County Magistrate Zhou was certain—absolutely certain—that he had never heard the name "sextant." But an armillary sphere was renowned far and wide—
Even without having seen one himself, the county magistrate had heard of the armillary sphere standing atop the imperial observatory. He knew it was an enormous set of several rotating rings, its outermost ring measuring one zhang, four chi, and six cun in circumference.
It was said that the rings of the armillary sphere were engraved respectively with the inner and outer circles, the north and south poles, the ecliptic and equator, the twenty-four solar terms, the twenty-eight lunar mansions... It rotated on its own, corresponding precisely to celestial phenomena without the slightest error.
That had been the splendor of the Han Dynasty at its height. It was gone. All gone...
When Dong Zhuo entered the capital and forcibly relocated Luoyang's officials to Chang'an, "he burned all palaces, temples, government offices, and homes, leaving not a single survivor within two hundred li." That precious instrument vanished amid the flames of war, leaving not the slightest trace behind.
County Magistrate Zhou's hands trembled faintly. He focused on the thing in Clerk Shen's hands. Though it was incomparably smaller than an armillary sphere, its structure bore the same sort of complexity—
There was a fan-shaped wooden arm, large rings nested around smaller ones, markings on the rings, and all sorts of strange mechanisms whose purpose he could not discern at a glance.
He did not understand it, but perhaps—maybe—it really could determine their location?
"Then..."
He opened his mouth, intending to say, "Then I'll leave it to you," but his throat was dry and hoarse, and no sound came out. Shen Le misunderstood and hurriedly spoke first:
"My clan migrated here from the north. Our ancestors..."
"Oh! Oh!" County Magistrate