Get AppWrite a dramatic historical novelTHE STONE-BEARERA Novel of Qin and the First Emperor's Library
PROLOGUE
The Forge, 227 BC
The fire did not roar. It screamed. A thin, metallic shriek, as if the very ore in the crucible was fighting its own transformation. Li Jie, Chief Scribe of the Qin prefecture of Shu, watched the molten bronze bubble, his face a mask of soot and profound unease. This was not for swords or ceremonial tripods. This was for words. For memory.
"Now," rasped the Master Founder, his eyes white moons in a black face.
Jie nodded. His two assistants, young men with nervous hands, lifted the clay mold. Into its intricate channels—a negative of thousands of tiny characters—the glowing, golden-red river poured. A hiss, a plume of steam smelling of burnt earth and hot metal. The characters Jie had spent three months carving into the sand-tablet, the entire legal code for granary management, were now being born in metal. Imperishable. Immutable. Like the Law of Qin itself.
A runner arrived, panting, as the mold cooled. He did not speak to Jie, but to the grim-faced Qin Captain overseeing the work. The Captain's expression tightened. He strode over.
"Chief Scribe Li. The King of Qin has a new title."
Jie wiped his hands on a rag. "Oh?"
"He is now," the Captain said, the words leaving his mouth like stones dropped into a still pond, "Shi Huangdi. The First Emperor."
The silence that followed was broken only by the crackle of the furnace. Huangdi. The legendary Yellow Emperor, a figure of myth, made flesh in their mortal ruler. Jie felt a cold finger trace his spine. A man who would claim such a title would not be content with ruling lands. He would seek to rule time. To shape history itself.
"The Emperor commands," the Captain continued, "all historical records not authored in Qin, all poetry not celebrating its glory, all philosophy not extolling its order, are to be gathered and brought to the capital, Xianyang. A great library is to be built. A library of truth. You are summoned to oversee the indexing."
Jie, a man who had devoted his life to the preservation of texts—legal, agricultural, astronomical—felt a surge of dizzying hope. A universal library! A sanctuary for all knowledge under heaven!
The Captain's next words froze the hope in his veins. "And you are to burn the duplicates."
PART I: THE GATHERING (221-215 BC)
Xianyang was a city of sharp angles and marching shadows. The new palace complex rose like a mountain range carved by a ruthless god. Jie, now a middle-aged Master Archivist of the Imperial Library Project, worked in a vast, dusty hall that echoed with the quiet rustle of bamboo slips and the soft curses of scholars.
Scrolls from conquered states arrived daily: cartloads of Confucian Analects from Qi, mystical Daoist texts from Chu, romantic songs from Zhao, bloody chronicles from Han. Jie's team sorted, catalogued, copied. And they burned.
A pyre smoked perpetually in the central courtyard. Jie would stand at his high window, watching pages of Mencius curl into black butterflies, the words "The people are the most important element…" vanishing in a puff of
Chapter wiseTHE STONE-BEARERA Novel of Qin and the First Emperor's Library
PROLOGUE: THE FORGE227 BC, The Prefecture of Shu
The fire did not roar. It screamed.
Li Jie, Chief Scribe, watched molten bronze fill the character-shaped channels of the clay mold—the entire legal code for granary management, made permanent. A runner brought word: the King of Qin had taken a new title. Shi Huangdi. The First Emperor.
Summoned to the new capital, Xianyang, Jie's hope for a universal library curdles when he hears his secondary duty: burn the duplicates. The contradiction is planted like a seed in stone.
CHAPTER 1: THE PYRE AND THE PILLAR221 BC, Xianyang
Jie navigates the ruthless geometry of the capital. In the vast, echoing Scriptorium, he oversees the sorting of a conquered world's memory. Bamboo scrolls from the six defeated states pile high: Chu's poetry, Qi's philosophies, Zhao's histories.
His orders from the Chancellor, Li Si, are clear: one copy of useful texts (agriculture, law, Qin-approved history) is to be preserved on the new, durable medium—stone tablets. All other copies, all divergent narratives, all "seditious" poetry praising other kings, are for the fire.
Jie meets Lin, a sharp-eyed archivist from conquered Qi, who secretly slips a bamboo slip from the flames—a love poem from her homeland. Their silent complicity begins.