Prologue: Salt Crystals Illuminate the World, Bloodlines Flow Like a River
“This is the story of a branch of the Wang clan of Taiyuan Hall that migrated west. Yet its salt-trade heritage and poetic spirit truly carry on the traditions of old Jinyang.”
…
Three hundred and fifty years of turbulent change, and a forty-two-character generational poem:
Ever guard, rise, and ascend the Dragon and Tiger Roll,
A name renowned through all ages, bringing glory to the clan.
Honor, virtue, resolve, and fragrance flourish in the grain,
Filial piety brings prosperity, forests flourish, and the stars shine true.
Heaven’s rise, the nation’s flourishing, letters and arms bestowed,
May fortune pour forth, celebration begin, and the family prosper.
This is more than a cipher for carrying on the bloodline. It is a secret code in the struggle for supremacy over the salt routes, a call to arms to defend home and country, a chart of technological heritage, and a spark ensuring civilization never dies! It has been carved into tea bricks, salt permits, banknotes, inkstones, prison clothes, armor, machine tools, telegrams, genetic sequences, and at last, the galaxies of the digital universe.
What night is this? Qingming, 2023, Tianfu Square in Chengdu. The night sky is black as ink. Streams of drone light interweave with precision, forming forty-two stars that have crossed through time. Salt crystals hang suspended as holographic lights flow and shift: from the windswept tea formations in the Kangding River Valley, to the hardships of protecting the court as it moved south from the Forbidden City, and onward to the light of life amid the ruins of Wenchuan… The figures of ancestors from every generation gather and take shape in the luminous salt, appearing before us and giving a nod.
Look! At the heart of that luminous salt matrix, the radiance of a quantum encryption protocol is the ultimate answer to our ancestors’ “secret marks on tea bricks,” spanning three centuries!
The great river of our bloodline surges down from the snowy Kunlun peaks, blending the strength of salt and iron with the splendor of poetry and books. It endures every calamity without falling, and shines all the brighter in an age of prosperity. This river is called the Wang clan of Taiyuan, and it is also called the backbone of China.
Now listen to how this river surges, how it roars, and how it crashes through the gorges of history, sending echoes that shake the past and astonish the present!
