The pages continued to turn under the oil lamp.
Olivia had stopped reading word by word—those Urske letters were as clear to her dragon vision as etchings on crystal.
She read faster and faster, her fingers gliding across the page almost too slowly to keep up with her eyes.
“So, while people change nature through labor, they also change themselves.”
Gaoerji said nothing.
He simply sat quietly across from her, the water in his enamel cup no longer steaming.
He paused.
“Labor tools went from stone to bronze, and from bronze to iron. Every change wasn’t just a change in tools—the people using those tools changed too.The dexterity of the hand, the judgment of the mind, the language used for coordinated labor—all of it came from that.”
She turned a page.
“And then, division of labor appeared. Agriculture split from hunting, handicrafts split from agriculture, merchants split from handicrafts. Each division pushed productivity up a level, but at the same time—it also divided the fruits of labor away from the laborers.”
Her finger stopped on a passage.
“The laborer built the palace, yet lived in a hut. The laborer created beauty, yet became deformed. The laborer created civilization, yet regressed to savagery.”
She looked up.
“All of this is right. Every word is right. How could this be banned as a forbidden book?”
Gaoerji set down his enamel cup.
His index finger slowly traced a circle around the rim, then he raised those murky brown eyes to meet hers.
“Because when I wrote this chapter, I hesitated myself.”
“Hesitated about what?”
“About whether to write out the conclusion.”
He leaned forward, flipping open the latter half of the book, pointing at a line of Urske script gleaming in the lamplight.
“Look here—the value created by labor. Part of it returns to the laborer in the form of wages; the other part stays in the capitalist’s hands. The ratio between wages and surplus value determines the degree of exploitation. But because the means of production are in the capitalist’s hands, that ratio is always his to decide.”
His finger paused against the page.
“So the blacksmith can’t decide how much a horseshoe sells for, and the miner can’t decide how much ore sells for. The capitalist can.”
“And then?”
“And then—”
He turned the book to the final chapter, the pages rustling softly in the quiet study.
“If one day, all the means of production no longer belong to one person or one class, but to all laborers—then the surplus value would return to the laborers themselves. The blacksmith’s wages would no longer be charity from others, and the miner’s safety would no longer depend on mountain gods to bless it. Division of labor would still exist, but the exploitation it brings—would disappear.”
He closed the book.
“That’s why this book was banned. Because it doesn’t talk about how to improve the price of horseshoes, or how to make the nobles treat workers a little better. It talks about—how the entire system can be replaced.”
He paused.
“In other words—it shakes the very foundation of the Emperor’s rule.”
Olivia was silent for a long moment.
She suddenly felt that Mount Sergei’s existence wasn’t so frightening after all.
The mountain god, the Sacred Lake, that legendary ice cave said to reflect a person’s true face—they were, at the end of the day, just a piece of rock, a stretch of water, a block of ice.
But someone had linked the mountain to a god, and the god to morality, and morality to obedience.
And so, when miners were pressed beneath the shafts choking on dust, they looked up at the snow on the peak and thought it was divine will—then went back to chipping at the stone.
But all of this seemed too idealistic, too intangible.
Like everything had been planned out perfectly, yet there was no way to actually implement it.
Olivia suddenly recalled the Holy Mountain that Hui had mentioned.
“So, the god doesn’t exist, right? But the god’s will exists, because someone speaks on the god’s behalf. Who speaks for Sergei? The Grand Duke? The priests? Those nobles at the banquets who say ‘may the mountain god bless you’?”
Gaoerji nodded silently.
“So Mount Sergei… is just an excuse.”
“It’s not the mountain suppressing them. It’s the mountain being used to suppress them.”
Olivia sank back into her chair.
The wide sleeves of her white gown rested on the armrests, the silver-thread frost patterns catching the lamplight.
She remembered the feeling at the dragon political banquets, listening to the elders preach the greatness of dragonkind—that nausea felt much like this now, but back then she had only felt bored.
Now she knew.
It wasn’t just boredom.
It was someone using the word “greatness” to plug her ears, so she wouldn’t ask “why can dragon commoners only dig pyrite in the pits their whole lives?”
“So, what does the teacher plan to name this book?”
Gaoerji looked down at his hands resting on the table.
The knuckles were thick, the fingertips covered in heavy calluses, and the old scar on his wrist gleamed with a faint blue luster under the lamp.
“Originally I wanted to call it <A Critique of Political Economy>. Then I wanted to call it <Das Kapital>.”
He paused, picked up the enamel cup, and took a sip of cold water.
Then he set it down, the bottom clinking against the wooden edge of the table with a dull thud.
“Now, I want to call it—<A Treatise on Resistance>.”
Olivia silently repeated those three words to herself.
Not “debate”—”resistance.”
Not written for the professors in the academies, but for everyone whose surplus was being taken from them.
“What do you plan to do next?”
Gaoerji placed his hand on that dark brown–covered forbidden book, his fingertips brushing lightly over the worn spine, and then pushed the book toward Olivia.
“Little miss. You know, on the frozen ground of Urske, in the coldest part of winter, even the trees split open from the frost. But that sound—it’s the tree telling everyone: it’s still alive. The locals call it ‘night-split’—it was never the sound of a tree surrendering. It’s the tree telling everyone: it’s still alive.”
He picked up the enamel cup, wiping the rim with his rough thumb.
“On my own, I truly have very little strength. Writing—it has no army, no magic, no bloodline advantage, no backing. Others carry swords, while I can only hold a pen. But as the saying goes—’a single spark can start a prairie fire.’ I don’t need to see how far the fire spreads. I only need to place the ember here. As long as there’s still someone on this frozen ground turning these pages at night, the fire hasn’t gone out.”
His voice stayed steady from beginning to end.
It wasn’t a rousing speech from a podium, nor a fervent slogan at a rally.
It was one person, deep in the night, speaking to another—carefully sorting through the very words she had just said, and placing them into her hands.
Olivia lowered her head.
She knew the “ember” the old man spoke of wasn’t just a metaphor.
He had said at the hideout that “words outlive bullets,” and now he was pressing all of his firepower into the covers of a single book.
Tonight was long.
She thought she finally understood this old man’s resolve.