“They have never once broken ranks.”
A Mountain immortal of The Mortal Realm
3 known connections · an open question
Guardian of the First Emperor's tomb at Mount Li: one of some eight thousand, and no two faces alike — archers, charioteers, generals, each modeled from a living soldier of Qin and fired in clay to stand the eternal watch. Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian described the tomb's rivers of mercury and jewelled sky; in 1974, farmers digging a well struck the first pit, and the army rose out of the earth it had guarded for 2,200 years. Bronze weapons in hand, facing east against every enemy the dead emperor might ever meet. They have never once broken ranks.
He is standing in the pit right now, clay and mineral paint, one face among eight thousand — no two alike — facing east as he has faced for 2,200 years. Tourists file past. He does not blink. He has never blinked.
When the last enemy the First Emperor ever feared finally fails to come — and none of them ever came — the army will stand down, one by one, and the eight thousand faces will turn from the east at last, and look at each other. It will be the first time. They have earned the look.
“They all face east — 2,200 years, bronze weapons, the eternal watch against the emperor's enemies. The pit surveyors found it last spring: one figure, third rank, archers' pit, facing west. No record of it turning. No record of it ever facing east. The City God was asked. The City God, mayor of the local dead, said the figure's file lists no orders. The file is otherwise complete.”
One of the eight thousand faces west.
They started human. Mostly. The Monkey King, the sea goddess Mazu, Guan Yu and his long beard, the Kitchen God filing his annual report — and the First Emperor’s clay guardian, who has stood his two-thousand-year watch without blinking.
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