In a blink of an eye, another two months had passed.
The continuous heavy rain for many days had diluted the scorching heat of the dog days to a great extent.
The rain was not torrential, but it kept falling incessantly, from morning till night and from night till morning. The patter of the rain formed a dense net, enveloping the entire Shengjing City.
The water droplets under the eaves strung into lines and pattered on the bluestone steps, hitting out shallow pits. Many petals of the wisteria in the courtyard were knocked off. The light purple fragments were scattered all over the ground, mixed in the mud softened by the rain, looking rather nice.
The air was filled with a damp earthy smell, mixed with the fresh and cool smell emitted by the plants soaked in the rain. Taking a deep breath, it was cool and refreshing, penetrating straight into the lungs.
While taking away the heat, it brought a pleasant coolness.
Pei Cijing held an oil-paper umbrella.
He stepped over the puddles all over the ground.
Walking into the Imperial Academy with uneven steps. The raindrops hit the umbrella surface, making a crackling sound, so dense that it was like someone was scattering beans on top of his head.
He put away the umbrella, shook off the water droplets on the umbrella surface under the porch, and stamped the mud off his boots before walking towards the duty room.
Although it was really inconvenient to go out on a rainy day, one should do one's job as long as one was taking the imperial court's salary. A little wind and rain could not be a legitimate reason for absenteeism.
He had this kind of awareness.
Of course.
Even if he used this reason to ask for leave, it wouldn't be approved...
When passing through the bluestone corridor, the bamboo on both sides was washed shiny by the rain. The bamboo leaves were hanging with crystal water droplets, which would rustle down when the wind blew.
The moss under the bamboo roots was full of water.
It was so green that it looked black.
Stepping on it was soft, like stepping on a blanket.
The door of the duty room was ajar.
When Pei Cijing pushed the door and walked in, Liu Zhixing and Chen Wangbei were already there.
Liu Zhixing was sitting in front of his desk, holding a cup of hot tea in his hand. His eyes were fixed on the bamboo leaves outside the window that were being shaken by the rain. One couldn't tell what he was thinking.
Chen Wangbei was stretching his muscles. His big hands like palm fans were rotating his wrists and twisting his neck from time to time, making a slight clicking sound. Obviously, he had been sitting for a long time and his body was stiff.
The asparagus fern on the windowsill was very energetic. The delicate leaves were moistened by the water vapor seeping in from the window crack, looking even more vibrant than usual.
After the three of them greeted each other, Pei Cijing walked to his desk and sat down.
As usual.
He didn't rush to work.
Instead, he first took out the purple clay tea set from the drawer, pinched a handful of new tea leaves, and slowly started to make tea. When the hot water was poured into the teapot, white steam rose slowly, and the fragrance of the tea filled the damp duty room, suppressing the stuffy and humid air in the room a bit.
He picked up the teacup, blew off the foam, and took a sip. The warm tea slid down his throat, making him feel comfortable all over.
Then he slowly opened the file in front of him and started the day's compilation work.
Speaking of which, this lazybones of his had really made some efforts during the revision of The Great Qian Commentary on the Water Classic.
But after that period of hard work, his enthusiasm waned. As time passed, everything returned to normal.
He clocked in and out on time.
He worked for eight days and then took two days off to be with his wife.
After the revision of The Great Qian Commentary on the Water Classic, he wasn't idle either. There might be a shortage of other things in the Imperial Academy, but there was never a shortage of ancient books and files.
After finishing the old ones, new ones were assigned for revision, one after another, as if there was never an end.
But it wasn't very busy either.
These tasks didn't have a fixed time limit. No one was urging him to hand in the work, and no one was keeping an eye on the progress. When the superiors assigned the tasks, they just said "Take your time, there's no hurry", not even bothering to set a deadline.
So Pei Cijing just calmly did the work at his own pace.
Every day when he arrived at the duty room, he would make a pot of tea, flip through a few pages of the file, write a few lines of words. When he got tired, he would get up to stretch his muscles, look at the bamboo outside the window, and chat with Liu and Chen for a few words.
He had lunch at noon and got off work at the fifth watch. His days passed regularly and leisurely.
This kind of state.
Pei Cijing thought it was just right.
He wouldn't be so idle as to make his colleagues uncomfortable. After all, he really had work to do, and he was revising the files one by one. Although the progress wasn't very fast, it wasn't slow either. No one could find fault with him.
Nor would he be so busy as to make himself uncomfortable. He had plenty of time every day to taste tea, read books, be in a daze, and think about his wife. When he got home, he still had the energy to talk with his wife, have meals, and do the things they liked to do.
Balancing work and leisure.
This was what life should be like.
Pei Cijing picked up the teacup and took another sip. Just as he was about to continue his idyllic days of working half a day, slacking off half a day, and clocking out on time,
he heard Chen Wangbei beside him sigh and say, "This rain has been falling for five or six days, right?"
As he spoke,
he turned his head to look out of the window.
There was a bit of emotion on his square face, as well as a faint, imperceptible trace of worry.
Hearing this, Liu Zhixing put down his pen, calculated the days roughly, and nodded, saying, "It's been six days."
He also picked up his teacup and took a sip. His tone remained as calm as ever, as if he was talking about an ordinary thing.
Chen Wangbei withdrew his gaze and looked at the two of them. There was a look of reminiscence on his face. "This kind of rain is not common in the northern border. There's a shortage of water there, and droughts are frequent. Occasionally, when there is rain, it comes suddenly and violently, as if God had held his anger in for a whole year and suddenly let it all out."
"However, the rain there comes fast and goes fast. It will clear up after at most three consecutive days of rain. I've lived in the northern border for more than twenty years, and I've really never encountered this kind of continuous drizzle like in the capital city a few times."
He paused for a moment and then added, "It's not that I'm not used to the rain. It's just that the way this rain is falling makes me feel a bit... indescribable."
Listening to him, the corners of Liu Zhixing's mouth curled up slightly. There was a bit of calmness of an experienced person and a bit of nonchalance in his smile.
"What's this?" He said, with a faint smile in his tone. "It's just rain for five or six days. How can that be considered a lot?"
He put the teacup back on the table and looked out of the window. There was a rare look of reminiscence in his cold eyes.
"When I was in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, it was the rainy season. That was the real rain. It was common for it to rain continuously for ten or fifteen days. It rained non-stop, as if the sky had been punctured by someone and could never be patched up."
"There's an old saying in our place, 'During the plum-rain season, every household has rain.' When this season comes, the whole of Jiangsu and Zhejiang is soaked in water. The clothes can't be dried, the quilts are so wet that you can wring out water, mildew spots grow on the corners of the walls, and even the pages of the books stick together and can't be turned over."
As he spoke, he shook his head slightly. There was a bit of helplessness in his expression, but also a bit of nostalgia for his hometown.
"I'm from Wuxian County. Although it's a large county, whenever there are continuous rainy days, the water in the city can reach up to the ankles, and in some deeper places, it can even reach the calves. People there either go barefoot or walk on stilts when they go out. Those who are more particular will take small boats to travel through the streets and alleys."
"Don't laugh. They really do take boats. Boating on the streets is actually a unique sight in our Wuxian County."
"The government yamen says every year that they will improve the water management and repair the ditches, but as soon as there is heavy rain, the city still gets flooded. My private school always has a hard time during the rainy season because the school is located in a low - lying area, and when the water rises, it will flood into the classrooms, so the children have to have a holiday. I was very happy when I was a child. I wished it would rain every day so that I didn't have to recite books."
When Liu Zhixing said this, the smile on his lips deepened a bit, but beneath that smile, there was a hint of complexity that was not easily noticeable to others.
At that time, he only thought that not having to go to school because of rain was a good thing.
But now, when he thought about those houses soaked in water, those people wading barefoot through the water, and those farmlands that had no harvest because of a heavy rain, how could it be a good thing?
After listening to Liu Zhixing's recollection of the past, Pei Cijing then calmly continued, "There's no need to worry about the rain in the capital."
As he spoke, he picked up the tea cup and took another sip. His posture was extremely leisurely, just like an old tea - drinker sitting in a teahouse listening to a storyteller.
"After all, the capital is the capital, the seat of the Great Qian Empire and under the feet of the Son of Heaven. This city undoubtedly gathered the wisdom of the most outstanding craftsmen in the entire Great Qian. Every brick, tile, ditch, and canal was carefully planned."
He put down the tea cup, pointed out of the window with his finger, and said with a certain tone, "Take the drainage system for example. There are countless open and hidden ditches underground. When the rain falls, it has its own way out. The water that should be drained will be drained, and the water that should flow will flow. It will never accumulate on the streets. At least in the capital, even if it rains heavily, there will mostly be no problem of water accumulation."
In his life, he had really never seen the capital flooded because of heavy rain.
Never.
In his previous life, after getting used to seeing news about "seeing the sea in the city", he thought that the drainage systems of ancient cities were not very good. But after traveling through time, he found that he had underestimated the wisdom of the ancients.
The drainage system of Shengjing was excellent even by the standards of his original world.
The open ditches on the ground were laid along every street. The ditch walls were made of blue bricks, and the bottoms were paved with stone slabs. Sedimentation pools were set up at regular intervals to prevent silt from clogging the ditches.
The hidden ditches underground were even more intricate, leading the rainwater in the city to the moat outside the city.
On normal days, there was nothing special about them.
But once it rained heavily.
This system would start to operate.
The rainwater would flow along the road surface into the open ditches, the open ditches would merge into the hidden ditches, and the hidden ditches would drain into the river. The process was well - organized and in an orderly manner.
At least since he had traveled through time and arrived in this world for nineteen years, there had never been a major waterlogging in Shengjing. Even if there was water accumulation, it would mostly disappear cleanly within half a day after the rain stopped.
This kind of urban construction achievement was not something that could be achieved overnight.
It was the result of generations of craftsmen and officials continuously repairing and improving over the more than a hundred years since the establishment of the Great Qian Empire.
Liu Zhixing listened to Pei Cijing's words and nodded thoughtfully.
He had lived in Shengjing for quite a while, and it was indeed as Pei Cijing said. The drainage in this city was excellent. No matter how heavy the rain was, there was hardly any water accumulation on the streets, let alone boating.
Because he was from the Jiangsu - Zhejiang area, he knew better how rare this "no water accumulation" was.
In the Jiangsu - Zhejiang area, even in the prefectural cities, after a heavy rain, the low - lying streets and alleys would inevitably be flooded for several days, and the water receded slowly. If it rained continuously, before the previous wave of water receded, the next wave would come, and people could only watch the water rise higher and higher helplessly.
The capital had really put a lot of effort into achieving this level.
Chen Wangbei listened to their conversation. A look of relief appeared on his square face. He scratched his head and smiled, "So it seems that I was overthinking. But this rain makes me feel uneasy. I can't even say why."
He paused for a moment, then his gaze turned to the bamboo leaves outside the window, which were rustling under the beating of the rain. Suddenly, as if he remembered something, he said, "Calculating the days, the summer flood season is coming."
He said this so casually, but in the duty - room, it made Liu Zhixing and Pei Cijing fall silent for a moment.
Summer flood season.
They were both all too familiar with these two words.
Some time ago, when they were revising the "Great Qian Commentary on the Waterways", the three of them buried themselves in those files, flipping through them one by one, extracting information item by item, and repeatedly dealing with records about water, rivers, and flood seasons.
On normal days, there might be no problems.
But during the flood season, it was really a test for people.
"It should be okay, right?" Pei Cijing said, but the corner of his mouth twitched slightly.
If it were on a normal day, he wouldn't have taken it seriously and would have just gone about his business. But at this moment, he couldn't help but feel a bit nervous.
It was a very subtle feeling.
It was like something gently plucked at the depths of his body. The force was not strong, but it made him feel uncomfortable all over.
They were just talking about the rain. How did they suddenly start talking about the summer flood season?
The Great River and the Big River were the two largest water veins running through the Great Qian Empire.
These two rivers ran horizontally from east to west, like two giant dragons coiled on this land. Their tributaries were countless, dense like a spider's web, and spread across every state, prefecture, and county in the Great Qian Empire.
These two water veins nourished millions of people, irrigated vast fertile fields, and carried countless merchant ships traveling from south to north. It was no exaggeration to say that they were the mother rivers of the Great Qian Empire.
But even mothers can lose their tempers.
To be honest, the tempers of these two rivers were not very good.
They seemed gentle on normal days, but as soon as it entered the dog - days, they would turn against people.
The melting snow water from the upstream mountains rushed down violently, mixed with the heavy rain in the dog - days, and the water volume increased sharply. The river channels in the middle and lower reaches couldn't bear it, so they started to overflow.
In the milder cases, the dams would break and the farmlands would be flooded. In the more severe cases, there would be torrential floods and the whole area would turn into a vast expanse of water.
So this period was called the summer flood season.
It was a difficult hurdle that the Great Qian Empire had to face every year, and also the most tense time for the water management in the Great Qian Empire. The inspection and defense of the dams, water level monitoring, and material reserves in each prefecture and state had to be fully prepared in advance.
Chen Wangbei mentioned this probably because they had been revising the "Great Qian Commentary on the Waterways" some time ago, and the records about the summer flood season in those files had left a deep impression on him, so he blurted it out subconsciously.
But this casual remark was like a stone thrown into a calm lake, and the ripples it stirred up spread out in circles in Pei Cijing's heart.
To be honest, this feeling was the real reason for his uneasiness.
Because his experience told him that whenever this feeling appeared, things usually didn't turn out well.
The last time he had this feeling was at the palace banquet. He was so attracted by the roast suckling pig that his soul was almost flying away. Just as he was about to enjoy it to the fullest, the crown prince staged a coup.
The last time he had such a feeling was on the day of the marriage exchange. He was sitting merrily in the Breeze Tea House, enjoying some juicy gossip when Yuanbao rushed in, out of breath, and said, "Young master, something terrible has happened at the mansion!"
And now, here it was again.
And it was happening at this crucial moment.
The summer flood season.
Heavy rain.
It had been raining continuously for six days.
Just thinking about these words together made one feel uneasy.
Pei Cijing picked up his teacup and gulped down the last mouthful of tea. The warm liquid slid down his throat, but it failed to quell the faint uneasiness in his heart.
But surely nothing bad would actually happen?
He thought to himself like this...
