Book 2: Chapter 15: Taizhou’s Legacy

Book 2: Chapter 15: Taizhou’s Legacy

I walked silently behind Yin, as she guided me back to her home. A thousand questions ran in my mind, all that I’d been wanting to ask the girl, but she’d insisted on taking me to her place, and seeing her resolute expression, I’d given in to her demands.

The village swept by beyond my awareness, as my eyes remained set firmly on the back of the girl walking in front of me. I nodded absently to the village head as I walked into his home. The man squawked, looking at me nervously in confusion, and then at Yin. For a while he tried to stop me for tea, but I briskly refused the offer, thanking him once, as I continued to follow behind Yin.

Stepping in the girl’s chamber, I waited for her to enter. Yin shut the door behind her leaning against the frame as she looked at me with beady eyes that seemed to still be staring in disbelief.

“This is my chamber. Before me, it used to be my grandfather’s. He gave it to me in his will,” Yin said, in the Azure-Jade language, straightening her back from against the door frame.

“Were you close to him?” I asked in English, keeping my eyes on the girl.

Yin nodded, walking past me. She went to a drawer set at the corner of the room. Crouching on the floor, the girl pulled out the bottom most cabinet, letting out plumes of dust. From within, she picked out a single dusty book, coughing twice. Gently, she cleaned the book, before turning to face me, as she took a seat on the floor, and opened its contents.

“This is my grandfather’s book,” Yin said. “He only ever showed me this. The one place where he wrote of his home, and his past.”

I took a seat in front of Yin, watching her go through the book. Her gaze was distant and nostalgic, likely going through the memories of her time with her grandfather.

After a moment, Yin closed the book, and turned it towards me. “I think my grandfather would have wanted you to read it.”

I looked up to meet Yin’s eyes, as I gave her a nod. Carefully picking up the book, I inspected it. The cover was of leather, sewed in with threads on the side. Sloppy work, clearly not someone who was used to the task. There was no name or title written on the book. I flipped the page open and frowned as I saw the contents within.The debut release of this chapter happened at Ñøv€l-B1n.

“This isn’t... the Azure-jade script is it?” I asked, looking up at Yin.

The girl shook her head. “It’s the language of his homeland. One similar to ours, but not the same,” she replied.

I read the letters, finding quite a few of them familiar. It was definitely a language similar to this world. Mandarin, I suspected. Briefly I remembered Ki’s ability to understand the languages from earth, and I wondered if I could replicate any of it, having inherited the tree.

From this merchant, I remained a trinket of this other stranger from earth. An old pistol carved with a name on it that read John Smith.”

I paused at the word, struggling to take in everything written. I’d always suspected lands outside the empire existed, because while it was entirely possible that this world just had a single supercontinent, it was entirely likely that that wasn’t the case as well.

But to hear of another person from earth, from all the way back from 1899... I wasn’t sure what to think of it. After a moment or two of thought, I flipped the page, and read further.

“Along my travels, I met some others. None were from my home, but some had mentioned encounters with people who may have been. I documented these encounters in a diary, and along my travels, I also made notes of the industry and development in the empire. Little ideas and comforts that I wished to introduce in my life here. I’d once met a merchant who’d been willing to gamble on my ideas, but that is a long story that had ended in tragedy by the hands of the mighty gods that ruled this land.

“After nearly a decade of travelling through most of the Azure-Jade empire, I grew weary of my life as a wanderer. As chance had it, I met a wonderful woman in a quaint little town near the seventh peak of the empire. Having been a lone wanderer for nearly a decade, I longed for the company of others, and settled down with her near a Qi-vein that was recently discovered. Somehow, I was elected as the head of this new village, and decided to name it Taizhou, after my homeland that my family fled from, back home.

It pleased me immensely, to finally have a place to call home. But as the decades passed, I felt a strange loss about my home, and how I had never found anyone who'd come here from Earth. I had met strangers, and obtained trinkets, but they were far and few in between. And so, when my granddaughter Yin had shown interest, I told her of the secret, something not even my wife knew of. I’d told her stories of my home, and of the adventures I’d had in this land. Eventually, this led me to write the book that you hold in your hands, hoping if one day, someone else is brought to this world like I was, they would know that there was someone before them, and that there might be others out there, waiting to be found.”

I sat there in silence, as I read the last portion of the entry. Further pages showed the man’s ideas on general technology, documents of his travels and other things. A strange feeling filled me, that I couldn’t quite describe.

“I never thought I would get to meet someone from my grandfather’s home. For a long time I’d thought that he had just invented these things to tell me stories. Even the languages, I’d thought of them as quirks of my grandfather. He’d always been a strange man. But... the day before he passed, he showed me something. Asked me to promise that I would not share this with anyone till someone like you came around,” Yin said, tears pooling in her eyes, and trickling down her cheek.

Wiping the tears off her face, the girl turned, and pulled open the drawer. Putting her hand in, she reached into the back, and ran her hand around. A few moments later, I heard a click as the drawer fell out of the cabinet, and Yin pulled out a thin rectangular box that'd been hidden inside the cupboard.

Yin presented the box to me, setting it on the floor. “This is my grandfather’s legacy. I’d like you to have it.”

I stared at the wooden box, looking at it hesitantly for a moment. Nodding, I grabbed the small lid at the top, and pulled it open. My heart began to race as I saw the contents of the box inside.

There was a letter, ruled with lines clearly printed from an electrical printing machine, with words inside. Pages from a book I didn’t recognise. Next to it were two electrical devices with small screens. Pagers, I think they were called. I touched the plastic coverings on them and felt something go through my chest at the sensation of the material.

The box was full of items like these. A metallic compass, a pen. Yet, at the bottom of everything here, I saw one particular item covered in a white handkerchief. The name John Smith was carved on it, now blurred and scraped from rust.

Gently I picked up the pistol, and felt a world from my past be far closer to me than I’d ever imagined.