Summer had come; scattered white clouds dotted the blue sky above, and the temperature in Jiangning was pleasant, with an air of leisure hanging over the city both within and without its walls. In the bright summer sunlight, roads and courtyards alike lay dappled with patches of shade, birds flew among the painted pleasure boats on the riverbanks, pedestrians came and went through the ancient city, and in the wine houses and teahouses the voices of storytellers and singers rang out, the fragrance of tea mingling with the chatter of friends gathered together, all woven into this season’s tapestry.
It was afternoon. In a courtyard on one side of the city, the fragrance of tea being brewed drifted through the air, and the shade of a parasol tree cast the black and white pieces on a chessboard into a mottled play of light and shadow. It was in just such a courtyard that a young voice was speaking.
“…Mencius said: one does not fortify the state’s borders by the boundaries of its territory, nor secure the nation by the steepness of its mountains and rivers, nor overawe the realm by the sharpness of one’s weapons and armor. Those who have the Way find many to assist them; those who lose it find few. What the sage said is certainly the highest truth — and yet, from ancient times onward, those who found many to assist them at any given moment were not necessarily those who had the Way, while those who lost it, who found few to assist them, often considered themselves to be the ones who possessed it. What, in the end, is the true meaning of the Great Way?… Confucius said: the village worthy is the thief of virtue — from this line, we may understand…”
The young speaker was not tall, his features still bearing a trace of childishness, perhaps eleven or twelve years old. Yet dressed in a white long robe with a scholar’s headscarf worn at a rakish angle, he looked every bit the poised little adult. In truth, children of ordinary families at eleven or twelve hadn’t yet seen much of the world, and would usually still wear their hair in the child’s double-horn style — hair parted and tied into two tufts, which, resembling horns, gave rise to the ancient term “twin-tufted youth.” The Book of Songs itself contains the line, “at the feast of twin-tufted youths, they laughed and spoke with joy and ease.”
But such things always varied by circumstance. Children of this era typically underwent the capping ceremony marking adulthood sometime between fifteen and twenty. Among farming families, however, it wasn’t unusual for children to marry and have children of their own as young as thirteen or fourteen, and many had to shoulder family responsibilities well before turning fifteen. City children, on the other hand, having gone through elementary schooling and learned a bit more of the world, tended to see themselves as budding scholars — this was an era with a strong literary atmosphere in society, and a boy who could compose a few poems would often dress in a scholar’s robe and headscarf like a little adult, full of youthful spirit; as long as the styling was kept simple enough, no one thought much of it. A fifteen- or sixteen-year-old boy holding forth on matters of state and consorting with courtesans, for instance, wasn’t considered anything out of the ordinary.
The young speaker in the courtyard was Zhou Junwu, one of Ning Yi’s disciples. In the past he had always been a lively, playful child, but over the last year or so he had grown noticeably more mature. Of course, there were limits to how mature an eleven- or twelve-year-old could really become — but mainly, having begun to develop ideas of his own, he no longer spent his days idling about as before, and so had come to consider himself “grown up.” His features were fine and delicate to begin with, and dressed now like a small scholar, he carried himself with a certain spirited bearing.
He stood there speaking, thinking as he went, organizing his words — naturally, in answer to a question posed by an elder in the courtyard. Beneath the shade of the trees, Qin Siyuan and Kang Xian had just finished a game of chess, and in passing had asked him a few questions, prompting him to deliver this discourse on “the debate over the Great Way.” To one side of the courtyard, a young girl sat on a low stool watching the scene. She, too, was still young, her hair still worn in twin child’s tufts, dressed in pale pink-and-white summer robes that set off her slender waist and small feet in goose-yellow, ivory-white embroidered shoes. Her chin rested on her hands as she watched with a faint smile, a round fan in one hand — since the weather wasn’t especially hot, she only occasionally fanned the small stove beside her, on which a kettle of water was heating for tea. This was, of course, the little princess, Zhou Pei.
Ning Yi had already been gone from Jiangning for several days now. Though the two siblings still held nominal enrollment at Yushan Academy, they had, in practice, more or less separated from their studies there. As always, their education was largely overseen and coordinated by Kang Xian, with various other tutors from the princely household or the consort’s residence handling the actual instruction. Zhou Pei had not yet come of age for the hairpin ceremony, but given that she was, after all, getting “older,” the demands placed on her studies were left largely to her own inclination and weren’t especially strict. Zhou Junwu, however, was still held to a fairly demanding standard.
Of course, though he was often bullied by his domineering older sister, Zhou Junwu was in fact a genuinely clever child; his academic performance wasn’t top-tier, but solidly middling, nothing to worry over.
“The debate over the Great Way” was a rather all-purpose sort of topic — one that neither Qin Siyuan nor Kang Xian had actually assigned, but that the boy had spun up on his own from a few remarks Kang Xian had made. After his long, flowing discourse, the two old men exchanged a glance and smiled.
“Flowery and ornate,” one of them said.
“Grand, but lacking in substance,” the other offered as his assessment.
Neither verdict was especially flattering, but as a test of the boy’s ability to think independently, he’d evidently passed, well enough. Little Junwu, knowing his two “grandfathers'” personalities well enough by now, only rubbed his ear and grinned sheepishly. In truth, now that his master had left for Suzhou and Hangzhou, Grandfather Qin was also soon to set off for the capital, and today, coming to visit, he’d noticed that a number of things had already been packed. Consort-in-law Grandfather Kang had come by to play chess these past few days largely, it seemed, to say his farewells as well.
“After your master left, you moved on to studying under several of the tutors at the princely household — I imagine the pace differs quite a bit from what you were used to at Yushan Academy. Can you still keep up? Do you understand the material?” Qin Siyuan asked with a smile.
“I understand it fine,” Zhou Junwu said, bowing respectfully before breaking into a grin. “Actually, Tutor Zhang and the others already tested where the students stood, and they’ve been teaching from that point onward — though they also went back over what came before. But even for the material after that point, whenever the tutors explain it, I keep feeling like I already know a lot of it. Master used to ramble on and on about all sorts of seemingly unrelated things when he taught, but thinking back on it now, it seems he’d already covered what came later while he was still teaching the earlier material. So even though there’s still plenty I haven’t formally learned yet, once the tutors explain it, it feels very familiar and easy to understand. It’s just… heh, a bit dull, is all.”
Hearing this, the two old men exchanged another glance and smile, then both promptly put on stern expressions. Kang Xian said, “Don’t get complacent. Tutor Zhang and the others are among the foremost scholars of our present day, with real learning and insight. Different people teach differently — even if you feel you understand something, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve grasped the true essence of Tutor Zhang’s scholarship. What they say may sound clear to you as you hear it, but the more familiar it seems, the more carefully you ought to think it through.”
Junwu nodded respectfully. “Yes. Master said much the same thing when he left. He said every teacher has their own particular strengths, and as a student, one should learn to think for oneself — take in whatever is good, regardless of the source, though what counts as ‘good’ can only really be confirmed through practice, later on. It’s fine to be as imaginative as you like, he said, just never arrogant.”
“A teacher like Liheng really is hard to come by…” Qin Siyuan said with a rueful laugh, while Kang Xian shook his head in mock exasperation. Junwu looked rather proud of his master at this praise, and off to the side, the little princess, chin still resting on her hands, smiled, her eyes narrowing into crescents as though she were turning something over in her mind. Qin Siyuan went on to test Junwu a bit further on his grasp of the Four Books, chatted a while longer with Kang Xian, brewed a fresh pot of tea, and was just setting up a new game of chess when the subject of Ning Yi came up again.
“Before Liheng left Jiangning, I did speak with him about the matter of the capital, though he still seemed to have some reservations in his heart. What’s actually going on in his mind has always been hard to pin down — in the past he only ever spoke of getting things done, never of saving the nation or aiding the people. To my eye, it seems he has some reservations about the Great Way itself, and so proceeds with great caution.”
Kang Xian nodded. “He’s remarkably capable when it comes to getting things done. But it’s always been clear enough that he holds the world of officialdom in some contempt. If he could bring himself around to helping you, you’d face far less resistance in the capital in whatever you set out to do.”
Qin Siyuan shook his head slightly. “Liheng is always steady in how he handles things, but if you look at his overall style, his aims tend to run radical and thoroughgoing — and given that he has the ability to match, he’s probably well aware of that about himself. Before he left, he told me that if he really were to step forward and take action, even he himself wasn’t sure whether that would turn out to be a good thing or a bad one. As I’ve been thinking about it myself lately — allying with Jin against Liao, what will it actually lead to in the end? I don’t know either. Jin has grown powerful now; who’s to say it won’t simply become another Liao? Sometimes good intentions don’t necessarily lead to good outcomes.”
“At least there’s an opportunity now. With Jin and Liao at war, if we can just seize the moment and win a few battles, we can reclaim our lost territories. But if we can’t even manage to win under such favorable circumstances, then that surely wouldn’t be on you alone.”
“If it comes to that… then the nation would deserve to fall…” Qin Siyuan frowned, recalling the line. Coming from an ordinary commoner, such words would sound almost treasonous, but here, naturally, there was no harm in it. Kang Xian frowned as well. Qin Siyuan lowered his voice. “Actually, I think this is exactly where Liheng’s reservations lie.”
“Oh?”
“What’s in his mind has always been, in keeping with his own style of doing things, quite simple. That day when I heard him say those words, it seemed like a joke on the surface, but it may not have been, in truth. Perhaps, in his view, our dynasty has grown so weak that if, given even an opportunity like this, we still can’t seize it — then such a state and family… deserve to fall…”
“How could it come to that…”
“The opportunity is already here. Once I reach Bianjing, I’ll naturally work with Chancellor Li to reorganize the military, but whether we can actually manage it well remains, I fear, fraught with difficulty. Ha, since ancient times, even the smallest reforms in the affairs of the realm have always faced countless obstacles — those who attempt great transformations, nine times out of ten, find no good end. He said to me, ‘Your future’s uncertain, old man — I’m not signing on with you.’ Ha, though it was said in jest, I suspect Liheng has actually thought these matters through quite clearly. With the insight he has, he’s probably also thought through how difficult it would be to actually seize this opportunity and see it through. Perhaps he’s thought it through so thoroughly, and grown so preoccupied with the difficulty, that he’s shrinking back from it. As I see it now, that’s really the reason he keeps deflecting.”
“Difficult as it may be, someone still has to do it.”
“The more intense the affair, the more sweeping the reform, the harder it is to know how it will turn out in the end. I suspect Liheng feels his own way of doing things runs too far to extremes — after all, he’s never actually set foot in the political arena, and going purely on imagination, he probably fears that down the road he’ll grow too fixated, too uncompromising, and that’s what’s given rise to this notion of retreating into seclusion. I’ve thought it over these past few days, and this is the only explanation I can come up with.”
“Ha, to assume you understand something you’ve never actually done — isn’t that rather arrogant of him?” Kang Xian said with a laugh.
“If it were anyone else, I’d say the same. A man in his early twenties, even one who thinks rather highly of himself, would usually only imagine himself becoming a county magistrate or prefect someday at most. But with this man, I can’t say the same so easily. In his handling of several matters here in Jiangning, he’s shown a shrewdness I’ve rarely, if ever, seen in a man his age in my whole life — he has an innate gift for seeing straight into what’s on people’s minds, and for turning that understanding to his own ends. A man like that, in a chaotic age, would inevitably become a formidable, ruthless figure. But the fact that he’s aware of his own capabilities and also exercises restraint over them — that’s what I genuinely admire most about him. Take this invitation to the capital: in his heart, he may not truly be averse to it at all. On one hand, he’s aware of the difficulties ahead; on the other, he’s aware of his own tendencies, and holds himself back for fear of doing more harm than good. In my view, that’s not cowardice at all — if anything, it only makes me admire him more.”
The old man chuckled again. “Still, I’m not worried about whether he’ll come forward or not. With ability like his, he’ll come out sooner or later. For now, let him work it all through in his own time.”
The two of them spoke without troubling to keep Zhou Junwu out of earshot. He was not, after all, an ordinary student — with an ordinary student, respect for one’s teacher would be paramount, and the two of them would certainly never have discussed his master in front of him. But Junwu was, after all, the young lord of the Prince Kang household. Although the Wu Dynasty kept tight control over its imperial clan, on the other hand, Zhou Junwu was also Kang Xian’s disciple, and Kang Xian’s wife, Princess Chengguo, held a great deal of imperial property in her name. Though Kang Xian and Zhou Xuan had children and grandchildren of their own, passing that property on down the line would eventually require approval from above, and Junwu was in fact being groomed as one of its future managers. Ning Yi, being such a difficult man to read, meant that if something truly came of all this in the future, the assessment the two old men gave here and now would become an important point of reference in Junwu’s own thinking.
Of course, it was precisely because this was a favorable assessment that the two men felt comfortable speaking of it so openly. As they talked, Junwu had frowned and looked somewhat hesitant, but once they finished, he broke into a smile. Qin Siyuan looked over at him with a smile. “Just now, in your discourse on the debate over the Great Way — some of that was Liheng’s own thinking, wasn’t it?”
Junwu hesitated briefly, then nodded. “Master said something like that too, though… on this particular point, Master seemed to hold something back, like he wanted to say more but didn’t.”
“Ha, your master’s probably worried that if he spoke too bluntly, it might frighten you children. Knowing him, he’d probably say something like: whatever proves useful once you’ve tried it, that’s the Great Way — anything else is just talk. Still, Junwu, I think what you’ve learned from following Liheng isn’t mainly poetry, prose, or the Four Books and Five Classics — it’s how to look at things, how to think about things. You said you find what Tutor Zhang and the others teach much easier to understand now — that’s partly because of things Liheng mentioned to you before, sure, but mostly it’s because you’ve simply learned to think better.”
Junwu nodded emphatically.
“But learning to think too early isn’t necessarily a good thing,” Qin Siyuan said with a smile. “In truth, for a scholar, learning characters and words is ultimately meant to broaden one’s experience of the world, and from there, to learn how to think. Once you’ve truly learned how to think, everything else you study afterward comes easily, with half the effort for twice the result. Your master’s teaching has always aimed at getting you to learn to think as early as possible — that’s why he told you all those stories, to get you turning things over in your heads, so you’d learn faster. But you’re still far too young, without enough life experience yet, and thinking too much too soon can actually leave you with a skewed view of things. In the end, you might grow to look down on everyone around you — feeling that Tutor Zhang can’t compare to Master Ning, and from there, that what Tutor Zhang says doesn’t hold up, and eventually even coming to feel that the writings of the ancient sages themselves contain errors… The moment you start forming your own opinions, you start looking down on everyone else — that’s provincial arrogance! Junwu, you need to remember these words clearly.”
Qin Siyuan had always been gentle and indulgent with the younger generation — even when Kang Xian had just called Junwu’s discourse “grand but lacking in substance,” he himself had only said “flowery and ornate.” But now, as he spoke, his expression grew serious, and by the end, even rather severe. Junwu, too, immediately straightened up and sat properly, listening attentively to the lesson. After a moment, Qin Siyuan’s expression eased.
“So generally speaking, when a teacher instructs a student, at first he only has you memorize things, and only once you’re truly older, once you’ve actually witnessed something of the world for yourself, does he let you start thinking things through — that way your foundation is far more solid. Of course, I’m not saying your master’s teaching has been wrong — just look at how seriously he cautioned you on these matters, and you can tell he takes it very seriously himself. He has exercised restraint over it, but you’re still a child after all. Since Grandfather Qin is about to head to the capital, I wanted to caution you once more on this point. Thinking for yourself is a good thing — but as your master said, guard against arrogance above all. Whatever others say, even things you disagree with, even things that strike you as stale and outdated, you must still take care to remember them carefully. As long as you remember them, later, once you’re older, you’ll be able to confirm them one by one against experience, and you’ll come to understand why others thought the way they did — you’ll see the reasoning behind it, and doing that, you’re bound to discover the benefit in it.”
The boy straightened respectfully and bowed. “Junwu will remember.”
“Good, then.” Qin Siyuan smiled. “Now then — when you were studying with Liheng before, you also covered the Four Books and Five Classics, of course, but I don’t imagine that was really the main focus. That study of natural principles — how’s that going? Do you find it useful, Junwu? You must have some views on it by now.”
“Useful — very useful!” Junwu, always a lively child, had been engaged and attentive throughout his examination and lesson, but at the mention of natural science, the boy’s whole face seemed to light up all at once, nodding again and again. “Natural science is — natural science is…”
He seemed eager to spread the concept to others, but for a moment struggled to organize any particularly striking words. Qin Siyuan chuckled. “Oh?”
“Er, natural science is… Master said a line once — physics, um… the foundation of the study of natural principles is bold conjecture.”
“Conjecture?”
“Mm.” Junwu nodded. “No matter what you observe, you can make a guess about why it happens, and from there come up with a usable formula or theory. But that theory has to hold true absolutely everywhere — if there’s even one case it doesn’t fit, you have to throw out the guess and keep guessing…”
“Just guessing?” Qin Siyuan frowned, trying to make sense of it.
“Mm, generally it still involves careful reasoning, but Master says you absolutely need imagination too — if there’s something you don’t understand at all and want to figure out, you first have to guess at it. Mm, Master’s told us some of the basic principles before — like, you can draw a straight line between any two points, and a straight line can be extended indefinitely…”
Junwu began chattering on, laying out the basics of natural science he’d learned, looking for all the world like a little missionary, determined to spread this “eminently reasonable” field of study to Grandfather Qin. The old man listened to these simple principles. “Do you really need to guess at things like this?”
“These are the basic building blocks, Grandfather Qin! Natural science can’t just take things for granted — sure, the theory itself can be a guess, but the process of verifying it has to be rigorous, step by step, with absolute precision at every single stage…” Junwu pressed on, energetically promoting the concepts he’d learned from Ning Yi. “Put these things together step by step and you can build very complicated things, Grandfather Qin — everything in heaven and earth comes together this way. Learn it, and we can understand why a scale can weigh things, why a lever can transmit force… force, right, say we put a rock here as a pivot point, press down on this side, and the other side lifts up — how high it lifts, we can calculate that. Then put a gear over there, and figure out how the gear will move, and after that gear there can be another gear, and then add a lever, and you get things like waterwheels, windmills — we can build very complicated things this way…”
“Don’t waterwheels and windmills already exist?”
“But we can make them more complicated! Grandfather Qin, you don’t know — Master designed something really simple for us once. Start with a waterwheel, add levers, gears, then take a printing plate — the plate rises up, and there’s a brush that sweeps ink across it, then the plate presses down, and it prints a page of a book, then the plate rises again, and there’s a claw that pulls the printed page away and pulls in another sheet of paper, and then — bang, it prints again… bang, prints again — Master called this an assembly line…”
The boy’s eloquence wasn’t quite up to explaining something this complicated, and he flailed his hands about as he talked. “Of course, you also have to think about the toughness of the paper, the evenness of the ink, the wear on the machine parts. But all of that can be calculated too — even the paper. As long as we understand why paper can become paper in the first place, we can make better paper — Master says it’s because of plant fibers or something, we don’t quite understand it yet ourselves. Oh, and we can also calculate the quality of iron — did you know, Grandfather Qin, iron is hard but brittle because there’s something flammable inside it, called carbon. The less carbon, the tougher the iron — meaning it doesn’t break as easily, and doesn’t rust as easily either…”
By this point Qin Siyuan was already glancing over at Kang Xian. He hadn’t asked many questions about Ning Yi’s natural science before, and had rather dismissed it at first — but now, gradually, he was beginning to make out its shape. And Kang Xian, of course, would already know the things Junwu had been learning from Ning Yi. The two old men exchanged a glance, and Qin Siyuan said, “Bold conjecture, but rigorous derivation at every step, each one locked to the last…”
Kang Xian nodded. “Not much concrete has come of it yet, but I’ve had people write down some of what Liheng has told Junwu, to think it over. There’s a little notebook — I’ll have someone bring it to you to look at tomorrow. Honestly, just these two elements — conjecture and derivation — turn out to be vast and profound once you actually try to work with them. But… there may well be some trouble in it too. You might help me think it through.”
Qin Siyuan nodded. Junwu, standing nearby, didn’t understand what “trouble” referred to — he assumed completing the derivations would naturally involve some trouble, and kept talking excitedly.
“Grandfather Qin, have you ever wondered why a kite flies up into the sky? Why a sky lantern flies up? It’s because when the wind blows against it, the kite is tilted at an angle, and that angle splits the force into two parts, one pushing backward, one pushing upward. As long as the wind keeps blowing, it keeps generating upward force — if we could just build a really big wing, and keep moving forward, reach a certain speed, we could fly… Of course, Master says that would need sturdier materials to go along with it. If we can just understand the principle behind the bellows, we can make better bellows, get the furnace hotter, make better iron, and we could also produce cloth that doesn’t tear as easily. Either way, we’ve already started calculating it — as long as we have a large enough surface catching the wind, and enough speed, we can fly… I’m definitely going to build a giant kite that can really fly…”
As he said this, there was a feverish, longing look in his eyes. The two old men, momentarily absorbed in thinking over what he’d said, didn’t notice the expression. Then Junwu shook his head. “Of course, that’s all a long way off — the basic industry needed for it will take a long time to develop too…” He was repeating Ning Yi’s own words.
“Anyway, before Master left, he had us thinking about a few things. The first one — we already know now that force is at work in everything in the world, but… where does this force come from?…” He hopped a little on the spot. “When we jump, we come right back down — why do we fall back down? Why does an apple fall down? Why does the earth pull at us — why don’t we just float upward instead…”
“This one, too — Liheng had you thinking about this?”
“Mm, it’s just for fun to think about, but of course we should think about it — I find it strange too, honestly… The second question is, why is it that when we’re by the sea and watch a ship sail away, the mast is always the last part to disappear…” He gave a little shiver. “Grandfather, this one’s really scary. We see everything as flat and straight — if the mast is always the last thing to vanish, that means…”
Junwu swallowed, then took out a sheet of paper, an odd, unsettling gleam in his eyes, and folded it into a small arched bridge shape, cutting at the middle with his hand. “The high side is the land, the low side is the sea. Grandfather, our world has a slope to it — it’s like a circle, sloping down toward the sea, and if it slopes all the way down to ninety degrees, Grandfather, what do you think that would be… I think there must be a huge hole on the sea side, maybe like a giant funnel — but then the seawater doesn’t pour down into that hole, and that brings us back to Master’s earlier question — why is there a force holding us in place… Grandfather, we don’t know the reason yet, but because there’s a force holding us, that’s why we don’t fall off… But why would the world end up shaped like this in the first place — Master must be thinking about these very reasons, that’s probably why he asked us…”
The world was tilted, with a great gaping hole somewhere out past the sea — Qin Siyuan and Kang Xian found the idea hard to credit, and yet, putting it together with the fact that a ship’s mast really was the last thing to vanish from view at sea, it was, indeed, a little unsettling…
Junwu shook his head. “But Master said these first two questions were just for fun, to think about — probably worried they’d scare us, and he had no idea we’d already figured it out this fast… But Master’s third question is the really important one.”
Qin Siyuan found himself rather intrigued now. “What did Liheng ask?”
Junwu stood up, walked over to the little stove where the water was heating for tea, and crouched down to look at it for a moment. “Master said, physics — er, the study of natural principles — one of its most important paths of development is right here in this teapot…”
“The teapot?”
“Mm.” The boy nodded, glancing back at the two old men. “Master forgot, he mentioned this to us once in passing… Grandfather Qin, if we plug up the spout of the teapot, and press down on the lid so no steam can escape, could we hold it down?”
“The steam has to come out eventually — I doubt you could hold it down.”
“The steam will push the lid open — that’s a force right there, and if the teapot were bigger, the force would be even bigger… Master taught us, as long as you use levers, gears, this and that, you can always transmit that force out to do something, and if we can build a device like that, it’ll be just like Master said…”
The boy jumped up, turned around, and grinned. “Master said something once before — he said human strength has its limits, and so does animal strength. No matter how fine a horse you have, a carriage can only go so fast, because even the strongest horse is still just a horse. But with levers and gears combined, a machine is different — a waterwheel alone has far more power than a horse, but a waterwheel can’t move on its own. The first goal of natural science is a portable power source!”
Words like “machine,” “portable,” “power source,” and so on were, essentially, all Ning Yi’s own way of talking. Ning Yi had been here long enough now that he’d largely blended into the era, but whenever the mood struck him and he started talking about something new, he tended not to worry about whether it fit the grammar and vocabulary of the time — whether people understood him or not, he never pushed the point. Junwu, having spent so much time with him, had memorized all these turns of phrase and taken them as guiding principles for studying natural science. Because he remembered them so well, once Ning Yi said something, it wasn’t long before he’d worked out the meaning for himself.
“Someday, we’ll be able to fly up into the sky…”
The boy murmured this, staring at the teapot. A moment later, the girl seated by the little stove raised her round fan and gave him a sharp smack on the forehead.
“Enough. You haven’t even finished your arithmetic and you’re already dreaming about flying up into the sky. Don’t you value your life? Master scolded you for this just the other day, said it was dangerous, told you not to think about it anymore!”
“Ow…” The boy clutched his forehead, giving his sister a resentful look, muttering, “This is my dream, though…”
Whether a boy with such lofty dreams could really be knocked to his senses remained, for the moment, an open question. As for the underlying nature of this study of natural principles, Qin Siyuan and Kang Xian found it, on one hand, something they’d never heard of before yet strangely reasonable, and on the other, rather absurd in places — mainly because of Junwu’s claim that the earth was shaped like a funnel. After a while, Qin Siyuan said slowly, “On the grasslands, when you watch someone ride a horse off into the distance, it looks the same in every direction, doesn’t it? Why would that be? If we followed that logic through… could the earth perhaps be round?”
He mulled it over, then laughed. “Nonsense, absolute nonsense — though it’s an amusing thought all the same, ha ha.”
Kang Xian, too, sat stunned for a good while before laughing. “Amusing indeed — but if it really were round, what would the far side of the earth even look like? Wouldn’t everyone just fall off? Would people over there have to live their whole lives upside down?”
Junwu looked rather troubled for a moment. The two men shared a laugh, their expressions turning a bit strange afterward, and then they steered the conversation elsewhere. Both were men of considerable intelligence, and though they had no prior familiarity with Western forms of logical reasoning, people the world over tend to think in broadly similar ways — laying out premises and principles, then following them through to a strict conclusion — and they adapted to it almost instantly. On this particular question, though, for the moment, neither quite dared to think it through any further.
“Listening to you keep saying ‘we’ just now — it sounds as though it’s not just you and little Pei studying this natural science. Are there others as well?”
“There are, sort of.” Junwu nodded, looking rather proud of himself. “Besides me and my sister, there are two junior schoolmates from the academy, and the youngest son of the Duke of Kaiping’s household — I talked to him recently and he thought it made a lot of sense, he’s been wanting to build kites with me lately. Oh, right, and Kang Luo thinks natural science is really interesting too… so a few days ago we started the Natural Science Faction — there are six of us now. I’m the leader!”
Zhou Pei’s fan smacked her brother’s head again, though she said nothing, smiling all the while. The two old men found this rather funny too — his two junior schoolmates were one thing, but the Duke of Kaiping’s youngest son was only ten this year, always tagging along after Junwu, who had simply pulled him in. Kang Luo, meanwhile, was Kang Xian’s own young grandson, currently eight years old. This boy Junwu clearly got along well with the other children and had wasted no time recruiting them all.
“Sounds like this Natural Science Faction is going to grow quickly,” Qin Siyuan said, nodding.
“I imagine my own little Qi and little Xin won’t escape it either…” Kang Xian said with a laugh, making a joke at the expense of a couple of his own grandchildren — among his several grandsons, Kang Qi was seven and Kang Xin was five, hardly likely to avoid being recruited into the Natural Science Faction either…
Amid the two old men’s joking, little Junwu had actually grown a bit annoyed, and decided then and there not to give Kang Qi and Kang Xin the chance to join his faction after all — they were both too dim-witted anyway. He was, at present, quite strict about recruiting new members, since every time he brought someone in, he made sure to give them a rousing description of the glorious future ahead — flying up into the sky, no less.
Someday, that day would surely come…
On this summer afternoon, some eight hundred years before a real flying craft would ever appear in that other history, the young lord glanced back at the teapot in the courtyard, and in his heart, drew himself a grand, sweeping picture of the future.
Some things, planted silently, having taken root and sprouted, could never again be shaken loose…
Meanwhile, the very person who had so carelessly scattered that seed had, by this time, already sailed past Zhenjiang by boat. They had originally sailed east along the Yangtze, stopping at Zhenjiang for a few days before setting off again, heading south along the Jiangnan Canal. This stretch of water saw heavy boat traffic, though the current wasn’t swift, so the journey moved along slowly and leisurely. After a day’s travel, they passed Danyang and were just entering the borders of Changzhou.