Time and space are changing, like the wings of the jasper cicada, flickering uncertainly.
And within a certain flashing point of light, the Apocalypse Continent located in another time and space was reflected.
Great Spirit Dynasty.
Outside the history museum, it is late at night, and autumn is strong.
In the history museum, Chen Mo's hand holding the pen hung above the bamboo slip, and the ink condensed into small ripples in the inkstone.
The sound of autumn cicadas outside the window was broken, and the light of the bronze lamps on the desk reflected the old yellow of the classics in the room, like old tea soup soaked in time.
He stared at the newly sent "River and Canal Chronicles" and was annotating, but now the tip of the pen stopped at a line of records.
"In the ninth year of Yuanguang, Wang Yan, the captain of the river embankment, recruited the people to block Huzi......
As Chen Mo's pen paused, the ink fell, and a ball of ink stains opened on the bamboo slip.
Just like his mind at the moment.
This is the thirty-fifth time he has discovered doubts in his records over the years.
The bamboo slip clearly reads "In the ninth year of Yuanguang, Wang Yan, the captain of the river embankment, recruited people to plug the gourd", but last year he saw the folk stele printed in Chenliu County, which was engraved with "In the ninth year of Yuanguang, Li Ping, the river management clerk, dug a canal to drain water".
The two names appeared alternately in different history books, like overlapping foam in the river, which made his eyes hurt.
What's even more strange is that in the water level record of the Ling River in the third year of Yuanguang, the difference between the "Book of Taishi Gongshu" and the "Han Old Yi" is actually three feet, as if the same river split into two parallel waterways in the historical pen.
"My lord is examining the river affairs again?"
The servant on duty at night came in holding the newly collected slips, and the candlelight shook the ink marks on his cuffs.
"The Minister of the Treasury said the other day that the water officials are in charge of the affairs of the rivers and canals, and we historians only need to record the court documents." Chen Mo didn't look up, his fingertips rubbed the different shades of notches on the bamboo slips.
The official smiled, put down the slip and left.
Looking at the other party's back, he took a long ...... Chen Mo was about to continue, but the pen in his hand could not be put down again, and finally sighed lightly.
Turning around, he found a roll of parchment from the mountain of historical records.
That was "The Great Spiritual Disaster"
After unfolding it, Chen Mo looked at the skewed arc formed on the parchment paper due to the ink seeping into the texture, and finally stopped at a line of handwriting.
"In the seventy-ninth year of the spirit residence, the red star fell to the ground."
Looking at these cinnabar words, Chen Mo fell into deep thought.
This is the last time he found an error in the history.
The seventy-ninth year of the mourning residence has been more than five hundred years since now, and he has checked the history books and found that there has been no such thing in the seventy-nine years of the mourning residence.
The musty smell of parchment paper mixed with the fragrance of pine smoke and ink penetrates into the nasal cavity, while the copper leak of the history museum ticks, seemingly cutting time into equal fragments.
Chen Mo suddenly remembered another strange thing he found in the Sutra Pavilion three years ago.
At that time, he was proofreading the "Biography of King Mu of Zhou", but found half a piece of silk from the summer and winter periods in the gap between the bamboo slips, which was written in tadpole script:
"The year is in the quail fire, the river dries up and the mountain collapses, and the ancestors are all gone to Xuanhuang."
In the earlier "Lingluo Chronicles" tortoise shell inscription, the same disaster was repeated nine times in different words.
It is as if the same song is sung by people from different eras, but the lyrics have changed over the years.
But in more historical records, it is coherent and there are no disasters.
It's as if someone in history has made a joke on future generations.
Thoughts rise and fall.
After a long time, Chen Mo rubbed his eyebrows, got up and walked to the window, looking at the first snow in the outside world, and muttering.
"What is the truth of history?"
Chen Mo, silence.
Time passes, ten years in the blink of an eye.
In the past ten years, Chen Mo is still a historian, and he is not old, and his gray hair and wrinkles have far exceeded those of his peers.
Because in the past ten years, he can't help but look for answers in the vast sea of classics.
So in "The Inner Biography of Chenwu", he found the record that "the Heavenly Emperor's mother gave the elixir of longevity, which blooms once every 3,300 years", but the same story in "Jin Taikang Diji" became "The Eastern King gave the secret of longevity, and the result is one in five hundred years"
The "Water Classics Notes" of the Southeast Dynasty and the "Kuo Di Zhi" of the 19th Dynasty of Earth and Heaven have thousands of miles of different records of the direction of the same mountain, but they both mention that there is a stone box engraved with a perpetual calendar hidden in the mountainside.
The most amazing thing is that when he arranged the time of the demise of each dynasty by Jiazi, he found that every 1,800 years, there would be a coincidence of "five stars and the king's aura is extinguished".
He also told his colleagues, but they seemed to be possessed by evil spirits, saying that he was possessed by evil.
Even the bachelor in charge of the college took pictures of the historical maps he compiled and angrily reprimanded him.
"History books are a mirror of dynasties, how can you confuse the public with absurd statements!"
Only when his wife adds clothes to him late at night, she will look at the layered timeline on his desk and whisper.
"I once saw you find half an oracle bone in the abandoned garden, and the cracks on it are the same as the jade huang patterns unearthed from the imperial tomb last year."
"Maybe the story of this world is a replay of an old song."
"I know your ideals, and if you are determined, I will support you."
Her words reminded Chen Mo of the wooden hairpin stuck in her temple when they first met, and the texture seemed to be no different from the dead tree rings he had seen when he was a child.
So Chen Mo was confused.
He also thinks that he is confused.
So late at night, lying on the bed, unable to sleep, looking at the night and looking at the roof, he remembered what the teacher said when he first entered the history museum twenty years ago.
"The historical pen should be like a river lantern, shining on the stones in the mud."
He didn't understand it at the time, but now recalling the flickering contradictions in the shelves of classics, he realized that there were layers of aquatic plants buried under the stones, entangled with the lamps that illuminated the river.
So in the late winter of this year, Chen Mo resigned from his official position and embarked on a journey around the world with a box of rubbings.
This is the thought that has always existed in his heart over the years.
Years of doubts, the words of the teacher, and the support of his wife made him determined.
Time is like a song, even this song is a cyclical performance.
In the singing, Chen Mo once found a mural that was about to dissipate in a cave at the foot of Kunlun Mountain, and the flood totem on it was exactly the same as the Ling Sheng Emperor controlling the water in the "Later Book".
In the genealogy of the Beihai fishing village, he also saw a legend that the ancestors fled in a giant boat in the year when the sea eye was hanging upside down.
But this is a full three thousand years away from the records in the "Great Spirit Sutra".
Although the theory of destruction, reincarnation, and disaster is incomplete, it was inextricably linked by him in the records of his accompanying.
Until in the quicksand of the southern region, he dug out half of the stone stele, and after the text on it was translated, it was almost the same as the Great Spirit Sacrifice to Heaven.
At this moment, Chen Mo had some understanding.
"If there is really the destruction of different civilizations, then they are all similar elegies written under the same starry sky."
So in the thirteenth year of his travels, Chen Mo ended his journey and started his return journey.
It's just that he has prematurely declined, and now he is old, and he finally fell ill on the way and it was difficult to return to Beijing.
He could only lie on a simple wooden couch in the post station, knocking blood while weakly looking at the books he had drawn and sorted out along the way.
"Civilization Reincarnation Map"
——
There is also