One road, two thousand years, seven generations of lives.
In 212 BC, Qin Shihuang ordered Meng Tian to build a straight road from Ganquan Palace to Jiuyuan, a journey of 1,800 miles across mountains and valleys. The bones and blood of three hundred thousand soldiers were pounded into the roadbed. The empire died in two years, but the road remained.
Monto was one of the road builders. His surname is not Ying, he is not a general, he is just a carpenter apprentice who applied for his master. He fastened a copper ruler to his waist, wrote down the names of each deceased person in the loess and blood, and buried an engraved stone deep into the roadbed. Little did he know that this path would outlast any dynasty.
For the next two thousand years, Montessori's descendants walked on the straight path from generation to generation——
The garrison soldiers of the Han Dynasty watched the Huns on the beacons; the border generals of the Tang Dynasty traced the relics of their ancestors; the merchants of the Song Dynasty identified the direction on the abandoned roadbed; the military craftsmen of the Ming Dynasty used ancient ramming techniques to repair the side walls; until contemporary archaeologists dug out a stone inscribed with "Mengtuo built this" during exploration.
A stone, a copper ruler, and a copper coin with a hole in it. What are each of them looking for on the road - some are looking for their ancestors, some are looking for a way back, and some are looking for an answer: Is a road built with blood worthy of being remembered?
Dynasties change like horses in a hurry, the straight road is ruined and then repaired, and the straight road is ruined again. The wind has blown for two thousand years, and the loess has buried one foot after another. But the roadbed is still there.
"A Thousand Years of Straight Road" is a novel about the road and an epic about people. It asks: Is it worth creating meaning out of meaninglessness? Does anyone remember those forgotten names?
