Isolated town in northern border region

As Jiang Min received news from the southern states at her villa in Yongzhou, the plum tree outside her window blossomed its first flower. She read through the secret reports one by one, placed them on the corner of her desk, then stood up and walked to the window. She looked at the plum blossom, still glistening with morning dew, gleaming faintly in the afternoon light, like an unbroken boundary line re-measuring the surrounding air at its newly unfolded angle.

She did not reply to any of them immediately.

She stood by the window for the time it takes for an incense stick to burn, as if silently waiting for the information in the secret reports to completely sink into its proper place. Then she returned to her desk, picked up her brush, and wrote seven letters, each with a different content, but all addressed to the patriarchs of various aristocratic families. She sealed the letters and gave them to different messengers. The last one was addressed to the purple-robed officials in the capital, containing only one sentence: "Starting tomorrow, all matters discussed in my harem shall be sent directly to Yongzhou from all aristocratic reports."

After the letter was sent, the side gate of the Yongzhou villa began to open from morning till night, with people constantly going in and out. Those entering dressed modestly, their carriages lacking family crests, but they alighted quickly, as if eager to finish their message before the next group arrived. Those leaving walked more slowly; some stood at the gate for a while before getting into their carriages, some carried envelopes sealed with wax, and others carried nothing, their shoulders slightly lower than when they entered.

The next day, a new edict was posted in the Chu court. The edict bore the private seal of the Northern Frontier Queen, alongside the seal of the Xiao royal family. The two seals were side-by-side, like two wheels linked together by the same axle, each rotating in the same direction. The edict was lengthy, but its core consisted of three points: First, the old system of aristocratic families was to be restored immediately, with free buying and selling of land, and no restriction on the right of aristocratic families to acquire land under any pretext; second, all engineering schools and workshops could be transferred to private individuals, with the inheritor required to be from an aristocratic family or have a family guarantee; third, all members of the Xiao clan were to be granted a first-class noble title, which could be inherited by all Xiao family members, and they could be directly appointed to official positions without taking the imperial examinations.

When the decree was posted, the parliamentary chamber remained silent for a long time. Nearly half the seats on the left were empty. Those on the right, looking at the decree stamped with the seals of both the Queen and the Royal Family, stood up, bowed, and praised the Queen's wisdom before sitting down. No one objected, nor did anyone echo the sentiment too loudly; it was as if a conclusion, repeatedly confirmed but not yet formally announced, was awaiting its final confirmation.

But the public's reaction to the decree was completely different.

In a county town in southern China, a craftsman who had worked in the Cui family workshop for three months squatted on the steps at the workshop entrance, holding a hardened piece of bread in his hand, chewing it occasionally. He saw the government decree posted on the wall of the government office and had someone read it aloud. After it was finished, the bread in his hand stopped at his mouth; he didn't bite into it, put it down, and placed it on his knees. He muttered, "The school can be sold to someone else now?"

The person next to him did not answer.

He put the cake back in his pocket, stood up, and walked towards the school. When he reached the school gate, he saw that the sign that read "Zhao Family School" had been replaced with a new one that read "Cui Family Industrial School Branch." He stood at the gate looking at the new sign. The wood grain was still new, and the paint was not yet completely dry. In the sunlight, it shone with a layer of lustrous light, like a newly drawn outline waiting to be confirmed whether it was dry enough to be touched.

He stood at the door for about the time it takes to drink half a cup of tea, then turned and walked back into the workshop, sitting back down at his workstation. As the grinding wheel turned, sparks continued to fly along its original trajectory, but their brightness was dimmer than before, as if a light-providing core was slowly thinning from the inside. He didn't look up, didn't speak, but simply continued grinding the iron plate in front of him. By the time he finished get off work, his hand was clenched tighter than usual, and when he released it, a white mark from the grip appeared on his knuckles, like a not-yet-completely-faded mark waiting to be clearly seen before it could disappear completely.

Meanwhile, in several engineering schools in Yongzhou, a few of the first batch of national craftsmen sat in empty classrooms, several transfer documents spread out on the tables in front of them. These documents, delivered three days earlier, stated that the schools would be transferred to the Cui family for management. The original instructors could choose to stay and continue teaching, but the content of their courses had to be approved by the Cui family and could not involve "theories beyond current needs." A line of small print was tucked into one of the documents—"Any discussion involving the principles of heaven and the origins of things must be submitted for approval before it can be taught."

Tie Niu sat at the table and read the document three times. The first time, his fingers gripped the edge of the paper; the second time, he loosened them; the third time, he placed the paper on the table, remained silent for a moment, and then said, "I won't sign." Three other craftsmen sat nearby. One echoed, "I won't sign either," while the other remained silent, simply pushing the document back to the center of the table, as if returning something deemed no longer theirs.

On the fourth day, the Cui family's steward came with a new document. The new document was more lenient than the old one, agreeing to double the monthly wages of the remaining artisans and allowing them to teach freely within the approved scope. However, the small print at the end remained: "Any discussion involving the principles of Heaven and the origins of things must be submitted for approval before it can be taught."

After reading the document, Tie Niu carefully folded it and put it in his pocket. The steward, assuming he had agreed, turned to leave, but Tie Niu said after him, "I'll keep it as a memento. You can take the school back. I'm going back to Cangzhou."

That afternoon, Tie Niu walked out of the school gate carrying a cloth bag. Inside the bag were his handwritten textbooks and a few changes of clothes, the fabric of which was very thin. His steps were slow, each step crossing the threshold he had crossed countless times before, but this time, unlike any other time, he didn't turn around, didn't look back, and didn't pause on the threshold even for a moment.

As he squatted down by the roadside to tie his shoelaces, he glanced at the distant northern horizon. He saw nothing, only a layer of hazy clouds slowly moving across the sky, like an unwritten boundary redrawing the chosen area with its own edge. He finished tying his shoelaces, stood up, and continued walking. His figure grew smaller and smaller in the afternoon sunlight, finally disappearing into the thin dust rising at the end of the road.

Rumors among the people began to shift. In a teahouse in Jiangnan, several craftsmen dressed in short clothes crowded around a table with four bowls of tea, drinking more slowly than usual. One of them put down his bowl and said, "I heard that the Princess Consort has decided on the titles of the Xiao imperial family."

Another person chimed in, "So what if it's settled? The Xiao royal family is long gone. Apart from the prince's branch, the rest are just idle people."

"But thanks to the princess's actions, those who were just sitting around getting promoted can now hold official positions."

"So what if they appoint officials? Do they think they'll care about the lives of ordinary people once they're in office?"

The third person interjected, his voice low: "You didn't understand. The princess is bribing them. She's solidified the royal family's status, restored the privileges of aristocratic families, and given the schools and workshops to them. Now, who would still follow the King of Northern Frontier?"

A moment of silence fell over the table. Then the first person finished his tea, wiped his mouth, and said, "In the five prefectures of the Northern Frontier, the schools are still public, and the workshops are still privately owned. You all know what's happening in the South after the Prince left."

No one answered. But someone put down the bowl, the bottom of it hitting the table with a soft sound, like a scale being leveled, its own weight confirming its position.

Meanwhile, Jiang Min met with the three clan leaders of the Cui, Zhao, and Sun families at the villa in Yongzhou. The meeting was brief, lasting less than half an hour, but when it ended, the three clan leaders walked out of the villa gate with a half-beat faster pace than when they arrived, as if a predetermined rhythm was using its own speed to pull the human body's rhythm, which had not yet been adjusted, back to its proper place.

No specific details about the content of that meeting have been released to the outside world. However, three days later, a new decree was issued at the southern trading ports: the number of trading ports between the Great Chu and the Yan and Shu kingdoms increased from three to seven, and tariffs on goods carried by Yan and Shu merchants were halved. Simultaneously, a suppression order targeting the former territory of the Chen kingdom was swiftly sent to the southern border—"Any remnants of the Chen kingdom who cause trouble shall be killed without exception. Anyone who harbors remnants of the Chen kingdom shall have their entire family, including three generations, executed."

On the tenth day after the suppression order was issued, on the city wall of the former Chen state town, where a banner bearing a white crane and plum blossoms was hung, Yuan Jia stood behind the battlements watching an army approaching in the distance. The army's banners were the red of the Chu army, but their formation and marching speed were different from the Chu army he remembered—more orderly, more silent, as if they had practiced many times. Before he could analyze the difference, the army had already stopped two miles outside the city. The shields of the front rank were lowered, and the crossbowmen of the rear rank were raised, their movements as clean as a gate being pushed open.

A former subordinate general beside Yuan Jia whispered, "This isn't the Chu army. This is the Jing army with Chu banners."

Yuan Jia's throat bobbed, and he said, "Jiang Jun lent her his troops."

The army outside the city neither attacked nor challenged the enemy; they simply remained stationed there, cutting off the three roads connecting the county town to the outside world. On the third day, food began to run out inside the city. People gathered in the streets and alleys; some squatted inside the city gate, whispering to each other through cracks in the wall; others shared their last half-sack of rice with their neighbors, sitting on their doorsteps staring blankly at the empty sack. On the night of the seventh day, the city gates were opened from the inside.

When Yuan Jia was bound and sent out of the city gate, he was dressed in plain clothes. The general of the army outside the city took him, but did not put shackles on him. He only said, "The princess said that the orphan of Chen Kingdom is to be sent to Jing Kingdom and handed over to Prince Jiang Jun for disposal." As Yuan Jia was pushed into a carriage, he looked back at the county town behind him. The white crane carrying plum blossoms banner on the city gate tower had been torn down and thrown on the ground, trampled into the mud by the horses' hooves.

When the news reached the capital, the people in the council hall neither laughed nor cheered; they simply exchanged glances. The official in purple robes folded the report of victory and tucked it into his sleeve, saying, "The South is secure." He paused, then added, "The Princess Consort deserves much credit."

After that sentence was uttered, someone quickly followed up with, "The Princess is truly the chosen one." The first sentence sounded like a tentative probe, with a lingering, unfinished note. The second sentence followed like a response, pinning the unfinished note to its proper place. The third and fourth sentences, when uttered together, resembled a chorus, rising sequentially from the seats on the right, landing on the decree already stamped with the double seals, like a row of strings being plucked one after another by the same hand.

In less than half a month, the words "Heaven's Mandate" spread from the National Assembly hall to teahouses, from teahouses to streets and alleys, and from streets and alleys to fields. When someone stood on the edge of a field reciting these four words, the hoe in his hand never stopped, but after he finished reciting, he switched the hoe to his other hand, as if the weight of the recitation was shifting from his left hand to his right, not yet deciding which side it would ultimately land on.

When Jiang Min heard the news in the villa, she was pruning a withered branch of a plum tree. The shears made a crisp sound as the blades closed, like a boundary line being cut off, trimming away its excess and leaving only what it deemed necessary. She placed the pruned branch on the windowsill, not throwing it away, as if waiting to see if it would sprout new buds.

Then she returned to her study, spread out a sheet of paper, dipped her brush in ink, and wrote a letter to Xiao Lie. The letter was long, three pages long. The first two pages described the changing situation in the south, how she stabilized the powerful families, how she pacified the Chen Kingdom, and how she dealt with the three kingdoms of Yan, Shu, and Jing. It was written in a straightforward manner, like stating the steps to solve a problem using a proven formula. After finishing the first two pages, she paused, looked out the window at the plum blossom in full bloom, and then began writing the third page.

The third page contains only one paragraph: "I can ignore the autonomy of the five northern prefectures. But do you know how long you'll go before you achieve the world you desire? You teach a hundred craftsmen in those few schools, and those craftsmen teach a thousand more, and those thousand teach ten thousand more. These ten thousand people learn the arithmetic and geometry you taught them, they learn oxidation and combustion, and then what? They learn accounting, they learn land measurement, they learn rust prevention. But they are still controlled, oppressed, and their wages are withheld with a mere 'written agreement.' They learn skills, they are no longer rusted iron, but they are still iron on that chain." The ring has simply changed from a rusty iron ring to a rust-free one. The world you desire is one where no one makes iron rings anymore. But you can't dismantle the chain until you reach that position. If you stand in those few schools in the northern frontier teaching a hundred people, and those hundred teach a thousand more, by the time those thousand people have learned to dismantle the chain, it will have grown into an iron chain, forming an entire iron wall. If you reach that position, I'll go with you. If you can't reach that position, I'll help you get there. But if you're unwilling to even reach that position, then everything you teach is merely preparing even less rust-resistant iron for the next batch of people wearing chains.

When she wrote the last word, she pressed the pen tip down on the paper, as if using that pressure to confirm that she had said what she needed to say. Then she lifted it up, folded the letter and sealed it, without blowing on the ink, letting the ink dry naturally on the paper. She watched the words change from wet to dry, like watching a boundary line transitioning from liquid to solid, its edges gradually becoming clear.

The letter was sent out at dusk. The messenger rode a fast horse from the north gate of Yongzhou. The twilight on the official road was turning from gray-blue to dark gray. The horse's hooves kicked up a thin layer of dust on the dry dirt road, leaving a trail behind it that was gradually disappearing. Jiang Min stood at the gate of the villa, watching the trail being blown away by the wind, until it was completely out of sight before turning back.

The letter arrived in Cangwu City on the seventh day. Zhou Xun received it but didn't open it; he delivered it directly to Xiao Lie's desk in the Engineering Department. Xiao Lie was grading the third batch of students' assignments at the time. He opened the letter, took out the paper, and read it from beginning to end. His expression remained unchanged as he read the first two pages, as if he were reading an official document whose contents he had already anticipated. When he turned to the third page, his gaze paused, then he placed the three pages on the table and picked up the third page separately to read it again.

He put down the letter and sat at his desk for a long time. The sky outside the window had turned from afternoon to dusk, and most of the plum blossoms on the windowsill had fallen, with only a few remaining hanging on the branches, ready to be blown away by the wind at any moment. He sat there without moving, his fingers resting on the edge of the letter, his fingertips tracing the creases back and forth twice, as if he were re-measuring the distance between the characters with his sense of touch.

He stood up and walked to the window, pushing it open. The wind from the northern frontier rushed in, carrying a dry, cold air and the smell of a distant, burning fire. He stood there for a while, gazing at the darkening sky outside, the wind ruffling his hair without him raising a hand to fix it. Then he murmured something softly, as if talking to himself, or perhaps offering an unwritten response to a letter that had already been delivered: "She's right. Teaching technology alone isn't enough."

He paused for a moment.

"But the location she mentioned isn't the location I want."

He closed the window, returned to his desk, sat down, spread out a new sheet of paper, dipped his brush in ink, and wrote three lines as a reply. First line: "You're right, just teaching the technique isn't enough." Second line: "But you're wrong to say that once you reach that position, you can dismantle the chain. Even if you reach that position, the chain is still there; you'll simply be the one holding that end." Third line: "What I need to do is teach those who have held the chain to dismantle it themselves. This is something you can't do from that position."

After writing these three lines, he put down his pen without writing another word, folded and sealed the letter, and handed it to Xu De at the door: "Send this to Yongzhou. Let her see it."

Xu De took the letter and left. Xiao Lie sat back down at his desk, picked up the workbook he had only half-graded, and continued reading. On the last page of the workbook, the student had drawn a balance scale with charcoal, writing "Technology" on the left and "Brain" on the right, with an equal sign in the middle. The equal sign wasn't drawn perfectly straight, but it was still legible. Xiao Lie looked at the crooked equal sign for a while, but didn't correct it. He wrote two words at the bottom of the page: "Keep it."