Chapter 14: The Year 1627
Gao Yiye exclaimed, "This fellow won't say the emperor's name, and the Heavenly Lord is very angry! Everyone, grab your weapons and give him a good thrashing!"
Gao Chuwu was the first to snatch up a large wooden club, while the other young men tightened their grip on their sticks. Villagers, one after another, began searching for weapons.
Under the setting sun, a large crowd of villagers raised all sorts of haphazard items: earthenware pots, hoes, table legs, carrying poles...
Seeing this intimidating display, San Shier's face turned ashen. Before the villagers could make a move, he immediately wailed, "Zhu Youxiao, Zhu Youxiao! The current emperor's name is Zhu Youxiao!"
At this point, he couldn't care less about the taboo of speaking the emperor's name. As the saying goes, "the sky is high, and the emperor is far away," and imperial authority doesn't reach the villages. His priority was to save his own skin; he didn't care if it was taboo, and he even forgot his characteristic habit of punctuating every statement with a four-character idiom.
"Tsk, so his name really is Zhu Youxiao." Li Daoxuan's face darkened. "Yiye, ask him about the state of the world."
Gao Yiye quickly relayed the question.
Seeing the motley collection of weapons around him, San Shier was thoroughly terrified, and not knowing what she meant by "the state of the world," he recited a government document he had just seen in the county yamen: "On the eleventh day of the fifth month, Manchu forces besieged Jinzhou. The imperial court dispatched troops to reinforce Jinzhou. On the twenty-eighth, the Manchu forces divided and again attacked Ningyuan City. Governor Yuan Chonghuan, along with eunuch Liu Yingkun and Vice Commissioner Bi Zisu, directed officers and soldiers to defend from the city walls. They set up camps inside the moat and repelled the attack with cannons..."
He stopped there, seeing the bewildered faces of the villagers, who clearly didn't understand. His heart pounded nervously, but their weapons hadn't dropped, so San Shier knew he was on the right track and continued: "Man Gui, leading You Shilu and Zu Dashou, brought troops to the rescue. A fierce battle ensued outside the city, with casualties on both sides. Man Gui was struck by several arrows. The Manchu forces soon withdrew and reinforced their attack on Jinzhou. However, Jinzhou also could not be captured, so they returned to their base due to the intense summer heat..."
He couldn't remember the rest. Sweat streamed down his face. He thought: 'I'm done for. I can't remember any more. I don't know if they're satisfied, or if they'll beat me to death! This is what they call 'hanging by a thread'!'
In reality, what he had recited was already enough.
Hearing this, Li Daoxuan was certain: the diorama box wasn't some miniature world from another dimension, but rather – the Great Ming Dynasty.
And it was the late Ming Dynasty, during its most arduous years.
No wonder Gao Family Village was so desolate, and the villagers couldn't even get enough to eat. Wasn't this precisely the life ordinary people lived during the late Ming Dynasty? He had read about it in history books before, but it hadn't been visceral. Only by seeing it in the diorama box could he truly empathize.
Suddenly, Li Daoxuan understood everything. "Alright, stop tormenting him. I've asked all I needed to know. He looks exhausted and hungry from being dragged here. Give him something to eat."
Having said that, he no longer had the heart to pay attention to the matters in the diorama box. He quickly opened his computer, launched his browser, went to Baidu, and searched for information related to the late Ming Dynasty... He plunged headfirst into it, wandering through the ocean of history.
As his final words were conveyed by Gao Yiye, the villagers immediately lowered their weapons, bowed their heads to the sky, then dispersed, returning to their homes.
San Shier breathed a sigh of relief. He thought: 'My life has been spared. These villagers are so bizarre. They all listen to this girl, and this girl looks like a charlatan, a typical fraud pretending to 'speak for the gods.' Could this be some kind of cult, like the White Lotus Society? A grim fate awaits anyone caught by a cult. I must play along to survive and make it home. This is what they call 'swallowing one's pride to preserve oneself'!'
He, too, put on an act, imitating the villagers, and bowed his head to the sky. He had no idea which deity he was bowing to, but figured bowing was the right thing to do. To save his life, there was no shame in it.
Gao Yiye said to him, "Come with me, I'll get you something to eat."
San Shier responded with a nod and quickly followed. As they walked, he couldn't help but whisper, "Young lady, it seems your village worships a deity... Who is this immortal you worship? This is what they call 'getting to the bottom of things'!"
Gao Yiye replied, "I don't know."
San Shier exclaimed, "What?!"
He had never heard of people not knowing which god they worshipped. 'Are these villagers utterly foolish?'
Gao Yiye said, "The Heavenly Lord is just the Heavenly Lord. He has never revealed his divine name, and we dare not ask. We only know that his divine power is boundless, and he is gentle and benevolent. He has shown exceptional care for the people of Gao Family Village, and we all owe our lives to him."
San Shier scoffed inwardly. 'Only dimwitted commoners would believe the myths concocted by charlatans. I, San Shier, have read the classics of sages; I won't be easily fooled by you. This is what they call 'unwavering resolve'!'
Just as he was pondering this, they had already arrived at Gao Yiye's home. She pushed open the creaking wooden door. "You can sit for a moment. I'll go to the kitchen and prepare some food for you."
San Shier looked up and glanced inside Gao Yiye's house. He was instantly dumbfounded. In a corner of the room, there was a massive pile of what looked like white rice, truly enormous—each grain the size of a millstone. Leaning against the wall was a cabbage leaf. It wasn't even a whole leaf; judging by its veins, it was clearly just a small section cut from a larger one, yet it was as big as an entire wall.
Gao Yiye casually picked up a few broken grains of rice and tore off a piece from the gigantic cabbage leaf. She placed them in a bamboo basket and walked into the kitchen, apparently intending to use these ingredients to cook him a meal.
San Shier's jaw dropped in astonishment, and he couldn't close it for a long time.
What was going on with this rice? What was going on with this cabbage leaf? And what was going on with this village?
Oh, my heavens!
San Shier was a quintessential ancient scholar.
While he knew far more than an illiterate person and wasn't easily deceived by charlatans, he couldn't entirely shed his "superstitious" beliefs. In other words, while he didn't believe the White Lotus Society's fantastical tales of the "Unborn Mother" and the "True Empty Homeland," he was by no means an atheist.
He, too, believed in the existence of deities in the world.
After standing frozen for several tens of seconds, he darted to the kitchen doorway and shouted to Gao Yiye, who was cooking inside, "Which immortal has truly bestowed these foods upon you?"
Gao Yiye replied, "I already told you, I don't know."
San Shier retorted, "You don't even bother to ask about this clearly? And you call yourself a divine messenger! You've caused the villagers to bow their heads without knowing whom they worship, and when it comes time to build a temple for the immortal, they won't even know what to enshrine! This is simply 'utterly muddled'!"
Gao Yiye uttered, "Oh? You're right! Indeed, learned people consider things more thoroughly."
She tilted her head back and called out to the sky, "Heavenly Lord, Heavenly Lord, how should we address your esteemed title?"
The sky remained silent; no one answered her.
Li Daoxuan, meanwhile, was engrossed in his history books. The humiliating history of the late Ming filled him with melancholy. The tiny voice of the maiden in the box, faint as a mosquito's hum, was utterly inaudible to him.
Gao Yiye shrugged at San Shier. "The Heavenly Lord doesn't want to say."
San Shier uttered a bewildered, "Huh?"
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