Governing the country, enriching the people, an unparalleled imperial tutor

Wang Mang shifted his gaze from him to the tightly closed stone door opposite him: "It's been so long that even I can hardly remember it myself."

The light in the stone chamber shone steadily, without any change in brightness, like a layer of solidified liquid sealed on the roof. Wang Mang sat opposite the stone table, his hands resting on the edge of the table, his gaze shifting from Lin Yanzhou to Zhao Lingxi, and then back again, as if waiting for a question whose answer he already knew.

Lin Yanzhou sat down at the stone table: "You just said they chose you as their observation subject. Why you?"

"Because they need a 'clean' consciousness," Wang Mang said. "For nine lifetimes, they have not been human, and have been reincarnated as animals. Cows, horses, donkeys, mules, one after another, they have never gathered the impurities of their souls. When such people die and disperse into reincarnation, the remaining fragments of memory and emotional residue are so thin that they are almost blank, like sand that has been repeatedly washed and then flattened by the burdens of the new life, clearing out a sufficiently clean bottom layer to store the new consciousness."

He paused, as if to confirm whether Lin Yanzhou understood: "The people of Abdala don't need exceptionally intelligent transmigrators. Intelligent people have too many memories and too many obsessions. They need someone with a clean enough foundation of consciousness, someone who can inscribe their understanding of the new world without being interfered with by the remnants of the old world. They chose you because you've never had a human body in your nine reincarnations, without the burden of accumulated self-awareness. You've always been a vessel, always transporting the weight of others, always bearing the weight of others on your back without leaving your own weight anywhere, repeatedly used yet never possessing any complete memory trajectory. So your consciousness was chosen—you're not a person with a solid soul, you are the vessel itself." He glanced into Lin Yanzhou's eyes, "You've been a beast of burden for nine lifetimes, with no residual self in your consciousness. This is the answer you're looking for."

Zhao Lingxi stood by the table, silent until now, before finally asking, "You said he's a vehicle, so what about his memories from this life?"

"His memories of this life were formed after he transmigrated. His life in this life is clean," Wang Mang said. "The people of Abdullah don't need a transmigrator burdened with heavy old debts, who could be led astray from his predetermined path by obsessions from his past life at any moment. What they need is someone who can regenerate a complete self-awareness after landing, not a fragmented person carrying fragments of memories from his past life, repeatedly disturbed and pulled by those fragments. His memories of this life are what he lived out himself."

Lin Yanzhou sat on the stone bench, his hand resting on the edge of the table, motionless. He recalled most of his life spent working on construction sites, eating boxed lunches by the roadside, being yelled at by clients, and lying in his rented room counting his remaining money while staring at the ceiling. He couldn't verify or refute the claim of nine reincarnations, but Wang Mang had no reason to lie, and there was no need for a lie between him and this old man who had been trapped in the stone chamber for who knows how many years. He simply squeezed the knuckles of his hand resting on the table: "What they needed was a vessel." His voice was low. "They chose me."

Wang Mang nodded: "You are indeed a vessel. None of your nine reincarnations involved any experience in human form, so you won't return here with the obsessions of the old era. That's exactly what they need—this emptiness."

Lin Yanzhou stood up and walked to the wall carved with moon and gear patterns. He gently touched the intricately carved textures, feeling a slight warmth on his fingertips, as if something within the wall was moving in and out according to some distant rhythm, as if the stone chamber itself was breathing. He then walked back to the stone table, standing on the other side of the edge, and looked at Wang Mang: "You've been here for so long, haven't you thought about leaving?"

Wang Mang did not answer his question directly. His gaze first fell on his own fingers resting on the table, then he looked up at Lin Yanzhou: "After I went out, the world outside had changed. What would I do if I went back?" He paused, as if sorting out a redefinition of his relationship with the world that he hadn't expressed in a long time, "Here, I can see some things and avoid others. I've become accustomed to this position of watching and being watched. It's more appropriate for me to stay here than to go out."

Zhao Lingxi remained standing by the table. She reached out and took the blood-red jade pendant from her belt, placing it on the table. The edge of the pendant tapped against the stone surface, producing a short, crisp sound. Wang Mang glanced down at the pendant but didn't touch it. "Your father always wore it when he came. He said it was a token given to him by an envoy from Abdullah, and that whoever possessed it wouldn't be stopped at the gate by the mechanisms here." He paused. "The fact that you brought it down means your father is no longer alive."

"He's been gone for three years," Zhao Lingxi said.

Wang Mang did not reply, but simply nodded. His gaze lingered for a moment on the jade pendant on the table, as if he were reading a message from that gap that he already knew but had never been able to confirm.

Lin Yanzhou stood by the table, looking down at the blood-red jade pendant. He felt the warmth between his brows slowly spreading outwards, like a thin thread being stretched, retracing the location of the door in the darkness from the inside. Then he looked up: "You mean I still have a chance to go further in?"

"Your time hasn't come to an end yet," Wang Mang said. "You've just reached a crossroads. The road ahead is still there; it's just a matter of whether you decide to take that step. You've been a beast of burden for nine lifetimes; in this life, you're a human. The people of Abdullah want to see if you can transform from a 'vehicle' into a 'ruler.'" He slowly sat up straight, as if recovering some energy in a final burst of energy before death. "You've been a beast of burden for nine lifetimes, leaving no trace of your own memories. You are a blank sheet of paper. But what they want to see is what you write on that paper." His voice lowered further. "You've already written quite a bit—grain prices, irrigation canals, seeds, farm tools, cannon fire on the city walls. They're all watching. They don't interfere; they just want to see how far you can go."

"They are not specific biological entities, but a kind of consciousness. They can detect our thoughts and consciousness. You can look at a passage, but you can't memorize it or speak it. You can only glance at it."

After saying that, he pointed to the small characters engraved on the table: They don't like people who are too controlling. They have things that change the times, or rather, they created us.