Chapter 105
— The Lord of Wuxiang Leaves A Plan In The Silken Bag; The Ruler of Wei Removes The Bronze Statue With The Dew Bowl.
Doctorate Scholar and then Master of Works, superintendent of Cao Rui's entire building programme, and the man who supplies the Dew Bowl idea: of the twenty-four Latter Han emperors only Emperor Wu lived long, 'because he drank of the essence of the brilliancy of the sun and the brightness of the moon', distilled in the third watch into the bowl held by the bronze figure on the Terrace of Cypress Beams at Chang'an, 'and if mingled with powdered jade and swallowed, it restores youth to the aged'. He takes ten thousand workers to fetch it, scaffolds a two-hundred-foot terrace, has the image detached — its eyes 'moist as with tears' — and loses a thousand men when the pedestal comes down in a whirlwind. Then reports that the pillar cannot be moved because 'It weighs a million and half of pounds.'