Chapter 61: Lighting Lamps to Illuminate the Night

The bronze wheat ears within the subterranean palace of Yecheng flickered with a faint, eerie glow beneath the illumination of the night-pearl. Zhang He's fingers brushed against the awns of the wheat, and a fine golden powder cascaded down.

"This powder..." He pinched the debris between his fingertips, bringing it close to the torch. Suddenly, a spark burst forth into a cyan flame. "Wang Wu! Fetch the bronze casket immediately!"

The veteran soldier scrambled to bring the Mohist mechanism box. The very instant the bronze wheat ears were placed inside, the Twenty-Eight Mansions star map on the vaulted ceiling of the subterranean palace suddenly began to rotate and gleam with radiance. Gazing at the stellar orbits reflected upon the wheat grains, Zhang He abruptly unbuckled his armor and declared, "Bring me my blood!"

"General, you must not!" Wang Wu pressed down on the hand that gripped the blade. "Only yesterday, the Imperial Inspector's letter stated..."

Before the words faded, Zhang He had already slashed his palm. The moment the crimson drops fell into the bronze casket, the wheat ears grew with frantic speed, the golden grains bursting open to reveal an internal jade-carved core—its shape identical to the core component of the Luoyang Armillary Sphere.

The night in the Southern Palace of Luoyang was as thick as ink. Sun Ru sat kneeling before the herbal medicine cauldron, a gilded dagger hovering over her wrist.

"If you bleed yourself once more, this dagger shall have to find a new master." Liu Xie's voice drifted from the shadows, carrying a weak, fluttering pant.

Sun Ru's wrist trembled slightly, the tip of the blade tracing a shallow scratch across her skin. "Is Your Majesty not intending to emulate Emperor Guangwu by feigning sleep to lure the enemy?"

"Feigned slumber and true death cannot deceive eyes such as yours." Liu Xie hoisted himself up, leaning against the *Map of Mountains and Rivers*, the bloodstains on his palm smudging over the coordinates of Yecheng. "The golden wheat cultivated by Zhang He in the subterranean palace should reach Sishui Pass tonight."

Sun Ru abruptly turned around, the flames of the medical cauldron dancing in her pupils. "Does Your Majesty know what was used to water those wheat ears?" She tore open the collar of her robe, where droplets of blood from the tattoo over her heart were seeping directly into the jade pendant. "Buried beneath Yecheng are the ashes of three hundred Mohist martyrs!"

A sudden clap of thunder cleaved the nocturnal sky, and a torrential downpour poured straight down. Liu Xie staggered forward, clutching her wrist. "So you used your own blood... cough, cough... to nurture that tattoo..."

"When Your Majesty spared my life all those years ago, was it not for this very day?" Sun Ru pressed close, her tattoo resting against his heart. "The legacy left behind by Empress Yin was not a set of blueprints for mechanisms; it was a curse for life-swapping!"

In the morning mist of the River God Temple in Yizhou, Liu Xun was measuring a newly constructed embankment with a carpenter's square. The elderly high priest rushed over in a breathless stagger, clutching a tortoise shell. "Lord Inspector! Last night, a star fell to the southeast, and the River-Stabilizing Pivot at the bottom of the river..."

"That was no falling star." Liu Xun pointed the tip of his square toward the vortex at the heart of the river. "It is a Mohist Sky-Vessel."

Abruptly, he unhooked the string of Jingyuan Tongbao coins from his belt. The instant the copper coins plunged into the river water, bronze gears broke through the waves. The morning light reflected upon shipboards engraved with the characters *'The Thirty-Sixth Year of Qin Shihuang'*, illuminating bundles of bamboo slips packed within the cabin—the *Mohist Canon: Chapter on Agriculture and Warfare*.

The elderly high priest's tortoise shell suddenly fractured into two halves. "This... this is sacrilege!"

"It is only false deities that are desecrated." Liu Xun picked up a bamboo slip; the river water gathered upon the bamboo slats to form the water-inscribed characters: *'The livelihood of the people is the Heavenly Dao'*. "Had Li Bing obtained this scroll in his day, what need would he have had to cast iron oxen to pacify the waters?"

The river breeze swept across the newly reclaimed farmland, rolling the transcribed copies of the *Imperial Edict to Encourage Agriculture* toward the direction of Luoyang. A relay courier's swift horse trampled the morning dew, the golden wheat ears pressed against his chest still dusted with bronze fragments from the Yecheng subterranean palace.

Upon the scorched earth of Hulao Pass, Gan Ning was leading men to excavate the fissures in the earth's veins. "General! This black oil is growing increasingly viscous!" The deputy's iron shovel suddenly struck sparks, and dark red flames leaped upwards along the trenches for a full zhang.

Gan Ning narrowed his single eye. "Bring me Yuan Shao's gilded helmet!"

When the gilded helmet was filled to the brim with black oil, he abruptly tore the fish-tally from his neck and cast it directly within. The flames instantly transformed into a deep cyan, burning the distinct outline of a Mohist talisman across the scorched earth: *"When subterranean fire cooks the heavens, the aura of royalty must serve as the conduit."*

"General, you must not!" The guards' cries of alarm were swallowed by an explosion. Standing amidst a sea of fire with the helmet in hand, Gan Ning watched the cyan flames spread along the veins of the earth toward Luoyang. "Report this swiftly to His Majesty! Tell him... tell him that Gan Xingba has borrowed an Eastern wind!"

In the quiet chambers of the Southern Palace, half of the green-calyx plum blossoms withered away instantaneously, and Jia Xu's medicinal cup shattered into pieces. "Your Majesty! Gan Ning has ignited the subterranean earth-fire!" When he burst into the secret chamber, he caught sight of Liu Xie pressing the blood-stained jade pendant directly against Sun Ru's heart. Beneath their feet, the trail of fire upon the *Map of Mountains and Rivers* had already burned all the way to the coordinates of Luoyang.

"You arrive right on time." Liu Xie's pale complexion flushed with an unnatural crimson hue. "Does Wenhe still recall the great fire of Luoyang in the first year of Jian'an?"

He suddenly jerked open the curtain, revealing the jade statue of Empress Yin enshrined within the wall niche—the hollowed recess over its heart matched Sun Ru's tattoo with absolute precision.

Jia Xu's pupils contracted violently. "Does Your Majesty intend to... to use ancestral spirits to prolong your life?"

"It is not my life being prolonged." Liu Xie suddenly coughed up dark blood. "It is this enduring flame of the Mohists!"

He snapped the golden chain around the jade statue's neck, and the moment the pendant plunged into the medical cauldron, cyan flames traced the crevices of the floor and darted directly into the secret chamber. Sun Ru's tattoo suddenly radiated a brilliant golden light, absorbing every thread of the spreading fire entirely into her body.

Within the bronze wheat fields of the Yecheng subterranean palace, Wang Wu watched as the golden ears grew with wild abandon. "General! The awns of the wheat have pierced the vaulted ceiling!" Amidst the shouts of the soldiers, starlight poured downward along the wheat stalks.

Zhang He slashed open his other palm, and the blood-stained wheat grains suddenly burst open, countless particles of golden powder gathering in mid-air to form an illusory projection of the Armillary Sphere.

"These are not wheat ears..." He burst into a sudden, wild laugh. "These are the seeds of the Measure-Heaven Ruler!"

Droplets of blood trickled down the stellar orbits, etching the street map of Luoyang directly into the bronze walls. Cuddled in the corner of a street in that map was the unmistakable shadow of a young Liu Xie.

At that moment, a swift horse broke into the subterranean palace, its hooves shattering the star chart. "Report! General Gan has ignited the earth veins, and His Majesty... His Majesty intends to burn the city to the ground!"

Zhang He abruptly snapped a golden stalk of wheat. "Fetch my armor! We ride for Luoyang!"

The morning mists at the heart of the Yizhou River were stained a deep, bleeding crimson. Standing atop the wreckage of the Sky-Vessel, Liu Xun watched as the *Canon of Agriculture and Warfare* in his hands began to seep blood.

"Lord Inspector! Urgent dispatches from Luoyang!" An imperial courier loosed a feathered arrow carrying a blood-stained silken scroll. Unfurling it, Liu Xun read Liu Xie's own handwriting: *"Borrowing the might of the River God, we safeguard the hearth fires of all common folk."*

The elderly high priest's tortoise shell abruptly surfaced upon the river, its cracks forming the pattern of the Eight Trigrams. "So that is how it is..." Trembling, he knelt toward the wreckage of the Sky-Vessel. "The Mohists wage war only to end war, turning weapons into plowshares—this is the true Heavenly Dao!"

Liu Xun leaped directly into the roaring river, driving his gilded dagger deep into a fracture in the vessel's hull. Amidst the thunderous roar of backflowing river waters, three thousand bronze seed-drills emerged from the depths, the *'Jingyuan'* inscriptions upon their shafts piercing through the morning mist.

The blazing inferno of the Southern Palace had already consumed half of the palace walls, and Sun Ru's tattoo was rapidly absorbing the very last wisps of earth-fire.

"Was it worth it?" Liu Xie's fingers brushed against her pale lips. "To expend the very last bloodline of the Mohists..."

"Your Majesty is mistaken." Sun Ru suddenly opened her eyes, her pupils reflecting the final, dying petals of the green-calyx plum blossoms. "What Empress Yin passed down was never a bloodline..."

She pulled open her robe, her tattoo dissolving into golden dust that drifted away into the wind. "It is the hearts of the people!"

From outside the palace walls came a sudden wave of shouts resembling a roaring tide, as the common folk used newly forged plowshares to beat back the tongues of fire. Gan Ning charged into the blazing fray, carrying black oil in his golden helmet! "Your Majesty! This earth-oil solidifies the moment it touches a plow!"

The flung black oil instantly solidified into a towering wall the moment it contacted the agricultural implements, sealing the raging inferno firmly within the confines of the palace walls.

Zhang He's swift horse trampled through the curtain of fire at that very moment, hurling a stalk of golden wheat directly toward Liu Xie. "The three hundred Mohist tombs of Yecheng have blossomed into flowers, awaiting Your Majesty's personal harvest!"

The instant Liu Xie caught the wheat ear, the withered roots of the green-calyx plum tree suddenly sprouted anew. The tender branch pierced straight through the scorched earth, and within its fifteenth blooming flower bud, the patterns of the Mohist giant's decree and the contours of the Jingyuan Tongbao coin overlapped and shone with brilliant radiance.