‘
Stop that, you idiot!’ Mu shouted at me and grasped my hand. ‘Can’t you see the time travel machine
standing here? What’s happening is real. ’
I went to touch that time travel machine. There were buttons, a monitor…
‘
No way! There has to be a mistake! Can you just send me back to where I belong?’ I cried in panic.
‘
Well, sure,” Huo said, ‘but after you learn a story. Come here with me.’ Opening the door, he led me to a
corridor with many old-fashioned designs. Walking along such an interesting place, I couldn’t help but feel
curious about it and asked, ‘Huo…can I call you this?’
‘
Sure,’ he replied casually.
‘
Where are we? ’
‘
Oh, it’s just a temple here, but we’re now heading to another place. I can guarantee that you’ll be very
surprised by what you’re going to see!’
Looking at his cheery face, I started to feel a little bit better. Maybe I could treat this as a special trip, right? I
was in the past and couldn’t get back to the normal time anyway…
When I was very concentrated on pacing slowly behind Huo, he suddenly yelled gaily, ‘Hey! Here we go!
You’re dazzled, aren’t you?’
I looked up at the front… ‘Yup,’ I nodded, murmuring.
What I saw was a lot of people constructing a…wall. They were building a wall to connect the other two.
‘
Hi guys,’ Huo greeted the workers.
‘
Hello.’
‘
How’re you doing?’
Many of them returned his greeting, but they continued to work hard again soon. They seemed to
cooperate well and enjoy working.
‘
They are building the Great Wall of China,’ I heard Huo’s voice saying.
Puzzled, I turned to him and blurted out, ‘But they’re happy.’
Huo took a deep breath and explained, ‘Josie, let me tell you the truth. I know that Zheng is making
everyone, even the descendants, believe the story he told the secretary to make up. But I don’t want to see him
ruining his own name. He deserves a good reputation, if not the greatest one in the world.’
‘
Huo, who’s Zheng?’
‘
Well, he’s called Qin Shi Huang by most people. There’s only one group of people who call him Zheng -
the criminals. ’
…
Huo was a criminal?
‘
I was a criminal,’ Huo said gravely as if he had read my mind.
‘
We were, too, ’ Mu and his friend echoed sadly together.
‘
I didn’t know you two were following!’ I said, startled by their sudden appearance.
…
Well, the silence was quite…unnatural and…uncomfortable…but what should I say?
So I kept silent too.
After a while, somebody spoke, ‘Josie, we’re criminals. But Zheng sympathized with our past. He’s really
the best emperor ever. I know that he’s telling a lie to everyone in the country.’ It was Huo speaking. He then
looked at his friends. They all burst into tears.
‘
Hey! You there! What did you do?’ one of the workers shouted angrily at me.
‘
It’s not my fault!’ I said, shaking my head. ‘Huo wanted to tell me something important and they
remembered something sad and …cried. ’
The man stared at me fiercely and asked, ‘Tell you what?’
‘
About a man named Zheng,’ I said this in order not to spill the secrets Huo was trying to reveal.
Hearing this, the man sighed. He walked to reach the sorrowful men’s shoulders to give them comfort.
‘
Thanks, Shi,’ they murmured. Huo looked at the man who comforted them and said, ‘He can be a witness
of what I want you to know.’
So he started the revelation.
‘
We all offended when we were younger. We were involved in crimes. But it was so lucky for us to be
brought to Xianyang, the capital. There we met Zheng. He was the emperor of the country, but he never scorned
us. We didn’t call him ‘‘Your Majesty’’. That’s his order!’ He smiled as he thought about the past and then
continued, ’On the contrary, he treated us very well as friends. Friends! Can you imagine that the king is making
friends with a common national? And he’s also doing it to criminals!’
Huo continued, ‘There had been a rumour about the identity of Zheng’s father. Someone said he was Lu
Buwei, a man who worked in the palace. We weren’t told much about it as it was a sore point with Zheng.
Because of this humiliating rumour, Zheng had a heart that pitied people who were classified as ‘bastards’. He
understood that our nature was not bad… we just faced difficulty in distinguishing right from wrong and