In the eleventh year of Gaozu's reign, Peng Yue's clan was exterminated, and Chen Mo, a minor clerk from Pei County, was framed and implicated. He was to be executed in three days.
At death's door, he awakened the [Han Dynasty Longevity System]: live one day, gain one year of life; save one loyal and worthy person, gain ten years of lifespan.
From then on, armed with complete memories of Records of the Grand Historian and the Book of Han, he struggled to survive amid the bloody upheavals of the early Han:
He evaded Liu Bang's purge of the kings with different surnames, avoided Empress Lu's political reprisals, saved Zhou Bo, Chen Ping, and Sima Qian, and gave the Crown Prince a slim chance of survival during the Witchcraft Disaster. He outlived nine emperors and watched the Western Han rise from its founding and eventually collapse.
When Emperor Wu asked him the secret to longevity, he only said, “Nothing special, just keep your desires in check.”
No one knew that this solitary official of the Western Han, who had lived for two hundred years, had long since memorized the history books from cover to cover.
The Han dynasty's mandate endured, but it was never the dynasty that endured: it was Chen Mo's life.
