The Inspector’s footsteps echoed, fading into the humid Shibao afternoon. Tan Ruyi observed his departure, nausea curdling her noon gruel. Ten thousand clay blocks. A speech in the capital. It was a snare woven of commendation. Exile to the Salt Flats, scraping brine crusts under a northern gale, was one trap. But a life of nonstop lectures, train journeys, and grueling ambition? That sounded far more exhausting. A slow, public strangulation of her afternoon naps.
She needed to fail. Not catastrophically, not enough to be banished to the frigid Northern Salt Flats, but just enough to miss the capital. A delicate, precise kind of failure. A failure that looked like effort, but yielded insufficient results. The answer, obvious and painful, lay in the very source of her accidental triumph: the imperial masonry blocks.
When the Progress Headquarters emptied for afternoon ‘study hour’ – a euphemism for napping or clandestine card games – Ruyi slipped out the back entrance. The sun beat down on the cracked earth behind the manor. A tangle of thorny weeds grew along a dilapidated retaining wall. Perfect. She found a heavy, rust-pitted sledgehammer leaning against a discarded barrel of dried mud. It weighed down her wrists, a stark contrast to the clean clay slabs she had presented earlier.
Exhaling wearily, Ruyi selected a pristine, dragon-embossed unit. Its surface, cool and smooth, felt fine beneath her fingers. Beautiful, irreplaceable kiln-work, but also the chains binding her to a future she abhorred. With a grunt, she hoisted the sledgehammer. The first strike glanced off the corner with a dull thud. The block merely chipped. Her shoulders burned from the exertion.
“Aha! Head Tan! You are truly a visionary!”
Ruyi nearly dropped the iron head, pivoting to find Ding Dongqiang emerging from behind a sagging shed, his gaze brimming with zealous reverence. He carried a smaller wooden beetle, posture showing he had trailed her from the courtyard.
“Dongqiang,” Ruyi said, her voice flat. “What are you doing?”
“Observing, Head Tan! Learning the true path! For days I studied your masterful delegation, your profound rest, and now—this! The ultimate lesson in detachment! Letting go of physical goods! Shattering the form, embracing the void!” He waved grandly at the chipped block. “Such profound philosophy! Is this the secret to transcending the earthly burden of labor? To become one with the dust?”
Ruyi blinked. “Something like that, yes,” she mumbled, deciding that correcting him would require far too much energy. “It’s… a cleansing process.”
“A cleansing process!” Ding Dongqiang practically vibrated with excitement. “Truly enlightened! Allow your humble disciple to assist in this sacred ritual!” Without waiting for an answer, he seized another dynastic slab, hoisted his wooden tool with sudden vigor, and brought it down with a sharp crack. The ceramic split into jagged chunks. He fell upon them, pummeling the shards into grit, a frantic grin splitting his face. “To dust! To dust! Free from the prison of form!”
Ruyi stared, chin drooping. He proved far more efficient than her. Grunting, she resumed her own leisurely demolition. Together, they pulverized a dozen slabs, the sharp clatter of shattering earthenware filling the yard. Ding Dongqiang swung with the ecstatic zeal of a convert, his rhythmic impacts outstripping her half-hearted taps. A mound of rust-colored silt accumulated over the gravel.
Meanwhile, Qiao Meilin, having completed her administrative duties—shaving pencil stubs and glowering at blank ledgers—patrolled the manor perimeter. Her route brushed the retaining wall, where a haze of copper-tinted grit hovered above the weeds. She rounded the corner and halted at the heap of pulverized clay. An intact relic lay gripped in Ding Dongqiang’s hands, his tool cocked mid-swing.
“STOP! What in the name of the Ancestors are you doing?!” Her screech broke the afternoon calm. Ding Dongqiang froze, tool poised overhead. Ruyi leaned on her sledgehammer handle.
Qiao Meilin’s gaze darted over the crushed powder, across the remaining stack of dynastic slabs, and landed on Ruyi’s blank, half-lidded face. “Smashing state assets! Counter-revolutionary sabotage! I knew her genius was fraudulent! This finishes her!”
She didn’t wait for an explanation, didn’t even glance at the two culprits. Her mind, already racing, saw only one outcome. She spun on her cloth shoes and bolted toward the central offices, bawling as she ran: “Commune Director He! Secretary Liao! Overseer Chen! Head Tan has smashed our glorious production! Seize her!”
“Ah, Head Tan,” Ding Dongqiang whispered, looking utterly bewildered, “did we perhaps… misinterpret the meaning of ‘letting go’?”
Ruyi shrugged. “Perhaps. But she will drag half the committee here within three minutes. We should probably finish this batch.” She pointed at five remaining units. Ding Dongqiang resumed swinging. The rhythmic thumping on clay filled the brief interval.
Just as the final block cracked into gravel, Liang Bo’s booming baritone shook the weeds. “Ruyi, my clever little lotus! Out here toiling under the sun! What miraculous compound are you formulating?” He strode up the ditch path from the equipment shed, carrying a dented wooden tub and a shovel. His gaze caught the spread of terracotta silt.
“Oh, that?” Ruyi kept her tone deadpan. “Just… an aggregate. For tighter adhesion.”
Liang Bo beamed. “Tighter adhesion! Brilliant! You always think three paces ahead! Our masonry was already exemplary, but you demand unyielding strength! Let me help you mix this remarkable mortar!” He dropped his tub, scooped the pulverized clay inside, and emptied a pail drawn from the yard pump. His muscular arms churned the silt into a dense, rust-toned paste. “Tougher than any blend in the provincial capital! True Shibao ingenuity!”
Ruyi stared, paralyzed. She had planned to ruin the quota, to deflate her sudden prestige. Instead, Liang Bo was whipping the evidence of her sabotage into a thick slurry. Something even sturdier.
Within minutes, Qiao Meilin returned at a gallop, trailed by Director He Ping, Secretary Liao, Overseer Chen, and three curious farmhands. Meilin pointed an accusatory finger at Ruyi, then at the bare ground where the relics had rested, then toward the tub. “There, Director He! She pulverized the antique clay! Look! They submerged the smashed pieces in that sludge!”
Director He, his temples glistening with midday sweat, marched forward. He took in Ruyi’s slouched posture, Ding Dongqiang clutching a wooden tool, and Liang Bo grinning over a basin of wet terracotta muck. “Head Tan! What is the meaning of this spectacle?!”
“A spectacle?” Liang Bo boomed, chest swelling with pride. “Director He, you mistake triumph for a mess! My Ruyi has engineered a revolutionary compound! Look!” He hoisted the wooden basin and tipped it forward, revealing a sample already hardening along the pine slats. The quick-setting lime-and-earthen paste had congealed into a flat, flinty mass that did not shift when he thumped the rim. “Magnificent! Rock-solid!”
Director He and Secretary Liao leaned down together while Qiao Meilin froze. The hardened patch was dense as granite. Director He struck it with his knuckles, producing a dull clink. He scraped his thumbnail across the surface; the lime-tempered glaze held fast. He pulled an iron padlock from his coat pocket and cracked it against the dried mass. The metal clanged and rebounded cleanly, leaving no mark.
“Unyielding…” Director He murmured, furrowing his brow in astonishment. “A reinforced bonding agent! And you synthesized this, Head Tan?”
Ruyi sighed faintly, accepting the inevitable disaster. “A flash of insight, Director He. An experimental application of Shibao tradition merged with collective labor.” She nodded toward Liang Bo, who straightened to his full muscular height. “We concluded that standard clay work lacked sufficient resilience. Thus, an adjustment.”
Director He seized Ruyi by the forearms, his grip uncomfortably stout. “This transcends simple masonry, Head Tan! This is miraculous mortar! With this slurry, we can pour foundations anywhere! The Jing River spillway has sat uncompleted for three dry seasons! We can seal the foundation before flood rains arrive! By next Monday, Head Tan, you will assume direction as Chief Field Engineer of the Jing River Dam!”