Chương 649: Current Status of the Inner City of Chang'an

"Make some arrangements later. For the first month after Chang'an Station officially opens, the public can ride for free once, in limited quantities, and tickets can be obtained with their household registration. Everyone, regardless of age or gender, can ride; there are no restrictions, and the rich and the poor can all ride."

Song Yingxing was taken aback: "Your Majesty, this... operating revenue..."

"What we need in the first month isn't income, it's reputation." Liu Ce continued walking forward, his voice languid, but the underlying meaning was sharp.

"You have to let the old farmers who have farmed all their lives see with their own eyes what a train looks like, what it feels like to ride it, and what it's like to visit someone in Luoyang and come back the same day."

When they go back and tell the villagers, "That train is more stable than an oxcart, more economical than a fast horse, and you can ride it all day without any bumps," do you believe it? In less than six months, the spontaneous passenger flow on this line will be enough to fill three trains. At that point, will we still be worried about not making back the ticket revenue?

Song Yingxing walked three steps in silence, then smiled—a smile that said, "I've been taught a lesson again, but I have to admit it."

"... Your Majesty, I will immediately draft the regulations for free admission. I guarantee it will be handled perfectly."

......

Liu Ce had never seen the real Chang'an.

In his past life, he had seen photos of the rammed earth foundation of the Weiyang Palace ruins and watched the restoration animation in a documentary, but those were all "knowledge".

Now, the inner city of Chang'an... no, the corpse of this city... lies within walking distance of him, and his modern-day bias towards the words "Han Chang'an" is stronger than anyone else's.

The moment Liu Ce stepped into the inner city of Chang'an, which was the real Chang'an in the past, the first thing he felt was not solemnity... but emptiness.

The rammed earth walls of the inner city of Chang'an are still there, and most sections are even relatively intact, with thick foundations and tall walls. However, many places inside the walls are empty.

It wasn't the kind of emptiness that's just empty space; it was the kind of emptiness that's been hollowed out... Whole stretches of village ruins were overgrown with weeds, wild jujube trees grew taller than a person in the cracks between the rubble, and a thick layer of yellow soil and moss covered the broken bricks of the foundation walls. Stepping on them felt soft and spongy, like walking between the withered ribs of some giant beast, with each step making a rustling sound.

"Your Majesty..." Song Yingxing walked beside him, his voice low, not like a Minister of Works who had just been in high spirits because of the railway's opening, but more like a descendant leading people to sweep a tomb.

"This road... used to be called Anmen Street, leading directly to the front hall of Weiyang Palace. In the past, both sides of the road were lined with government offices and noble residences, with carriages and horses rumbling, banners obscuring the sun, and pedestrians thronging shoulder to shoulder. Now..."

He didn't finish speaking.

Because the scene ahead had already told him everything.

The rammed earth foundation of the front hall of Weiyang Palace still stands... massive, square, and immovable, rising majestically on the horizon like a low hill with its top flattened, the weeds on the foundation swaying in the wind. But the wooden buildings that once stood on the foundation? All gone.

All that remained were the array of charred postholes, the remnants of collapsed brick walls, and a few makeshift foundations hastily built with broken bricks... These things didn't even qualify as "repairs"; at best, they were just makeshift shelters huddled inside the giant's skeleton, barely enough to keep out the wind and rain.

The area on the east side of the front hall... which should have been the location of Xuanshi Hall, Wenshi Hall, and Qingliang Hall... is now a large open space filled with dandelions. When the wind blows, the white fluff flies everywhere, contrasting with the grayish-yellow rammed earth cross-section, making it eerily quiet, like a silent funeral.

The moment Liu Ce stepped onto the steps, his boots crushed a piece of broken tile... He bent down to pick it up and saw that it was a piece of glazed tile end, and the four seal characters "长生无极" (meaning "immortality without limit") could still be vaguely discerned. Although the patterns were blurred, the exquisite craftsmanship of that time was still evident.

He stood there for a long time, clutching the roof tile.

"How many times has it been burned?"

Liu Ce asked. His tone was flat, revealing neither joy nor anger.

Song Yingxing flipped through his notebook: "The records I found state: At the end of Wang Mang's reign, the Green Forest Army entered the city and burned it down once. When the Red Eyebrow Army withdrew, they set fire to the palaces and burned it down again. In total... at least two major fires."

"Two big fires." Liu Ce repeated, gently placing the roof tile back on the edge of the platform, as if putting down someone who shouldn't be disturbed.

Changle Palace is located to the east of Weiyang Palace. It was originally the Empress Dowager's residence area, and its scale was second only to Weiyang Palace.

But it's worse than Weiyang... because it doesn't even qualify as a "spectacular ruin".

When he walked in, the first thing Liu Ce noticed was the ground... it was too flat.

It's not the kind of flatness achieved by artificial leveling, but rather the flatness resulting from natural settling and cultivation.

Some areas were even turned into vegetable gardens by later generations. Rows and rows of lush green vegetables grew on the ruins of the former Great Xia Palace, looking exceptionally vibrant.

Beside it was a section of crumbling wall, with a copper component that had long since rusted into red clay embedded in it. It was unclear whether it was a door hinge or a beam support, but it gleamed with dark red rust in the setting sun.

"Chang Le Palace... was the first to be abandoned," Cai Yong said softly, his tone tinged with regret as he spoke of it, befitting a scholar.

"After Emperor Guangwu established Luoyang as the capital, Chang'an was demoted to the Western Capital, and officials were only sent there for ancestral temple sacrifices. The court occasionally allocated funds to repair the Gao Temple and a few key mausoleums, but the palace complex... was uninhabited and therefore unmaintained."

The rammed earth foundation held up, but the wooden structure, tiled roof, and painted decorations... all rotted away within a few decades. Eventually, even local residents came and dismantled the bricks and tiles as building materials, taking them back to build pigsties and stoves. What remained... was only the foundation and the stories.

An official muttered under his breath, "This is too much... compared to our Luoyang..."

He didn't dare say the second half of the sentence.

But Liu Ce said it for him: "That's terrible, isn't it?"

He squatted down, plucked a leaf of vegetable growing in a crack in the wall, crushed it, and smelled it... a fresh, clean fragrance.

"The bustling restaurants, academies, workshops, newly laid railway tracks, and steel mills of Luoyang, though separated from the vegetable fields here by nine hundred miles, seem like two different worlds."

One is running forward, the other is collapsing backward.

Mingguang Palace is located at the northernmost point, near the Wei River, and is situated in a relatively low-lying area.

When I went inside, the air changed... damp, cold, and with a fishy smell, like something was rotting underground.

Upon closer inspection, a large area was found to be submerged by groundwater. In spring, when the Wei River rises, the floodwaters leave a clear yellow line on the remaining wall, rising a full two feet above the ground.

The foundation subsided unevenly, and the ground cracked with a gap as wide as an arm, with reeds growing in the cracks and their roots penetrating deep into the fissures.

"Mingguang Palace..." Cai Yong smiled bitterly, "The name was the most beautiful, but the ending was the most helpless. The terrain was low and close to the river. After it was abandoned, no one took care of the drainage ditches. The Wei River soaked it, and slowly... it became like this. The water softened the foundation, the walls collapsed, and after they collapsed, no one took care of them anymore."

Liu Ce didn't speak, but simply looked around.

The light shone from the northeast, falling on the shallowly watered ruins of the courtyard. The scattered reflections flickered, like countless eyes watching the ruins.

The facade of the entire Han Empire, the physical body of the "starting point of the Silk Road" and the "first capital under heaven," is now just this.