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Presented by Li Zhaosha?, (former) minster to His Grace of Entropy.

 Translation by Jonathan Walton?, anchor to the Power of Moments.

Àn shì zhi gùn, wu yún zhi luò.

Lit. "As the age rolls, dark (alt. raven/crow) clouds fall."

Definition:

The Chinese language remnant of the so-called Sanctity of Records? miracle, appearing in many texts where knowledge of the Lost Years was previously entrusted to paper, wood, stone, metal, digital, or memetic encoding?. It is unknown whether this epitaph was specifically chosen by the author of the miracle, or whether it is simply the consequence of the miracle's working or the process by which the Lost years became lost. Many scholars have assumed the later case to hold true and have analyzed the words for their deeper significance. However, it is the opinion of most respected scholars (i.e. those that Li agreed with) that the 8 characters hold no particular interest.

Interestingly, the last 4 characters only appear in a very small number of confirmed cases: only three texts, out of the several dozen Chinese language sources in which the Sanctity of Records? miracle seems to have operated. It is a miracle of scholarship that we even know the second half of the Chinese epitaph at all. I am not wholy familiar with current scholarship on the Sanctity of Records? epitaph in Western languages, but it seems this is a situation unique to Sino-Tibetan and Altaic language families [which includes all Chinese "dialects," Tibetan, Burmese, Turkish, Manchu, Mongolian, and sometimes Japanese and Korean].

The form the epitaph takes in Chinese, with four characters and then another four that are presumed to be known by the reader and therefore unnecessary, mimicks several common structural characteristics of two different types of [Chinese] idioms. The four character structure is a trademark of chéng yu, the most well known idiomatic form. Additionally, the manner in which the second half of the epitaph is often left out, presumed to be well-known and understood by the reader, is similar to many common folk idioms, catagorized as sú yu.

See also:

Memetic Encoding?, Sanctity of Records?

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This is an A entry in the Lexicon of the Lost 500 Years.