Chapter 122: Gathering Kindling and Mixing Ink

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Meng Tong laughed heartily. “Ha-ha, I already know. The Analects says, ‘Ji Wenzi thought three times before acting. When the Master heard this, he said, “Twice is enough.”’ I have neither managed the thoroughness in action spoken of by the Sage, nor matched Ji Wenzi in thinking matters through three times. To read the Analects without truly understanding it—what a disgrace, what a disgrace. So I must thank you as well, young lady, for your instruction.”

Now it was the little one’s turn to feel embarrassed. Folding her hands before her, she came over and lifted her small face. “To be honest, Senior Brother, at first all of us were taken in by Fellow Disciple Wang.” She pointed at Wang Ge, indicating that she was the “Fellow Disciple Wang.”

Meng Tong had not come merely to have his height measured; how could he not know Wang Ge? Since she had already marked the measuring line near his face, he kept his gaze straight ahead, smiling without saying another word.

“Done. Senior Brother is seven chi and fourteen cun tall.”

After saluting, Meng Tong did not leave.

Before long, the people he had been waiting for arrived: Liu Bo and three other fellow disciples, all with hemp ropes looped over their arms.

The five young scholars from Qinghe Manor Academy waited there without leaving. Seeing this, Xie Ju sighed. As expected, beneath their eager gazes Wang Ge halted her practice of carving lines, returned to the tent, set the wooden ruler down on the desk, picked up the saw, and waved to them.

“Come along, brothers.”

The servants assigned to watch over her hurried after her.

Bian Zi also came rushing over with her servants, whose arms likewise bore several coils of hemp rope.

“Sima Nandi, why are you going up the mountain too?” Bian Zi asked.

“I have used up my ink blocks as well. Fellow Disciple Wang, wait for me.”

“Eh? But I have some.”

Xie Ju came over to Sima Nandi and said, “Fellow Disciple Bian will not take your ink blocks.”

Why had Wang Ge and the others gone up the mountain together?

The reason was that the excavations of the Qin tombs had yielded an enormous number of bamboo slips, and the scholars had been copying them until all the ink blocks they had brought with them were used up. Now they had begun excavating the ruins of Yin. No one knew whether they would uncover inscribed texts, and such texts were of tremendous importance. How could the scholars not be anxious?

Thus, the Huan, Wang, and Xie clans jointly announced a rule called “Gather Firewood for Ink.” Using a bundle of firewood from the kitchen as the standard, any regular student who gathered ten bundles could exchange them for one small ink block.

There were three great screened-off work areas: behind the mountain, above the cliff, and here. The ancient tomb lay behind the mountain, where nearly all the scholars from Huan Clan Academy and Xie Clan Academy had gathered. The students of Qinghe Manor Academy were younger, so they had been assigned separately to the screened-off areas above and below the cliff, away from the ancient tomb.

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“Gathering firewood” meant that no one was allowed to cut down tree trunks; they could only collect broken branches and slender vines. Before the “Gather Firewood for Ink” rule was issued, there had been more firewood than people. Once the order was announced, there were more people than firewood.

Wang Ge alone had no reason to worry. The commandant had personally approved her right to fell trees, since she would be taking the prospective master-craftsman examination in the fifth month. No one else could challenge her over it. Thus, beginning the day before, wherever Wang Ge felled trees, the academy students in urgent need of ink followed her there to gather firewood.

Wang Ge herself came from poverty and understood the hardships of the poor better than anyone. Whenever she sawed down a tree, she tried to choose one with plenty of tangled branches. Once it was down, she took only the broad planks she needed and left everything else for those around her. After all, Liu Bo was helping her copy books; she could hardly compete with them for firewood as well.

Another student arrived, perhaps having only just borrowed a hemp rope. He chased after the others up the mountain while winding it around his arm.

Xie Ju returned to Wang Ge’s tent, intending to help tidy her desk. The instant he looked at it, however, his eyes froze.

The wooden ruler… How could this be?

He bent down for a closer look, then shouted, “Fellow Disciple Sima, quickly! Quickly call Master Zuo over!”

Master Zuo had just dismantled the Wooden Flowing Horse and drawn an illustration on a wooden tablet showing each stage of its disassembly. He was preparing to put it back together when Sima’s disciple described what had happened. He came over at once.

The wooden ruler Wang Ge had made herself was very thin. Though its edge was not as sharp as a blade, a hard stroke against it could certainly cut the hand. Yet now it stood lengthwise, slightly tilted, on the surface of the desk, its front end suspended one inch above it. A hemp cord hung from that raised end, with a colored stone tied to its lower end. It was precisely the weight of the cord and stone that allowed the ruler to remain standing upright without falling.

Xie Ju nudged the ruler. It swayed from side to side, making the one grown man and two children watching it grow increasingly nervous, yet it simply would not fall.

Master Zuo placed his own bamboo ruler on the desk. It toppled over with a slap.

His old face flushed with embarrassment. Hmph. He had known it would be so.

“What principle is this?” The master was thoroughly stumped. “Is this the difference between a first-rate craftsman and an ordinary one?”

After pondering in bewilderment, he carried away both the ruler and the corded stone.

A ruler that could stand upright without falling, and continue swaying for a short while, had been a little game played by the children in Wang Nanxing’s family in her former life after using straightedges. They would stand more than a dozen rulers upright on a table, then either clamp a metal clip onto the suspended end or slip a ballpoint pen over it. The rulers would swing like pendulums without toppling. The principle involved was the relationship between the center of gravity and stability.

Lowering an object’s center of gravity increases its stability, like a roly-poly toy. The greater its stability, the harder it is for the object to topple.

By then, Wang Ge had already chosen a tree and climbed up it with practiced ease. First she waved to those below, telling them to move out of the way. Then she straddled a fork in the tree and began sawing.

Liu Bo stood the farthest away. As sunlight shifted in broken patches across her body with every movement of the saw, he found himself sharing in her delight, unable to help feeling happy as she did.

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A thick, twisting branch came crashing down. The servants dragged it beyond the area beneath the tree. Wang Ge paused to catch her breath, then continued sawing. The years she had spent doing hard physical work had not been wasted. She alternated between her left and right hands, and only climbed down after sawing through five branches.

“Give it to me.”

Liu Bo took the saw and cut away all the smaller branches one by one. If Wang Ge did not want the firewood, then he would first gather enough for Bian Zi.

With so many people around, Wang Ge no longer avoided looking at Liu Bo. Deliberately avoiding him would only make people think more. During this period she had carefully considered every meeting between them and every conversation they had shared, and she felt that she must have misjudged the young man.

She had never been a foolish innocent in her former life, much less in this one. No matter how precocious he was, in her eyes he was still merely a middle-school boy whose thoughts could be seen through with a little care.

First of all, Liu Bo was not a selfish or petty man.

That day, when they had been alone together, laughing and talking, either he truly lacked awareness in such matters—which Wang Ge all but ruled out—or… he had already taken an interest in her.

But his interest was not love. Given his present circumstances, he simply felt that she was the woman best suited to share his life.

After sawing for a while, Liu Bo’s forehead began to bead with sweat. He tried switching to his left hand as Wang Ge had done, only to discover that it would not do; he was unaccustomed to it. He could not help wondering: Could it be that Miss Wang was equally skilled with both hands?

Bian Zi came over beside Wang Ge and whispered, “Young Master Liu is not even as strong as you.”

The remark made Wang Ge laugh. Thinking of how Liu Bo’s satirical essay about Xie Tangzhou had led the Xie family to punish the man severely, ensuring that Xie Tangzhou would never return to Flying-Current Peak in this lifetime, she said, “A true scholar’s strength lies in his writing. To compete with me in physical strength would be to abandon the root for the branch.”

At that moment, Meng Tong took over from Liu Bo. Liu Bo rotated his wrist and deliberately kept his distance, avoiding even a glance toward the young girl.

Wang Ge also stopped looking at him.

In this era, refusing to marry was not an option. Once a person reached a certain age without marrying, the authorities would forcibly arrange a match. Yet although she had to marry, she could not marry Liu Bo.

Their poverty was not the same; in other words, they were mismatched in family and status. If she rose first, perhaps the two of them could still live together as equal partners. But if he rose first, with his radiant appearance, he would surely attract no shortage of romantic entanglements.

End of chapter.