The Story of the Stone: A Master Li Novel by Barry Hughart

Author:Barry Hughart [Hughart, Barry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction, General, Fiction
ISBN: 9780553282788
Publisher: Random House
Published: 1989-10-01T00:00:00+00:00

Master Li tossed the scroll on the grass. I choked on a grasshopper. “That’s all?” I said incredulously.

“Not according to Ssu-ma Ch’ien,” said Master Li. He picked up Brother Squint-Eyes’ copy and began rapidly decoding the complete hidden text.

”’Red Chamber story correct about stone, tablet from Cave of Yu … Confirmation of reactions of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu … Have traced stone to Prince Liu Sheng … Consumed by evil, has become Laughing Prince … Secret hiding place … Down stairs … Cold room … Tunnel to construction site … Stone in sacristy … Plain appearance … Flat smooth area rising to round concave bowl shape … Found axe … Blow broke flat area from bowl area … Second blow broke off small chip … Soldiers seized, could not destroy … Imprisoned … Terrible sentence … Scholars, seek Stone of Evil! … Destroy it! … Evil that consumes men can consume world.’”

Master Li placed the copy beside the scroll.

“Ssu-ma Ch’ien was a very brave man,” he said. “The question is whether or not he was correct about the mysterious stone, and he suggests that Tsao Hsueh Chin, the author of Red Chamber, may have taken the stone story from a tablet from the Cave of Yu. Do you know what that means?”

We shook our heads negatively.

“The legendary Emperor Yu is said to have received certain tablets from Heaven, which he concealed in a cave,” Master Li explained. “They’re called ‘Annals of Heaven and Earth’ because they supposedly deal with matter affecting men and gods alike. Now and then somebody produces an old clay tablet said to have come from the Cave of Yu. Usually the message involves something lucrative for the discoverer, but one or two of the tablets have contained prophecies that proved to be astonishingly correct.”

He picked up the soil and plant report and waved it in my direction. The expression on his face made me very uneasy.

“Number Ten Ox, according to this, there isn’t one damn thing wrong with Princes’ Path, just as there wasn’t one damn thing wrong with the green growing things in the south until Emperor Li Ling-chi waved his hand,” Master Li growled. “If one allows for tale-telling embellishment, there’s nothing impossible about the tangerine story. A tremendous concentration of ch’i would draw lesser life forces to it like iron filings to a magnet.” The old man’s eyes bored toward my brain. “Just after a section of Princes’ Path was destroyed, you had a dream. In it you sensed an extraordinary ch’i, a pulsing life force, coming from a small round piece of clay that was colored orange. Was your sleeping mind guiding you to the story of the emperor and the tangerines?”

My mind was as blank and opaque as a pool of mud. I automatically swallowed my plum juice with vinegar.

“A stone touched by Heaven?” Master Li wondered out loud. “A stone worshipped by the Laughing Prince? All we know for sure is that something destroyed sections of Princes’ Path, and a strange sound seems to be associated with it.

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