Chapter 65 Winter Solstice (I)

Inside the cabin, a glazed spherical lamp hung high on the ceiling.

Zhenyi pushed a round table and placed it under the round lamp.

Soon, a young singer came quickly holding a mercury mirror that she used for dressing. “Madam, may I have this silver mirror?”

Zhenyi nodded and took it. After thanking the singer, she said to everyone, “Let’s assume that this lamp is the sun and this table is the ‘heaven and earth’ where we are, that is, the ‘Earth’.”

She held up the mercury mirror: “And this mirror is the moon – please take a closer look!”

Zhenyi held the mirror in both hands and moved very slowly around the round table. When the mirror moved into the shadow of the round table, the mirror showed what Zhenyi called a “lunar eclipse”. When the shadow completely covered the mirror, she began to say: “This is a total lunar eclipse—”

Then, when the mirror in her hand passed the shadow area, the “moon” began to return to fullness.

While Zhenyi was doing this, the cabin was almost completely silent. After she finished demonstrating the whole process, a surprised shout rang out from outside the ship: “The Tengu has gone, and the full moon is back!”

“I understand!” In the cabin, a scholar tapped his arm hard with a folding fan, and said as if waking up from a dream: “So that’s how it is, so that’s how it is!”

“I knew that the story about the heavenly dog ​​was just a rumor, but I never thought the real reason was this… The so-called beating of the gong to scare away the heavenly dog ​​was just the result of the normal changes of the lunar eclipse!”

Some people stared at the round table and suddenly had a clear understanding of the “round earth theory”.

The reason why mysterious and profound things cannot be widely accepted and understood is often because there is a lack of sufficiently vivid and popular explanations. However, Zhenyi’s use of local materials and seemingly simple demonstrations conceal her profound knowledge of astronomy.

The news that Ms. Wang simulated the cause of the lunar eclipse on the Qinhuai River and used the image of the lunar eclipse to prove the theory of the spherical earth spread throughout the Jinling literary world along with the sound of gongs that night.

In this age where “the laws of nature are hard to predict”, the overwhelming praise fed back to Zhenyi, making her even more excited.

In April, she first wrote “Questions and Answers on the Precession of the Equinoxes” to refute the current erroneous view of using a gnomon to measure the precession of the equinoxes, and firmly pointed out that the precession of the equinoxes can only be measured using the “central star method”.

In May, Zhenyi began to write a comprehensive account of her “Explanation of the Lunar Eclipse”. This was an extremely tedious and difficult task, so Zhenyi had to put aside the half-finished “A Brief Account of Calculations” for the time being.

Zhenyi was busier than ever before, sometimes she didn’t even have time to eat or sleep, and she always forgot the time when she picked up the pen. Whenever this happened, the cat’s paw hitting her arm became Zhenyi’s exclusive alarm clock.

Zhenyi would usually delay: “Juzi, wait a little longer.”

This is like delaying the alarm clock and letting it ring ten minutes later.

That night, the alarm clock Orange was delayed for countless ten minutes, so the alarm clock got angry and the big yellow cat sat down on Zhenyi’s manuscript paper.

Zhenyi had no choice but to put down her pen, quickly wash up and go to bed, forgetting to blow out the lamp.

Orange raised a paw and scratched the flame of the oil lamp, trying to put it out, but it didn’t work.

Zhenyi, who was already lying on the couch, couldn’t help laughing when she saw Orange struggling with the flames. She quickly got off the couch to blow out the lamp, scooped Orange into her arms, and carried him onto the couch.

The moonlight on summer nights was particularly bright. Zhenyi held Orange in front of her and suddenly bent down and kissed Orange’s head heavily.

When Juzi looked up, he saw in the moonlight that there were some crystal tears in Zhenyi’s eyes, and those tears were filled with an unquenchable joy.

It was quiet all around, but Orange understood Zhenyi’s joy. It rubbed its head against Zhenyi’s face and made a very soft meow so as not to wake Jingyi up.

A ray of moonlight leaked onto Zhenyi’s shoulders, like wings given to her by the stars.

Zhenyi was eager to fly.

But the sudden disaster was just like when Zhenyi thought she was lucky enough to save her feet, “Mother Lu” suddenly appeared with a snow-white foot binding cloth in her hand. At the end of June, an epidemic broke out in Jinling.

The first person to develop serious symptoms had been to Wang Xichen’s clinic for treatment. His family insisted that he contracted the disease in the clinic, and said that Wang Xichen used the wrong medicine and delayed treatment, which caused the condition to worsen. Because Wang Xichen has always been cautious in using medicine and the effects are slow, many people believed this. Faced with those accusations and condemnations, Wang Xichen’s arguments were useless, so he had to temporarily close the clinic to avoid disaster.

But this was just the beginning. As the virus spread more and more widely, the Wang family was unable to escape, and Jingyi, who had always been weak, was the first to be infected.

Based on the symptoms, Zhenyi and her father determined that the epidemic was malaria.

Malaria is transmitted by mosquitoes and mostly occurs in summer and autumn. Both your current majesty and your ancestor, Emperor Kangxi, have been infected with this disease.

However, Nanjing had no experience in dealing with this epidemic, and some people claimed that it was a punishment from heaven after the moon was eclipsed by the heavenly dog. As the saying goes, “after a strange phenomenon, there will be a year of disaster.” The government was extremely worried and reported the matter to the capital, anxiously awaiting the court’s instructions.

Wang Xichen reopened the clinic under pressure. He explained that the disease was malaria and that it would most likely be cured if treated promptly. However, many people had already believed the previous rumors and few dared to visit Wang Xichen for treatment.

There were seriously ill patients dying almost every day, but it was still unclear when the imperial edict and experienced imperial physicians would arrive.

After discussing with her father, Zhenyi decided to send the prepared prescription to the government, asking the government to come forward as soon as possible to advocate for treating the epidemic and allocate the large amount of necessary medicinal materials in advance.

Zhenyi went to the government office in person and persuaded the officer with all kinds of words before she finally convinced him to hand the prescription to the official in the government office.

The gentleman looked at the beautifully written prescription in his hand and asked the officer, “Who handed it to you just now?”

“My Lord, the woman said her surname was Wang and her name was Zhenyi.”

It is not easy for outsiders to know the specific names of Han women, but the name Wang Zhenyi is not unfamiliar recently…

The official’s eyes suddenly became clear: “It turned out to be her.”

After Zhenyi returned from the government office, she also developed a fever that night.

Before this, Zhenyi had been taking care of Jingyi personally for many days.

Jingyi’s symptoms were much more serious. She would sweat profusely, shiver from the cold, and was almost always in a coma. When she was slightly awake, she would always call out in a hoarse and weak voice, “Sister, Sister…”

Although Zhenyi was ill, she still stayed by her sister’s side day and night without taking off her clothes, feeding her soup and medicine personally, not daring to be careless in the slightest.

The overall situation outside should be managed by the government. She has done what she should do. Now, nothing is more important to her than Jingyi.

But no matter how hard Zhenyi tried to take care of and treat Jingyi, her condition worsened.

Zhenyi began to feel fear.

This fear was like a sharp knife, cutting into Zhenyi’s heart bit by bit.

Orange was also scared to death. Cats are supposed to be fearless, but at this moment, there were some things that Orange was so afraid that he didn’t dare to think about… The cat didn’t have malaria, but he couldn’t help but want to shiver.

That afternoon, due to great fear and fatigue, Zhenyi’s temperature kept rising and her consciousness became blurred.

It was clearly the season between summer and autumn, but in Zhenyi’s chaos it felt like the winter solstice, as if she was in a freezing abyss.

So, what happened next seemed like a nightmare from a distant winter to Zhenyi.

The lamps, tables, mirrors, and lunar eclipse demonstrations involved in the chastity ceremony are all recorded.

(There are also some records that roughly speculate that Zhenyi’s early death was due to the recurrence of malaria and its sequelae. (Just speculation)