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“Because the preth about you”

TEN

SHAANXI PROVINCE, CHINA

TANG TOLD THE DIRECTOR TO REMAIN WITHIN THE PIT 3 building and stand guard at ground level, ensuring that he was not disturbed Not that he would expect to be He was the second ly, others had begun elevating Ni Yong to that same plateau

He’d been against Ni’s appoint was a man of character, a person who could temper poith reason, and from all reports, that was precisely what Ni had done

But Ni was a Confucian

Of that there was no doubt

Tang was a Legalist

Those two labels had defined Chinese politics for nearly 3,000 years Every emperor had been labeled one or the other Mao had clai that the People’s Revolution was not about labels, yet nothing really changed The Party, like e the unrelenting power of a Legalist

Labels

They were problematic

But they could also prove useful

He hoped the next few ht help decide which end of that spectru

He stepped through the makeshift portal

The dank rooo with clay and stone Artificial lights had been brought in to illuhly five-meter-square chamber The silence, decrepitude, and layers of soot rave of things long dead

“It is remarkable,” the man inside said to him

Tang required a proper assessment and this wiry and short-jawed academician could be trusted to provide just that

Three stone tables dusted with thick layers of dirt supported what looked like brittle, brown leaves stacked on top of one another

He knehat they were

A treasure trove of silk sheets, each bearing barely discernible characters and drawings

In other piles lay strips of ba each one Paper had not existed when these thoughts had been memorialized—and China never used papyrus, only silk and wood, which proved fortuitous since both lasted for centuries

“Is it Qin Shi’s lost library?” Tang asked

The other man nodded “I would say so There are hundreds ofPhilosophy, politics, y, raphy, reatest concentration of firsthand knowledge ever found on the First Emperor’s time”

He knehat that claim meant In 1975 more than a thousand Qin dynasty bamboo strips had been discovered Historians had proclaireatest find, but later examinations had cast doubt on their authenticity Eventually, it was determined that most of them came from a time after Qin Shi, when later dynasties refashioned reality This cache, though, had lain for centuries within a kilorand uarded by his eternal army

“The a is I can read them,” his expert said

Tang knew the i dynasty was always regarded as a withdrawal of Heaven’s mandate To avoid any curse, each new dynasty became critical of the one before So co would even be altered,of what came before that much more difficult Only in the past few decades had scholars, like the expert with hiht, learned to read those lost scripts

“Are they here?” Tang asked

“Let me show you what I found”

The expert lifted one of the fragile silks

Wisps of dust swirled in the air like angry ghosts

Qin Shi his fron when he ordered all riculture, or divination be burned The idea was to “norant,” and prevent the “use of the past to discredit the present” Only the ee would be an ied that decree were executed Particularly, any- and everything written by Confucius was subject to is directly contradicted the First Emperor’s philosophy

“Listen to this,” his expert said “Long ago Confucius died and the subtle words were lost His seventy disciples perished and the great truth was perverted Therefore the Annals split into five versions, the Odes into four, and the Changes was transued over as true and false, and the words of the master became a jumbled chaos This disturbed the es in order to h, the hts, stored in the palace and they accompanied him in death”

That reat Confucian manuscripts should be here

The Book of Changes, a manual on divination The Book of History, concerned with the speeches and deeds of the legendary sage-kings of antiquity The Book of Poetry, containing s The Spring and Autumn Annals, a complete history of Confucius’ home state The Book of Ritual, which explained the proper behavior of everyone from peasant to ruler And finally, the Book of Music, its content unknown, as no copy existed