Chapter 51: Return of the Nine Cauldrons to the Source

The setting sun over the ramparts of Shouchun resembled a dying coal, staining the moat into a viscous pool of blood. As Huangfu Song climbed the city tower over the wreckage of scaling ladders, the dark-armored elite cavalry were mopping up the final resistance in the barbican. He leaned down to pick up half a gilded tally; the two characters "Yuzhang" on the back were cracked by horseshoes—the very same token retrieved from Zhang Kai’s corpse a month prior. Amidst the rising dust and smoke from the distant underground palace entrance, a muffled sound of rotating gears suddenly echoed, resembling a giant dragon shifting its weight deep in the nether springs.

In the Southern Palace of Luoyang, cyan and purple smoke rose from the medicine stove as Jia Xu stirred the herbal decoction with a silver spoon. Snowflakes drifting through the window lattice formed ice crystals on the liquid’s surface, reflecting the deep grooves knitted between his brows. Liu Xie’s pale fingers traced the Western Regions model on the sand table, and a vermillion brush stabbed a bloody spot at the location of Kucha: "Does Wenhe know the wondrous utility of this 'Taiyi Soul-Condensing Pill'?" Before his voice faded, he coughed up a spray of scarlet, and the blossoms of blood blooming on the snow-white handkerchief were identical to the markers on the sand table.

"Your Majesty, your health has grown increasingly frail of late."

The wrinkles between Jia Xu’s brows deepened slightly, his tone laden with anxiety for Liu Xie’s well-being. After all, Liu Xie served as the core pillar for everyone; once his body collapsed, everything they had built would vanish like a dream or a bubble.

"It is of no consequence. Am I not taking my medicine?" Liu Xie’s tone was somewhat nonchalant, as though he harbored no worry whatsoever for his condition.

He merely reached out to catch an ice crystal drifting from the window, which dissolved like ink upon his palm.

"It is already spring; why is it still snowing?"

Jia Xu approached from behind, handing the medicinal urn to Liu Xie.

"A timely snow promises a bountiful year. I imagine the subjects of our Great Han will enjoy a fine harvest this year."

"Let us hope so..."

Their voices dissipated into the all-encompassing wind and snow, finally fading into silence.

As the cold wind unleashed by the opening hidden door rushed into the secret chamber carrying subterranean chill, Sun Ru’s deerskin boots trod across the stalactite moss on the bronze casket. She watched Liu Xie’s fingertips caress the ice-jade vessel within, while a gilded dagger in its scabbard let out a low hum—the stains of Yuan Shu’s blood upon it had not yet dried. "The legacy left by the first Mohist Master..." Her words were interrupted by a violent fit of coughing, and fresh blood trickled through the emperor’s fingers, dripping onto the Shouchun model like a downpour of blood.

Undercurrents at the bottom of Poyang Lake were dragging wooden oxen and flowing horses toward the abyss. Gan Ning gazed at the closing bronze giant doors, suddenly realizing that the joint structures of the mechanical beasts bore a striking resemblance to the waterwheels of the brocade-sail warcrafts. The moment he touched the Taotie mythical-beast motifs on the rock wall, the entire cavern erupted with a chime-like roar. Three thousand mechanical beasts submerged in the water simultaneously turned toward the west, bowing their heads in the direction of Luoyang as if paying a final tribute of submission.

"General! Oil is seeping from the hull!" A frogman’s cry of alarm echoed from the lower deck. Rushing down the companionway, Gan Ning saw black grease oozing from the newly designed keel—a pungent odor that reminded him of the sulfur cakes Mi Zhu had once stuffed into fish bellies. The viscous fluid on his fingertips gleamed with a bluish phosphorescence under the torchlight, recalling the night before his departure from the capital when the emperor had stroked a model warship and murmured, "The sharpest blade must always be stained with its own blood."

On the official road outside Xuchang City, an elderly farmer named Wang Wu was turning the soil with a newly acquired curved-beam plow. The moment the plowshare broke the frozen earth, it struck a pottery jar, and Jingyuan Tongbao copper coins cascaded out like a shower of golden rain. "A heavenly portent!" His kneeling, joyous cry startled the flocking birds. Three miles away, outside the disaster relief shed, the child scouts chanted the rhymes of the "Song of Encouraging Agriculture": "In the second month we turn the new soil, imperial grace enriches the nine provinces..." The youthful voices intertwined with the crisp clinking of falling copper coins to form an intricate web.

Cao Cao stood upon the watchtower, the frontispiece of his *Compendium of Agriculture and Mulberry* yellowing in the morning light. Discovering that the vermillion seal of "Boundless Imperial Grace" concealed the counter-sunk characters "the twelfth month of the third year of Jian'an," he was suddenly reminded of the Battle of Lake Poyang—the twenty cargo boats of sulfur belonging to Mi Zhu’s fleet that day were now transforming into golden sand beneath his very feet. Cheng Yu suddenly pointed toward the northwest sky with a cry of astonishment as a meteor streaked across the vault of heaven, its trailing fiery tail echoing the smoke pillar rising from the Shouchun underground palace.

Deep within the Shouchun underground palace, Yuan Shu’s fingernails scraped a harsh screech against the surface of the Imperial Jade Seal. When he pried open the secret compartment of the seal’s handle, half a bamboo slip fluttered down—the eight characters "Mandated by Heaven, May You Enjoy Longevity and Prosperity" had been crossed out in vermillion brush and replaced with, "Are kings and nobles, generals and ministers, born of a distinct seed?" The instant falling rocks shattered Ji Ling’s spine, the Mohist runes manifesting on the rock wall suddenly flashed with golden light. As Yuan Shu plunged into the subterranean river clutching the jade seal, the final image reflected in the amber-hued crystal was the dragon motif, gleaming in unison with the cold light of Sun Ru’s dagger.

When the bronze bells of the Luoyang Ancestral Temple resounded across the firmament, Liu Xie pressed the Imperial Jade Seal into the central socket of the Nine Cauldrons. Jia Xu noticed that Sun Ru’s gilded dagger was embedded in the chipped corner of the seal, its cold gleam intertwining with the incense smoke like a coiling dragon. The moment the mechanisms locked completely into place, the twenty-eight lunar mansions on the armillary sphere began to rotate of their own accord, casting a star map that perfectly overlapped with the boundaries of the sand table. At that exact moment, a dispatch from the Protectorate General of the Western Regions burst open the palace doors, the horsehair wrappings of the Ferghana steeds still dusted with the snows of the Pamir Mountains.

Sun Ru appeared from behind a coiling dragon pillar, reeking of blood, with Yuan Shu’s severed head dangling from her fingertips. The plum-blossom jade hairpin in her hair suddenly snapped, and the crisp sound of half a jade pendant hitting the floor resonated with the roar of the Nine Cauldrons. Liu Xie reached out to catch the falling tip of the jade hairpin, and blood trickled along the lines of his palm into the star map representing Yuzhou; the droplet wound its way along the gullies of the Yellow River model, eventually coalescing into the vermillion characters "Jingyuan" at the river mouth.

The sound of iron forging echoing from beneath the Southern Palace that night startled the fish at the bottom of the moat. In the new blast furnace erected by Mohist disciples beside the armillary sphere, molten copper was being poured into clay molds inscribed with the reign era. Gazing at the soaring flames, Jia Xu suddenly recalled the ice crystals that had formed in the medicine stove—at this very moment in the emperor’s hands, those ice crystals were being ground into saltpeter powder for improved gunpowder. Sun Ru stood silently in the shadows, watching Liu Xie toss the first Jingyuan Tongbao coin onto the sand table; the trajectory of the copper coin spinning over the ruins of Shouchun mirrored the golden beads rolling from the cellar of the Marquis of Yue’s estate years ago.

In the darkness before dawn, Gan Ning’s warship was sailing toward the mouth of the Yangtze River. The black grease seeping from the lower deck had somehow solidified into a paste, and when a frogman tested it with a flint, the bluish flame instantly engulfed the entire river surface. Gazing at the fire dragon surging downstream, Gan Ning burst into wild laughter—he finally understood what the emperor meant by a "blade stained with blood." When the first ray of sunlight pierced the cloud cover, the bronze mirror on the bow’s watchtower suddenly refracted a rainbow of seven colors, and the patch of light fell precisely upon the location of the Poyang Lake cavern.

Amidst the fields outside Xuchang City, Wang Wu strung the excavated copper coins into a necklace and hung it around his grandson’s neck. The "Song of Encouraging Agriculture" chanted by the child scouts had taken on new lyrics: "In the third month we sow new seeds, across the four seas there is no famine..." The youthful singing drifted on the wind toward Luoyang, passing through the closing stone doors of the secret chamber in the Southern Palace. Liu Xie took one final glance at the empire upon which the sun never set, slowly rising on the sand table, and gently laid his blood-stained vermillion brush upon the base of the armillary sphere. Inscribed there was a newly added line of small seal script: "Wherever the sun and moon shine, all is Han territory."