Three Questions

Dawn broke. Li Daoxuan glanced at the morning light outside his window with bloodshot eyes.

Without realizing it, he had spent the entire night reading historical records. He had now read through a broad account of that humiliating period at the end of the Ming dynasty and gained some understanding of how events had unfolded, though many details remained unclear.

Besides, history books often relied on subtle wording to imply praise or blame, and contained plenty of contradictions. They could hardly be trusted in full.

He double-clicked a file on his desktop. It contained several key questions he had compiled overnight.

Question one: anything placed inside the Scenery Box grew two hundred times larger. After its dimensions increased proportionally by a factor of two hundred, its mass seemed to increase by much more. As a humanities graduate, he could not calculate the exact amount. In any case, a fifty-gram egg became something weighing tens of thousands of jin. By that reckoning, feeding each miniature person would cost him only a few tenths of a yuan per month. Supporting forty-two of them was no problem, and he could even let them eat well and live comfortably. But if he wanted to support tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands or millions, he would face the awkward prospect of going bankrupt in the real world. That raised a question: What is my goal? To save only these forty-two miniature people? Or to do everything I can to save as many ordinary people as possible at the end of the Ming dynasty? Perhaps even save the entire country? If it is either of the latter two, I do not have enough money. I need to reconsider my goal.

Question two: with warfare raging at the end of the Ming dynasty, the miniature people could face mortal danger at any moment. Meanwhile, he needed to eat, sleep, and shower, and might occasionally go on a date with a girl. He could not watch over the Scenery Box twenty-four hours a day. He might go out to buy groceries and return to find that all forty-two miniature people had been slaughtered by the Imperial Court, the Jianzhou Jurchens, Li Zicheng, or Zhang Xianzhong, leaving nothing inside the Scenery Box but ruins littered with bodies. That possibility was all too real. Therefore, he had to improve the miniature people's ability to protect themselves.

Question three: the Scenery Box was 2.5 meters long and 1.5 meters wide, offering a visible area only five hundred meters long and three hundred meters wide. That barely covered Gao Family Village and the surrounding fields. He could not directly affect "places he could not see." Was there any way to expand his field of view?

These were the most urgent problems he had identified that night.

Of course, question three concerned the supernatural. He could only let things take their course.

He would focus on solving the first two questions for now.

His gaze settled on question one. As someone who considered himself reasonably kindhearted, he certainly did not intend to save only these forty-two miniature people. If possible, he wanted to save as many impoverished commoners as he could. Better still, he would save the entire country.

So...

He could not rely solely on dropping food into the Scenery Box!

That approach made no sense. It would only raise a bunch of numb, useless layabouts.

He had to get the miniature people in the box to grow their own food and take an active approach to life.

With that decided, it was time to get to work!

The first thing he needed to do was provide the miniature people with water! Only with water could they thrive.

How should he supply it? Point a faucet straight into the box? That clearly would not work. A stream of water two hundred times thicker rushing into the village would not be a water supply. It would be a flood.

Li Daoxuan's gaze shifted to his Lock & Lock Container.

He picked up the Lock & Lock Container and held it over an empty patch beside the village to check the fit. Good, there was enough room here. He reached toward that patch of ground and dug hard, scooping out a large pit in an instant...

Early morning!

The villagers rose early. As soon as day broke, these hardworking people began preparing for work.

But drought gripped the land, and not a blade of grass grew in the fields. There was no farmwork for them to do.

Normally, they would have risen early to dig for wild vegetables. But they still had over a hundred "large" grains of white rice at home, along with several enormous pieces of cabbage leaf. There was no rush to forage, so everyone began tackling assorted chores after getting up.

Weaving bamboo baskets, sharpening knives, mending clothes...

Gao Yiye also planned to mend her tattered clothes. Taking her needle and thread and carrying a little stool, she walked outside. Just as she was about to set down the stool and thread her needle in the morning sunlight, she heard rustling beside the house.

She turned to look. To her surprise, it was San Shier.

"Huh? Why are you still in Gao Family Village?"

The previous night, following the Heavenly Deity's instructions, she had given San Shier a filling meal, warned him not to tell anyone what he had seen here, and sent him back to town.

But San Shier had seen rice grains as large as millstones and enormous cabbage leaves that night. Though he could not make sense of them, he had been deeply shaken and wanted to stay in the village a little longer.

After leaving Gao Yiye's house, he had slept beneath the eaves.

As a pampered secretary, he rarely rose this early. When Gao Yiye woke him, his head was still muddled. He rolled over and sat up. "Huh? It's morning?"

Gao Yiye asked in surprise, "Didn't I tell you to go back to the County Seat after feeding you last night?"

San Shier replied groggily, "Eh? Why didn't I go back last night? You could call that [utterly beyond explanation]."

He had barely finished speaking when Gao Yiye's expression changed.

She had seen a giant hand descend from the sky and scoop at an empty patch beside the village. The ground rumbled and shook, and an enormous pit appeared.

San Shier followed Gao Yiye's gaze. He could not see Li Daoxuan's hand, only an enormous pit suddenly appearing in the ground. An invisible force lifted the dirt, sand, and stones out of the pit and deposited them beside it...

Sand and stones flew through the air in an earthshaking commotion.

San Shier's mind went blank. "Huh? Did I get up too fast? Should I sleep a little longer?"

He even forgot to offer his customary four-word summary.

Every villager was startled by the disturbance, and they all ran toward the empty patch.

Gao Yiye hurriedly sprang to her feet and shouted, "Everyone, don't go over there! Don't interfere with the Heavenly Deity's magic!"

The villagers all stopped!

After calling the villagers to a halt, Gao Yiye watched closely. The Heavenly Deity's giant hand dug several more times, leaving a huge rectangular pit over ten zhang long, five zhang wide, and eight zhang deep.

Then the giant hand produced a transparent container and slowly lowered it from the sky. It fit neatly into the freshly dug pit, and the hand packed down the earth around all four sides...

San Shier and the villagers could not see the giant hand, but they could see the enormous transparent container. They watched it descend slowly from the sky and settle squarely into the pit, fitting perfectly.

Everyone stared in bewilderment, with no idea what had happened.

Li Daoxuan dusted off his hands. "Good. The reservoir is finished."

He picked up a cup full of water and slowly poured it into the Lock & Lock Container...

The miniature people inside the box witnessed an extraordinary sight. A waterfall suddenly appeared in the sky, and a massive torrent descended from above, pouring into the enormous container in the ground. Before long, the container was full of water.

The villagers stared, dumbstruck. A long, long time passed.

Only then did San Shier speak. "[As though the Milky Way were tumbling from the highest heavens.]"

Gao Yiye said, "That was more than four words this time."

San Shier clutched his head. "Nothing but that line of poetry could describe such a magnificent sight."