Little Ruanxu was holding a wooden sword and laughing and playing with a group of children of the same age or younger than him on the road. They passed by the old wizard of the Diyou family, but the children would not recognize this person. The old man, because before they were born, the old man had been in prison.
Nine years later, it turned into ten years in a blink of an eye. In ancient times, thirty years were one lifetime, and ten years seemed like a lifetime ago... It could barely be said to be half a lifetime.
The children were chatting, and the topic they talked about was about the school. It turned out that there was a big noise in the papermaking workshop. It seemed that the first batch of paper was almost ready, so the school was about to start preparations.
It is said that what Yu Zai means is that even if the paper still needs a little time, it can be temporarily replaced by bamboo slips. The first batch of students, the desks and textbooks used are relatively rudimentary. This is a personal effort to overcome... ..
"What kind of school? I won't go there. I can't play when I go to school. Why don't you let me play? I know everything my mother taught me. What else do I need to learn?"
Someone spoke up and felt that the school was boring, and everyone responded. The person raised the small bamboo pole in his hand and loudly told the children around him:
"If we really go to school then, we won't go to the first day, haha, look at the wonderful faces of those adults!"
"Ah, aren't you afraid of your butt blossoming?"
A child touched his buttocks at this time, seeming to think of some unspeakable and very painful memories, and said with a twisted expression and grinning: "Hey...don't your mother know how to beat you? My mother My mother used to teach me how to read Chinese characters and read divination, and whenever I didn’t know how to do it, she would spank me, which hurt a lot.”
"She won't hit you for no reason. That's because you don't learn well."
"What do you mean I don't learn well? It means I can't learn and I'm completely useless."
The children said bad things about their parents. Some of the children were already in their teens. A relatively strong child raised his hands and giggled at everyone and said, "I will be thirteen soon. When I turn thirteen, I won't have to go to school." I went to school, I was an adult by then and was a real warrior!"
"When the time comes, I will go hunting with others and practice my martial arts. You can just sit on the straw mat and sleep..."
"You're so weird. I don't want to go hunting. It's too tiring and too dangerous."
"Hey, the age of adulthood is going to change. It is said that you don't become an adult until you are sixteen."
Yan Xu looked at the stronger child and said, "I heard that it will be implemented soon. From now on, children under the age of sixteen will not be allowed to go to the battlefield or go hunting. They must be in school."
The strong boy's expression suddenly changed, but he suddenly said to Yu Xu: "A Xu, you are following your witch family. Can you go and beg him and ask him to let me go?"
"I'm going to ask my eldest brother, how could such a thing happen?"
Ruan Xu shook his head, but he also agreed with what some people said, that is, going to school is really meaningless. According to the adults, children like him would have to sit in the house on straw mats with their hands in their hands. Holding paper or bamboo boards, scribbling with graphite sticks, listening to the adults talking about the truth in a monotonous manner, and just thinking about it in my mind, I feel that this kind of thing is really boring to the extreme.
"If you don't go to school...what do you want to do in the future? It won't all be hunting, right?"
Someone asked this question.
"I want to make porcelain... It looks good and sells well. I heard you can earn a lot of money."
A child showed a silly smile, as if he was imagining that he had earned a lot of friends.
"If you want to make money, go and do business with Mr. Xu'er. How much money can you make by making porcelain? The middlemen are the ones who make huge profits. I don't even understand this. Just give it a try."
"Look, I heard from the adults that in the future, people who don't study or read books and don't understand knowledge will have to make small money like this."
There was a child who was eccentric, but was quickly beaten by the children around him, and then ran away whining.
Then, the other children continued to chat, talking about their dreams in the future. Some wanted to be a divination master, some wanted to be a blacksmith, some wanted to move bricks at a construction site, and some wanted to join an explosion factory and become a bomber. The child spoke plausibly. It means "wealth is sought in danger"...
"In the future, I will enter the explosion factory. When you don't want to go to school, come to me. I will help you blow up the school with yellow gunpowder! Don't thank me, my name is Huangdi!"
"This is good! This is called professional!"
"You all want to go out to work, but I am different. I just want to inherit my father's land. Don't you know? The benefits of agriculture have improved again this year. I farm at home and get no less good things than you do." , and there are subsidies during holidays..."
In this era, there is no distinction between high and low in any job, and the social consciousness that "everything is inferior, only studying is superior" has not yet taken shape.
"Axu, what about you, what do you want to do?"
"I think Axu will definitely inherit the position of the Akafang clan's wizard. I heard that the current clan leader of the Akafang clan, 'Yufou', likes him very much, and his teacher is a Qi practitioner. He will be the village chief in the future and will not run away."
The children gradually dispersed amidst laughter. It was getting late. Some people were afraid that they would be severely beaten by their parents when they went back. For some people, their parents had already prepared a delicious dinner...
Ruixu also went back, taking an ox cart back to the textile factory. My mother, Ruijing, worked in the textile factory, so she naturally lived here. If she went back to the village, it would be far away.
Now with the farmer's market as the center, various factories have sprung up around it. The old oil mill has now become a place for political offices, so the oil presses have long been moved to other places. It seems that the original clans of each tribe The village is forming a huge circle, and inside this circle are these emerging handicraft bases and new residential areas.
The weakening of clan consciousness has taken a big step forward unconsciously, driven by the social environment.
When Ruan Xu came to the door of his house, he saw a child next door playing with some bugs. The ants were running away. The child laughed and turned around in circles. When he saw Ruan Xu coming back, he called out "brother" crisply.
That was not Yujing's child, but Shijing's child.
He is Dayu's younger brother, Yan Rong.
"You're back?"
When Ruan Jing saw Ruan Xu, she invited him back to eat, and then talked about the school:
"Wu has already said that the school will be opened in ten days. Now the houses have been built. The people in the construction team are really not slow. Those who built the big flood control city back then, because of the constant rotation, our Hongzhou Now there are many more craftsmen..."
"Ten days, so..."
Ruexu looked at Ruijing and said to himself, "I don't want to go." But Ruanjing stared at him for a while. Ruexu was shocked by the look, but he still resisted the pressure and asked:
"Mom, I have a master. Master Yun Zhongzi will not allow me to go to school."
Yu Jing: "Master Yun Zhongzi has already agreed. Wu asked him before and he said that this is a good thing and he will become a lecturer when the time comes."
"What's a lecturer?"
"They are the people who teach you knowledge. When the time comes, you must respect them and not mess around."
"Mom, I can learn things at the Akakata clan. I don't need to go to school. I know all those things..."
"what can you do?"
Ruanjing looked at Yuxu: "Wu said, you are at the age when you are in elementary school. An eight-year-old child. In the past, you could learn to hunt now, but now you can't. Wu said, now you are ten." You are still far from being an adult at six years old, you must learn something..."
Ruexu suddenly became angry: "Mom, the witch said everything. Is everything the witch said correct?"
After he said this, he regretted it fiercely and immediately lowered his head, but Ruanjing was not angry, but responded calmly:
"When we came to the south, we were robbed by the Tong Hong family. At that time, there were people here who had no morals and etiquette. In the words of the Central Plains, they were not very civilized. At that time, if it weren't for the witches who took us out of the predicament, , I was captured by the Tonghong clan a long time ago, and the Chifang clan has long ceased to exist."
"Of course what the witch said is right. Everything the witch said is right. Without him, there would be no land like this. People would fight each other to kill each other without knowing justice and morality. The powerful tribes would oppress the weak. The Diyou clan cut off the Ganpan clan’s toes and asked them to dig mountains.... There are many things you haven’t seen, but those hardships have long passed.”
Ruan Xu listened quietly without saying a word. After Ruan Jing finished speaking, she said to him seriously:
"I remember what you looked like when you were born. Everyone remembers it. The people of the Chifang clan will never forget that when the sun totem appeared and the fire of Emperor Yan disappeared, Mr. Wu Pan delivered my baby. You took a name, and the Erba gods danced the dance of the years."
"The witch said that you were born to welcome the first ray of the morning sun, and Emperor Yan disappeared before you. Mr. Wu Pan said that it was the moment when the sun of the old era and the sun of the new era alternated, so the witch named you I gave him a name and called him Xu."
"So the tribesmen rose up and sang your name. You are the first child born during the revival of our tribe."
Ru Xu suddenly felt a pressure, and his little hands no longer picked up the food, but fell silent. He thought of many things at once, and Ru Jing looked at him, touched his little head, her eyes softened, and her tone became softer. With an inexplicable feeling:
"Why are you angry? You are the hope of all of us. We are waiting for you. Everyone is waiting for you. We have been waiting for too long..."
"But the past, the rise and fall of our tribe in the past, is no longer important..."
"So, just like what the witch said back then...welcome, this is your home."
Ruexu raised his head, looked at his mother, and suddenly asked: "Mom, was Emperor Yan really still alive when I was born?"
"Dead, but he appeared in the form of a divine soul... It should be like this, Teacher Yun Zhongzi said, divine soul..."
"Hmm...then, is Emperor Yan a great man? He lost to Huangdi, why do people still miss him? Some people say that he mismanaged the world and was attacked by Chi You..."
"Of course he is a great person, any ancestor is great."
"Compared to witches?"
Ruexu asked this. Although Ruexu had always known that Wu was a great person, could Wu be on par with Emperor Yan, Shennong, and Huangdi?
Yujing: "What did Master Yun Zhongzi say? Have you asked him this question?"
Ruxu: "Yeah... He said that witchcraft is greater than the Yellow Emperor... He said that in the Huang Emperor's era, there was no such prosperity as it is now. The strong can be used, and the old can be supported. He was raised well when he was young... He said that if everything here could be extended to the entire world, he would be the greatest person in history..."
"Yeah, so, do you want to be such a great person? Where does the knowledge of witches come from?"
Suddenly there was a voice, and both Ruojing and Ruexu looked towards the door, where Huangdi appeared.
"Ah, Master!"
Huang Di asked with a smile, bringing the topic back to the beginning, and then taught Yu Xu:
"Azai once said, read thousands of books and travel thousands of miles. He traveled thousands of miles before he had such extensive knowledge. Now, you don't need to walk thousands of miles, you can read those tens of thousands of miles while sitting in the school. The scenery, this is the luck of your age."
"Summarizing the experience and wisdom of the predecessors, written in books, there are some natural principles that took decades or hundreds of years for the predecessors to understand. But now, you can know it at a glance, and then sigh with emotion, 'It's just that.' .”
"But as long as we do this, it will be a success for the school."
Huang Di came over and Ruan Jing went to prepare a new meal. Huang Di sat in front of Ruan Xu and spoke seriously:
"Let me tell you some stories, about the Yellow Emperor..."
"You know, Wuzhuang lost its beauty, Juliang lost its power, Huangdi lost his knowledge, these three..."
Inside the earthen house, inside and outside the small courtyard wall, there were voices of questions and answers, one large and one small, one after another, just like the time of the past and the future intertwined, so the sky and the earth were covered by night, and the universe was peaceful...
