Wedge: Blood and Fire on Bamboo Slips
In 247 BC, the third year of King Zhuangxiang of Qin, Xianyang.
I woke up in the library of the Doctoral Palace, and my nose was filled with the musty smell of old bamboo slips and the smell of burning lamp oil. The severe pain in my forehead receded like a tide, and my vision gradually became clear—not the neat bookshelves and LED lights of the Peking University Library, but rows of wooden shelves with rolls of yellowed bamboo slips tied on them. The oil lamp swayed on the table, casting my shadow on the rammed earth wall, twisted like a ghost.
"Chen Ping? Chen Ping, are you awake?"
A young man wearing brown dark clothes and a square scarf walked over quickly, holding a pottery bowl in his hand, "You have been sleeping for three days! The imperial doctor said that you are overthinking..."
I looked down at my hands - they were slender but slightly calloused hands, definitely not my hands with slightly protruding knuckles from years of typing on the keyboard. Memories popped into my mind like broken lenses: Chen Ping, named Zi Heng, was twenty-two years old. He was born in the Jixia Academy of Qi State. He entered the Qin Dynasty three months ago and is now a doctor in the Doctoral Academy. And I, Chen Mo, a second-year graduate student in the Department of History at Peking University majoring in the Warring States, Qin and Han Dynasties, stayed up all night in the library reviewing the similarities and differences between "Sleeping Tiger Land Qin Bamboo Slips" and "Historical Records"...
"What year is it today?" My voice was hoarse.
The young man was stunned for a moment: "In the third year of King Zhuang Xiang, it is Bingxu in the fifth month. Chen Ping, are you really okay?"
In the third year of King Zhuang Xiang's reign. The last year of Qin Shi Huang's father's reign. My heart was beating fast - this meant that Ying Zheng, the thirteen-year-old future First Emperor, was in Xianyang Palace at this moment. And I, a soul from more than two thousand years later, have become...
