Chronicles of the Rong Dynasty
1
Year 58 of the Rong Dynasty, night.
The Translation Bureau was cold and quiet. A gust of wind blew through the cracks in the window, making the candle flame flicker. Garrett Buchanan quickly reached out to shield the weak flame, pulling his robes tighter around himself. He looked up at the sky—it was already past midnight.
"What's this, Minister Feng, still not resting?" With those words, a powerfully built man strode in.
"Ah, King of Rong." Garrett Buchanan hastily bowed deeply. "So late, and Your Majesty hasn't rested either?"
"I'm too happy to sleep. Both the Muse nation and the Mo nation have sent envoys to pay tribute, declaring their submission. From now on, there should be no more wars on our borders." The King of Rong walked over to the candle, the firelight illuminating his resolute jaw and robust frame, a stark contrast to the somewhat slender Garrett Buchanan.
"Indeed, two nations suing for peace, subduing the enemy without fighting—this is truly a great fortune for our great Rong." Garrett Buchanan bowed again. "Congratulations, King of Rong."
"Come now, there's no one else here, dispense with the formalities. Sit." The King of Rong pulled Garrett Buchanan down beside him and said, "Minister Feng, the back-and-forth of diplomatic letters for these peace talks these past days—you've worked hard."
Garrett Buchanan smiled modestly. "It is a minister's duty."
"Haha, if everyone were like you, the nation would have been at peace long ago, the seas tranquil. How could there still be years of warfare? By the way, now that the peace talks are concluded, what are you still busy with here?"
"Oh, I was looking through old texts, hoping to find useful clues."
"About... that matter again?"
"Yes. This was also my late master's dying wish, a knot he could never untangle. I hope to fulfill his last wish."
"Is it really that important?"
"It is very important, King of Rong, look." Garrett Buchanan picked up a brush and casually wrote a few characters. "Setting language aside for the moment, the written characters we use appeared far too abruptly—we cannot trace their origins, not even a transitional phase. This has puzzled me endlessly."
"Furthermore, according to the ancient texts, recorded history is extremely brief, spanning barely a hundred years. So what were we before that? Where did we come from? During the recent peace negotiations with the Muse and Mo nations, I also studied some of their historical records. Though their languages and scripts are entirely different from our great Rong's, their historical accounts are astonishingly similar. This only deepens my confusion."
The King of Rong rubbed his temples with a headache. If you asked him to lead troops into battle, he'd be the first to charge ahead without a second thought, but thinking about such things was pure torture for him. He waved his hand and said, "I truly don't understand you scholars. What's the point of pondering all these intangible things? You can't eat them or wear them. Why not just follow me, dominate the realm, unify the heroes, and achieve something great—wouldn't that be better?"
"It would be good, but..."
"Enough 'buts,' careful you don't make yourself sick from overthinking. By the way, your wedding with Lady Celia is coming up soon. Rather than researching these things here, you'd be better off spending more time with her."
"But I—"
"Minister Feng, this is a royal command!"
"...Yes, I obey."
2
The night was cool as water, the stars vast and brilliant. Garrett Buchanan and Lady Celia sat side by side, looking up at the stars. Lady Celia was the King of Rong's sister, but unlike her brother—not a trace of his ruggedness about her. Instead, she was delicate and graceful, like a little bird resting against him. She gazed at the man beside her with admiration and asked, "I heard you were in charge of communicating with those Muse people and the Mo people at the peace conference, right?"
Garrett Buchanan chuckled. "Of course, that's what I do."
"Oh, oh—" The young woman grew animated. "I heard their language is really hard to understand. How did you learn it?"
"Actually, it's not that difficult. It's just that everyone's way of organizing language is different. We speak character by character, but they don't use characters—they use words, and each word is made up of twenty-six letters..."
"I don't understand any of that. Just tell me, how do the Muse people greet someone?"
"To greet someone, you say 'How are you?' The person being greeted answers 'I'm fine, thank you, and you?' Then the one who asked says 'I'm fine too.' And that completes the exchange."
"Ugh, so complicated. Hard to learn, hard to learn." Lady Celia pouted, then smiled. "Then tell me, how do you say 'I like you'?"
Garrett Buchanan's pale face colored slightly. "I love you."
"I love you," Lady Celia repeated, her pronunciation surprisingly authentic. "That one's easy to remember—learned it in a flash. Not like greetings where you have to go back and forth so much. By the way, do those Muse people really have colored eyes?"
"Mmm, some are blue, some are brown, and some are emerald green."
"Wow, incredible! Why do they look like that? Oh, oh, and the Mo people—are they completely black all over?"
"If they didn't open their mouths, I guarantee you wouldn't be able to see them at night."
"Why?"
"Because their entire bodies are black—only their teeth are white."
"Hahaha—" Lady Celia burst out laughing, revealing a row of pearly teeth. Garrett Buchanan looked at her and said, "Your teeth are white too."
Lady Celia grew shy under his gaze, her face flushing, and she bowed her head. Breathing in the fresh scent of the young woman beside him, Garrett Buchanan slowly leaned closer, and just as his lips were about to brush her warm cheek, the girl suddenly shrieked, "Look, a flash-meteor!"
Garrett Buchanan nearly jumped out of his skin from her sudden outburst. He looked in the direction she was pointing, and indeed there was a flash-meteor, blinking on and off as it crossed the sky. Unlike ordinary meteors, these didn't streak across the sky with a bright tail and vanish—they flickered on and off, gradually fading away. Garrett Buchanan had also heard from people with exceptional eyesight that a single flash-meteor didn't have just one point of light, but several.
"Quick, I need to make a wish!" Lady Celia pressed her palms together, closed her eyes toward the flash-meteor, her expression full of excitement. They both believed that wishes made upon flash-meteors were especially effective.
"Don't worry," Garrett Buchanan laughed. "Flash-meteors take a long time to disappear—enough time for you to make several wishes."
After a while, the flash-meteor vanished, and Lady Celia finally opened her eyes. Garrett Buchanan asked, "Lady Celia, what did you wish for?"
"Hmph, I'm not telling you." Lady Celia pouted. "If I say it out loud, it won't come true."
Garrett Buchanan shook his head with a wry smile. Faced with this whimsical yet utterly innocent young woman, he could only adore her. Lady Celia asked, "Brother Garrett, what does a flash-meteor look like?"
"Well..."
"Is it round, like the moon?"
A sudden thought struck Garrett Buchanan. He grabbed Lady Celia's hand and pulled her up. "Where are we going?"
"You'll know when we get there."
Garrett Buchanan led Lady Celia to the Translation Bureau, where he pulled out a spherical object from a document cabinet—it was mottled with patches of different colors. Outside the sphere was a curved metal frame, fitted together so ingeniously that with a flick of a finger, the sphere would rotate.
"What is this thing?" Lady Celia examined it curiously.
"I don't know what this is either. It's a rare object that the Muse nation's envoy brought when they came to pay tribute recently. According to them, it was dug up from underground during palace renovations."
Garrett Buchanan tapped the sphere with his fingers—it gave a hollow sound, clearly empty inside with nothing inside it. "What puzzles me is the material—I have no idea what it's made of. It feels like cowhide, very lightweight, yet much harder than cowhide."
"Brother Garrett, look, there's writing on it!" Lady Celia held it up to the candlelight and studied it with curiosity.
"That's right, it's in our great Rong script. Look here it says 'People's Republic of China,' and over there 'Russia,' 'Iran,' 'India'... and they're separated by different colors, like..."
"Like what?"
"Like a map." Garrett Buchanan pondered for a moment before saying.
"A map?" Lady Celia's eyes widened. "A map of where? And why is it a globe?"
"I don't know where it's a map of either. I compared it with our own maps—it doesn't match at all."
"That's right! How can any place be shaped like a ball? If someone lived on this side, wouldn't they just—fall off?"