for a long time.
Finally, he turned and sat back down in his armchair. He reached out and picked up the cup of cold tea on the table, but didn't drink. He only held it in his hand.
"Elder Gu,"
He did not look up.
"Our paths are different. Let us not scheme together."
Outside the pavilion, the cold rain continued falling without end.
Water dripped from the eaves, bead after bead, striking the scattered chess stones that would never return to their places.
