Mount Li, like a black, giant beast crouching on the edge of the Guanzhong Plain, silently devours all living creatures that approach it. Before reaching the foothills, the air is already filled with a mixture of dust, sweat, the stench of blood, and an indescribable aura of despair.
The prisoner transport carts finally stop outside a massive encampment demarcated by wooden fences and trenches that follow the contours of the mountain. Inside the camp, low, damp, makeshift huts are densely packed, resembling colonies of fungus growing on a rotting corpse. Higher up, the clanging of tools chiseling into the mountain, the harsh scolding of overseers, and the agonizing groans of convicts merge into a nerve-wracking, endless tide of noise.
"Get down! Quickly!" The transport guard crudely kicks open the door of the cart, driving Zhang Cang and the others out like livestock. The heavy, linked shackles are removed and replaced with lighter, yet still constricting, iron fetters designed for labor. The cold metal kisses their worn skin, bringing fresh pain.
A head overseer wearing leather armor with a vicious look brings several assistants armed with leather whips over. His gaze, like a steel blade scraping bone, sweeps over this batch of new "materials."
"Listen up, you scum!" the head overseer rasps like a broken gong. "Once you arrive here, stop thinking of yourselves as humans! You are beasts, you are stones, you are nothing but bricks for His Majesty’s mausoleum! The only way out is to work! Work yourself to death! Whoever dares to slack off, whoever dares to cause trouble," he lashes a whip against a wooden post with a crisp crack, "this is your end! Do you hear me?!"
"We understand..." a scattered, listless response.
"Didn't you eat?! Louder!" Another whip strikes, this time landing on a prisoner who was slow to react; his skin rips open instantly, and screams of agony erupt.
"WE UNDERSTAND!!!" This time, the voices are filled with fear and are much more uniform.
Zhang Cang bows his head, blending into the crowd, feeling the raw, unadorned malice and oppression. Here, there are no laws, no procedures, only the most primitive violence and the most brutal laws of survival.
He is assigned to a team responsible for transporting stone. The task is simple: carry the stones of varying sizes quarried at the foot of the mountain along the steep, muddy slopes to the construction zone halfway up the mountain.
The work begins immediately. Each stone is incredibly heavy; the smallest requires two people to lift together, while the larger ones require four or five people, or even more, calling out in unison as they move forward with great difficulty. Zhang Cang, whose body was that of a frail Legal Official, has never suffered such hardship. After only a few trips, he is panting like an ox, sweat pouring down like rain, his lungs burning with pain, and his legs feeling as if they were filled with lead, every step feeling as though he were walking on knife blades. The iron fetters chafe against the wounds on his ankles, each movement bringing a piercing, throbbing ache.
"Faster! Faster! Why are you dawdling! Useless things!" An overseer with a fleshy, cruel face patrols beside the team, brandishing a leather whip. Whenever he sees someone moving slowly, he strikes.
Zhang Cang’s speed slows down, immediately attracting the overseer's attention.
"Crack!"
A black shadow cuts through the air and lands heavily on Zhang Cang’s back! Sharp pain erupts instantly as if scorched by a red-hot branding iron. His prisoner rags tear, and a bloody welt immediately appears on his skin.
"Ugh..." Zhang Cang lets out a muffled grunt, stumbling and nearly falling to the ground. He bites his lips, desperately bearing the weight on his shoulders, refusing to let himself collapse. He knows that once he falls, what awaits him will be even more ferocious whipping, or perhaps being beaten to death on the spot.
"What are you looking at?! You waste! Brain-dead from all that book learning? Here, strength is the only truth!" The overseer sneers, spits on him, and turns to whip others. Humiliation and pain irritate Zhang Cang’s nerves, but he forces himself to stay calm. Anger and despair cannot solve problems; they would only make him die faster.
As he struggles to drag his feet forward, he begins to observe carefully. He observes the overseer's patrol patterns, the way other prisoners transport the stones, and the topography of the transport route. Soon, he spots the problem. The transport route is far from optimal. It is too tortuous, with some sections being extremely steep, consuming far more energy than necessary. Moreover, the prisoners have no organization when transporting; they frequently cause congestion, wait in lines, or even collide because paths cross, resulting in extremely low efficiency. The bamboo scaffolding built for high-altitude work also appears chaotic and unstable, posing safety hazards and affecting the speed of material delivery.
Knowledge, at this moment, becomes his only weapon. The principle of the shortest path in geometry, the application of pulleys and inclined planes in mechanics, and even simple concepts of operations management begin to combine rapidly in his mind.
During a brief interval of rest (the so-called "rest" is just standing still to catch one's breath), Zhang Cang takes advantage of the overseer not looking to quickly drag his toe through the mud, outlining a straighter, gentler route. He also observes the crude scaffolding, silently calculating the best positions and angles for several key support points.
He cannot make suggestions openly; that would only invite deeper suspicion and suppression from the overseers. He must prove himself through action and results. When they resume transport, he begins to consciously guide the few prisoners in his group.
"Walk this way, the slope is a bit gentler," he whispers to a man next to him who is also on the verge of exhaustion, signaling him to follow the path he has chosen. At first, the man is hesitant, but after trying it once and realizing it truly saves effort, he silently follows along. When reinforcing the scaffolding, Zhang Cang "unintentionally" adjusts the angles of two support poles to make the weight distribution more reasonable. When stacking stones, he quietly uses a few small stones as fulcrums to create a simple ramp, making subsequent transport much easier.
These changes are minuscule, hidden amidst the heavy and chaotic labor, and almost go unnoticed. However, the effect begins to emerge imperceptibly. His small group's transport speed seems slightly faster than the surrounding groups, their time stuck on the path is reduced, and the frequency of tripping and injury also decreases. Although still exhausted to the point of death, the sense of suffocating hopelessness seems to have lightened just a fraction.
All of this does not escape everyone's eyes. In the evening, the horn for finishing work (actually a piece of broken copper being struck) rings out shrilly. The prisoners, like deflated burlap sacks, collapse to the ground, seemingly without the strength to even crawl back to their huts.
Zhang Cang leans against the cold stone wall, gasping for air. The whip wound on his back burns with pain, and every bone in his body feels as if it were falling apart. Yet, in his eyes, a faint light called "hope" flickers.
Just then, a man wearing slightly better clothing than the ordinary overseers, looking like a small team leader, pauses his gaze on Zhang Cang for a moment while counting the heads. He notices that the group of this new, seemingly frail arrival is operating with an efficiency that seems rather unusual. He says nothing, just looks at Zhang Cang two extra times with a hint of inquiry in his eyes, then turns and leaves.
Zhang Cang feels that gaze and his heart tightens, but he quickly calms down. Being noticed might be a risk, but... could it not also be an opportunity? In this living hell, demonstrating unconventional value might be the only way to survive.