bayedsolid 001 In just 7 months
001 In just 7 months
Zhen Xiaosi's perception of time is different from that of ordinary people.
This was something she finally confirmed in the seventh year after she traveled to the Tang Dynasty.
At first, it was just a vague feeling: the seasons seemed to change faster than she remembered, the plants withered and flourished like turning the pages of a book, and children grew into teenagers in the blink of an eye. It wasn't until Zhang Shuo held her hand and breathed his last on his sickbed that she confirmed this conjecture in the cruelest way—she stayed by his coffin and wept for seventeen months, feeling it was just a long and continuous grief, but when she finally stepped out of the mansion, she found that the streets of Chang'an had changed.
"Madam, you've finally agreed to receive guests." The old butler handed over the visiting card with a complicated expression. "Prime Minister Zhang has been gone for almost seventeen years."
Seventeen years.
Her fingers trembled slightly as she held the visiting card. The card carried a faint scent of cypress, a fragrance usually reserved for newly deceased families. Yet she clearly remembered that she had dressed Zhang Shuo in his third set of mourning clothes just yesterday.
"This visiting card is..."
“It was sent from the residence of General Zhang Shougui of Youzhou. The general lost his father last month and, according to custom, informed his old friends and acquaintances in the court.” The steward paused. “General Zhang’s father and my husband were both Jinshi (successful candidates in the highest imperial examinations) in the same year.”
Zhen Xiaosi closed her eyes, her mind racing with calculations.
Zhang Shuo was born in 667. If this year is... if it's the 22nd year of the Kaiyuan era, it would be 734. Zhang Shuo died in 730, so four years have indeed passed. As for Zhang Shougui, records show he was born in 684, seventeen years younger than Zhang Shuo.
Seventeen years old. Seventeen months old.
These two numbers struck her with a strange resonance.
"Change clothes." She heard her own voice, calm and unfamiliar. "I'm going to an appointment."
She first met Zhang Shougui alive at the Rebirth Hall of Jianfu Temple.
Dressed in plain clothes, he knelt before his father's memorial tablet, his back as broad as a mountain.
Zhen Xiaosi stood behind the pillar for a long time, watching his posture as he offered incense, the lines of his shoulders and back as he kowtowed, and the way he touched his knees when he stood up—an unconscious little gesture that Zhang said he often did when his arthritis flared up in his later years.
"Who is Madam?" He turned around and was slightly taken aback when he saw her.
The moment their eyes met, Zhen Xiaosi felt a wave of dizziness. It wasn't because he resembled Zhang Shuo—in fact, they didn't look alike at all. Zhang Shuo was a typical scholar with a lean and refined appearance, while Zhang Shougui had a square face, a broad forehead, and high brow bones, the bone structure of a military general.
But that look in his eyes... that deep, scrutinizing gaze, that gentle yet sharp look, was almost exactly the same as Zhang Shuo's when he was young.
"My name is Zhenshi, and my late husband was Zhang Yue." She bowed gracefully and announced this identity that she had not told anyone for seventeen months (or seventeen years?).
Zhang Shougui's expression immediately turned solemn, and he returned the greeting respectfully: "So you are the wife of Duke Wenzhen. I apologize for my disrespect."
Wenzhen. Zhang Shuo's posthumous title. It turns out that during the seventeen months she was in seclusion mourning, the court had already given him his final assessment.
They spoke from a distance. He talked about his father's life and the old days when he and Zhang Shuo took the imperial examinations in the same year; she talked about Zhang Shuo's political views, which he often mentioned in his later years, and his concern for the border. Every word was like throwing stones at opposite ends of a crack in time, judging the distance to the other side by listening to the echo.
"This humble general is about to return to Youzhou," Zhang Shougui said before parting. "If you need anything from me, or if you have any questions for me..."
“General,” she suddenly interrupted him, asking a question that seemed to have no basis in reality, “do you believe that time flows at different speeds?”
Zhang Shougui was stunned. After a moment of contemplation, he replied, "Those who have spent the night on the frontier know that the time spent waiting for the enemy to attack is ten times longer than usual; while the time of fighting is as short as the blink of an eye. Time is not a uniform thing."
This answer almost brought Zhen Xiaosi to tears.
She began writing letters to Zhang Shougui.
Initially, it was just a polite greeting, thanking him for his hospitality at Jianfu Temple. Then, she gradually added her insights into the border situation—insights that Zhang Shuo had analyzed before his death and that she had kept in mind. Zhang Shougui's reply was prompt, his handwriting strong, and his content concise yet sincere.
Through the letters, she pieced together his life over the past seventeen years (which were blank to her): the first battle of Beiting, the empty city of Guazhou, the garrisoning of Longyou, the defense against the enemy in Youzhou... She carefully recorded each event, and then, in the dead of night by candlelight, matched these events with Zhang Shuo's life in her memory.
In the fifteenth year of the Kaiyuan era, when Zhang Shougui served as the prefect of Guazhou, Zhang Yue was in Chang'an overseeing the revision of the "Kaiyuan Rituals." During that time, Zhang Yue often stayed up late, and once lamented to her, "I wonder if anyone at the border is also studying maps by lamplight right now."
Yes. She now knew, yes. That person was studying defenses by lamplight atop the dilapidated city walls of Guazhou, under the same moonlight.
This is a strange overlap: she missed Zhang Shuo with the intensity of seventeen months, while Zhang Shougui lived for seventeen years and became the person Zhang Shuo had hoped for—a true general who could protect the prosperous era.
In her third letter, she couldn't help but write: "General, do you ever think that some people are born to know each other?"
Zhang Shougui's reply arrived two months later, in late autumn. The letter was quite thick, and besides the usual account of the recent situation in Youzhou, it added a few lines at the end: "Your question, Madam, has reminded me of something. In the second year of the Kaiyuan era, when I first joined the army, I heard an old soldier recount the story of Zhang Xiang supervising the construction of the Great Wall in Youzhou. At that time, I thought that if I could receive some guidance from such a person, I would benefit greatly. Now, corresponding with you, Madam, I feel as if my wish has been fulfilled."
Zhen Xiaosi held the letter and sat in the autumn sun for a long time. The second year of Kaiyuan was 714 AD. Zhang Shougui was thirty years old, and Zhang Yue was forty-seven. At that time, she had not yet arrived in the Tang Dynasty and was still reading papers about Zhang Yue in a 21st-century library.
The sense of dislocation in time and space was so overwhelming that it almost drowned her.
In the winter of the twenty-fourth year of the Kaiyuan era, the Khitan invaded the border, and the war in Youzhou became critical.
Zhen Xiaosi did not receive a reply for thirty-seven consecutive days. For her, this was just a little over a month of anxiety; but for Zhang Shougui, it was the real days and nights on the battlefield, where every sunrise could mean farewell forever.
She began to suffer from insomnia. Every night, she would get up, put on her clothes, and spread out a map in her study—a map left behind by Zhang Shuo, on which he had personally marked the key border defenses. Her fingers would trace the location of Youzhou, imagining the battles taking place there. Sometimes she would hallucinate, as if she could hear the sounds of horses' hooves, shouts, and clashing swords through the paper.
On the forty-third day, the good news and the reply arrived in Chang'an at the same time.
Zhang Shougui's handwriting was more hasty than before, but the force was still palpable: "On the night of the seventh day of the twelfth lunar month, the snow was three feet deep. I led three hundred elite soldiers to raid the enemy camp, beheading eight hundred. On the way back, a soldier asked, 'General, why did you fight so bravely?' I replied, 'Someone in Chang'an has sent word.'"
The last seven characters were written in particularly thick ink.
Zhen Xiaosi's tears dripped onto the letter, blurring the words "Chang'an." In that moment, she suddenly understood that in this misplaced time and space, her feelings for him had long surpassed mere infatuation. She loved him, loved this man who truly lived amidst the flames of war, loved the tenderness beneath his rough exterior, loved the gentleness after his battles.
He also knew of her existence, knew that there was a woman in Chang'an waiting for his news with a time scale he could not comprehend.
That New Year's Eve, she mustered her courage and sent a special gift: an improved hourglass. The upper half was filled with fine sand brought from Guazhou (which she had purchased at a high price from a merchant), while the lower half was empty. The accompanying letter read: "This hourglass keeps time differently than usual; it runs out every seventeen months. I hope the general knows that there are others in the world who experience different times than you."
She didn't know if he could understand. Perhaps in his eyes, it was just a poorly made hourglass, or the pretentious poetic sentimentality of a widowed scholar. But it was the only confession she could make—acknowledging the misalignment of time and seeking the possibility of synchronization within that misalignment.
In the spring of the twenty-eighth year of the Kaiyuan era, Zhang Shougui returned to the capital to report on his duties.
This time, he didn't stay at the inn, but instead rented a small courtyard next to Zhang Shuo's old residence. Zhen Xiaosi was organizing Zhang Shuo's manuscripts when she found out. When the steward came to report, she accidentally knocked over a stack of poems.
"When...when did General Zhang arrive?"
“Yesterday at dusk. This morning they sent a visiting card, saying they would come over this afternoon.”
She spent the entire morning choosing clothes, finally settling on a simple, pale white ruqun (a type of traditional Chinese dress)—not mourning attire, but not brightly colored either. As she dressed in front of the mirror, she realized she couldn't remember the last time she had dressed so formally. Zhang said that for the seventeen months following her death (her time), she wore only mourning clothes; but to the outside world, twelve years had passed.
When Zhang Shougui arrived, he brought with him local products from Youzhou: a bag of dried dates, a jar of honey, and a paper cutter made from a Khitan arrowhead.
"This is a small gift; I hope you will not find it offensive, Madam."
"The fact that the general came is the best gift." She personally brewed tea, her hands trembling slightly.
Amidst the fragrant aroma of tea, they were finally able to converse face-to-face, instead of through letters. He spoke of the snowstorms in Youzhou, the newly built city walls of Yingzhou, and his insights into training soldiers. She spoke of the poetry gatherings in Chang'an, newly published classics, and Zhang Shuo's beloved tea ceremony.
Time seemed to grow thick and slow during their conversation. For a few moments, Zhen Xiaosi almost had the illusion that they were in the same time zone—her seventeen months and his seventeen years temporarily overlapped.
“Last time, Madam asked whether time flows at different speeds,” Zhang Shougui suddenly said, taking out the hourglass from his bosom and placing it on the table. “I have thought about it for a long time and think that perhaps it does. In Youzhou, I often felt that a day was as short as a line in an hourglass; but every time I read Madam’s letter, I felt that time was stretched out, long enough to savor every word repeatedly.”
Zhen Xiaosi's breath hitched for a second.
He picked up the hourglass and turned it over. The fine sand began to flow, shimmering like gold dust in the afternoon sun. "This hourglass, I always carry with me. Sometimes, when military affairs are busy, I look up at it and wonder: What is my wife in Chang'an doing right now? Is she reading, or writing a letter? Is she thinking of someone from the past, or…?"
He paused, not continuing.
But Zhen Xiaosi understood the unspoken words. She reached out and gently placed her hand on his hand that held the hourglass. His hand was large, with rough, calloused knuckles. Her hand, on the other hand, was pale and slender, still retaining an air of pampered elegance.
“General,” she said softly, “only seventeen months have passed since my late husband passed away.”
Zhang Shougui's hand trembled slightly, but he didn't pull away. He gazed at her, his eyes filled with shock, confusion, but even more so with... understanding.
“No wonder,” he said softly. “No wonder the sorrow in your eyes is so fresh, no wonder you remember your late husband as if it were yesterday.” He grasped her hand in return. “Seventeen months… For me, that’s the distance from Beiting to Guazhou, the journey from a guerrilla general to a military governor.”
“And for me,” she finally cried, “that distance is from despair to meeting you.”
Everything that followed happened both naturally and shockingly.
A widowed prime minister's wife and a military governor stationed on the frontier began their relationship under the watchful eyes of Chang'an. Rumors and gossip swirled like autumn leaves, but neither of them cared—or rather, after experiencing the shift in time, worldly rules seemed so insignificant.
During Zhang Shougui's three months in Beijing (which amounted to less than twenty days for Zhen Xiaosi), they saw each other almost every day. Sometimes they discussed history in the study, sometimes they admired flowers in the garden, and sometimes they simply sat facing each other, each handling their own official and family affairs.
Zhen Xiaosi began to teach him how to appreciate tea and how to identify the ancient paintings in Zhang Shuo's collection. Zhang Shougui, on the other hand, explained the terrain and landforms of the border region to her, using chopsticks to depict mountains and rivers on the table.
“Here,” he pointed with his chopsticks, “is the city wall where the Empty City Stratagem was set up. It has been renovated now, and it is three zhang high and two zhang thick.”
"Do you still dare to use the empty city stratagem?"
"I wouldn't dare." He smiled, fine lines at the corners of his eyes—the marks of seventeen years of hardship. In her eyes, this man was maturing at an astonishing pace. "Once is a brilliant plan, twice is foolish. Military strategy is like life; one cannot repeat the same mistakes."
Looking at his smile, she suddenly thought: If Zhang Shuo were still alive, he would be sixty-seven years old this year. Zhang Shougui, on the other hand, is fifty, the prime of a man's life. In the normal timeline, they should have been close friends despite their age difference, one in the court and the other on the frontier, together supporting this era.
She, a time traveler from another era, became the only bridge connecting them.
On the eve of his departure, Zhang Shougui sent a letter, unsigned and unsaluted, containing only four sentences:
"The moon shines over Chang'an, the snow falls over Youzhou. Your seventeenth month is my seventeenth year. If time were a river, I would be two boats, each crossing its own course, flowing together to the vast sea."
Zhen Xiaosi pressed the letter to her chest, crying and laughing at the same time. He understood, he truly understood. He didn't fully comprehend the mysteries of time, but he accepted this misalignment and was willing to walk alongside her within it.
If the story ended here, it might have been a beautiful legend. But Zhen Xiaosi knew history—she knew that Zhang Shougui had adopted An Lushan, and that this barbarian general would become a calamity that would overthrow the prosperous era.
This is the cruelest curse for time travelers: they can foresee the future, yet are often powerless to change it.
After Zhang Shougui returned to Youzhou, he began to occasionally mention a subordinate general named An Lushan in his letters. "This barbarian is exceptionally brave, but also insatiably greedy and violent. Taking him as an adopted son is, in reality, a way to control him," he wrote, his tone revealing helplessness.
Zhen Xiaosi's reply was anxious: "This man has the eyes of an eagle and the gaze of a wolf; he is not one to remain subservient to others for long. General, be careful."
"How did you find out, Madam?" Zhang Shougui asked in his reply.
She couldn't explain. Should she say, "I read his biography in history books more than a thousand years later"? She could only vaguely reply, "I have some knowledge of physiognomy."
In the spring of the twenty-ninth year of the Kaiyuan era, when news of Zhang Shougui's serious illness arrived, Zhen Xiaosi was using that specially made hourglass to keep track of time—eleven months had passed since she last received his letter, while two years had passed in the outside world.
She desperately wanted to go to Youzhou, but everyone dissuaded her. A widowed woman traveling thousands of miles to the border to see a military general was an unimaginable scandal in the Tang Dynasty.
She could only write letters, one after another, pouring out all the things she hadn't had time to say. She wrote of her longing for him, her confusion about time, and her fear of the future. In her last letter, she finally revealed part of the truth: "I am not of this world, but come from a thousand years in the future. I know An Lushan will rebel, and I know the prosperous age will collapse. General, if you have the chance, you must eliminate this man."
The letter was sent, but she didn't know if he would ever read it.
The news of Zhang Shougui's death came one early morning.
At that time, Zhen Xiaosi had just finished breakfast and was preparing to write his eighty-third letter. When the steward came in, his face was ashen, and he was holding the court's official gazette in his hands.
She took it, and when she saw the words "Death of Zhang Shougui, Junior Guardian of the Crown Prince," the whole world fell silent for a moment. Then, time resumed its normal flow—no, it flowed at double speed. The birdsong outside the window, the distant sounds of the city, and her own heartbeat all merged into a roar.
She didn't cry, but calmly asked, "When did this happen?"
"A month ago. It takes time for news to reach Chang'an..."
One month. In her mind, she had just received his letter last week, which said, "The willows in Youzhou are particularly beautiful this spring, and I wish to enjoy them with you, my wife."
She got up and walked to the specially made hourglass. The sand was almost gone, with only a thin layer remaining in the upper part. According to its design, it would take seventeen months to run out—from the time she first gave it to him until now, in her perception of time, almost seventeen months had indeed passed.
From Zhang Shuo's death to meeting Zhang Shougui: seventeen months. From meeting Zhang Shougui to losing him: another seventeen months.
Is this a joke of time, or the rhythm of fate?
She turned the hourglass over and watched the sand begin to flow again. Then she began to pack her things and said to the dumbfounded steward, "I'm going to Youzhou."
"Madam! This is against etiquette, and the journey is long..."
“The system of rites?” She laughed, tears finally streaming down her face. “I have mourned an era for seventeen years (to outsiders), and loved someone for seventeen years (to Zhang Shougui).
In my time, these two relationships were only seventeen months apart. Do you think I would still care about social conventions?