Chapter 21: Following The Rules Is Pretty Good
Ever since the liquid metal could send him messages, Yun Ce stopped calling it liquid metal and started calling it Doggy instead.
It’s just a pity that this AI Doggy has very basic functions, and the answers it gives are full of errors and omissions, almost like making things up, which might be related to it having too little input content.
Fortunately, E Ji seems to have endless words to say to Yun Ce, her mouth spitting out local dialect nonstop, and Doggy keeps gulu gulu bubbling on the wristband, collecting, categorizing, summarizing…
Seeing so many people didn’t bring Yun Ce much excitement, although from his previous experiences he already felt that this wasn’t a technological civilization world, and now, after being confirmed, he was thoroughly disappointed.
This proves that he has no way to rely on the high-tech civilization here to return home, and might have to stay here forever.
As for riding a dragon home, he had long stopped dreaming of that; although his last contact with the dragon clan was brief, he had already felt their cold indifference.
A piece of cloud floated out from the mountains, blocking the blood moon, and the temperature in Hekou Village dropped sharply. Seeing E Ji hugging her arms and shivering, Yun Ce returned to the wooden house and lay down.
That night, Yun Ce slept very soundly, truly falling asleep; this kind of sleep was completely different from sleeping in the wilderness, very relieving of fatigue.
Sleeping deeply meant sleeping for a long time; when the sky was dimly lit, Yun Ce was startled awake by drum sound.
E Ji across the fire pit was already gone, probably gone to do drumming.
1 Opening the door, he saw dozens of short-statured men staring at him intently. They probably weren’t short before; they became short after losing their legs.
1 Seeing Yun Ce come out, those men scattered using benches as crutches.
1 The gray-bearded shorty without legs didn’t leave; he took out a few bamboo slips and handed them to Yun Ce, intending for him to write his name, native place, parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents’ names on them, and even specially noted that if an ancestor held a position of one thousand shi, he could trace back three more generations.
1 Yun Linchuan’s official rank placed in the Great Han, according to the Great Han’s inheritance of the Qin twenty ranks system, was roughly a marquis; his grandfather’s rank placed in the Great Han was also roughly a great chief; his father’s rank at the time of death placed in the Great Han should be Wu Da Fu.
1 Although Yun Ce wasn’t in the military, as long as the military-civilian conversion was done, his division-level position could also reach the Bu Geng rank; such a family placed in the Great Han could clearly be called a prominent family.
1 Yun Ce pondered for a long time and gave up writing about Yun Linchuan and their brilliant achievements, only writing after his name Yun Ce: Muyun Prefecture, Dingbian Commandery, under the Chuyun Colonel’s Sixth Zao Li Army, Seventh Scout Team as his native place.
1 After the gray-bearded shorty looked it over, he showed an expression of “as expected” and wrote on the bamboo slip: “Forgetting ancestors and turning back on roots is not human.”
1 Yun Ce ignored it; the gray-bearded shorty sighed, picked up the brush, and wrote a character after Yun Ce’s native place—Rogue—and after writing, looked up at him; Yun Ce naturally had no reaction, even feeling that the “rogue” after that character suited him well.
1 Having come here with no job, no fields, no house, being labeled a rogue was truly what everyone expected.
1 Sure enough, seeing Yun Ce unmoved by the title “Rogue,” the gray-bearded shorty decisively added a “rogue” after it, then stared at Yun Ce unblinkingly.
2 Yun Ce remained unmoved; that old thief Yun Linchuan had called himself a proletarian all his life, so being called a rogue wasn’t wronging him.
2 “You can still change it now; once reported, it becomes permanent.”
2 Yun Ce wrote: “Rogue is fine, no change.”
2 The gray-bearded shorty wrote again: “Your body, your blood are gifts from your ancestors; ancestors cannot be insulted.”
2 Yun Ce smiled and shook his head.
2 The gray-bearded shorty sighed, erased the two characters “rogue” after Yun Ce’s household registration, wrote “commoner,” then took out a carving knife and carved the words on the wooden slip exactly as on the model.
2 Yun Ce, familiar with administrative affairs through the dynasties, understood that from this point, this planet had one more full-obligation commoner named Yun Ce.
2 The so-called full-obligation commoner means: when the country goes to war, you must go out with the army as a laborer; when the country needs to build large projects, you must bring your own dry rations to work; when the country needs to collect taxes, as a commoner you have no exemptions; even if you have a son, it’s not good news—you have to pay poll tax.
2 Yun Ce hadn’t seen farmland here; the women went out early in the morning, seeming to make a living from gathering; no able-bodied men were visible, mostly disabled people; even boys around fourteen or fifteen like him were nowhere to be seen, but there were many young girls that age, and even younger ones were much fewer.
2 There weren’t many children in Hekou Village, just a few kittens; this showed that at least ten years ago, the women here had stopped having children much.
3 The reason for this outcome was only one: war.
3 Ten years ago, the men of Hekou Village were conscripted entirely to go to war, and ten years later they hadn’t returned—or rather, in ten years, only those with broken legs who couldn’t fight had returned; any who could still fight are now on the battlefield.
3 Many men had severely injured legs, which was also a great harm to population production.
3 Therefore, after Yun Ce surveyed the population age distribution in Hekou Village, he already knew that the Han Empire here was engaged in a protracted war; he just didn’t know who the enemy was.
3 A place named Muyun Prefecture must be a border area; a place named Dingbian Commandery is even the farthest from the empire’s political and economic center, and this place must be very poor, just like the Gansu he used to stay in—nice place names like Dingxi, Jingyuan, Wwei, Zhangye, Jiuquan, Dunhuang… each name more pleasant than the last, each poorer than the last.
3 No way around it; these places are where the empire displays its martial glory; not giving them a majestic and mighty name would betray the ancestors’ hardships and merits.
3 Now, being in Dingbian Commandery, Yun Ce vaguely felt like he was still living in the Hexi Corridor.
3 E Ji wasn’t there, and they seemed not to eat breakfast; naturally Yun Ce had no breakfast either; because he had eaten excessive dragon eggshell, he wasn’t very sensitive to hunger—he didn’t believe the people here were as insensitive to hunger as him?
3 To test this question, Yun Ce asked the gray-bearded shorty for a weapon; the old guy, hearing Yun Ce was going hunting, generously lent him a spear.
3 The spear shaft was indeed good, heavy in the hand; it was just the spearhead wasn’t great, only two inches long—upon close inspection, the spearhead was only two inches because of grinding.
4 Seeing an old broken wooden bow hanging on the old man’s wall, Yun Ce asked to borrow it, but he refused, chased Yun Ce out, and slammed the door shut hard.
4 Yun Ce shouldered the broken wooden spear and left Hekou Village, heading straight to the place where E Ji had drummed yesterday; he believed that after E Ji’s drumming, there wouldn’t be a single wild beast there.
4 But in his dragon pearl, there were plenty, all the fattest and tenderest little wild boars perfect for roast suckling pig; these little wild boars were what he got when he was hanging out with that little wild boar that had a romantic vibe.
4 Each weighed fifteen or sixteen jin; after gutting, seven or eight jin left; for such a little wild boar, prop up the carcass with wooden sticks, barbecue for less than two hours, and it’s a human world delicacy.
4 After drumming, E Ji was very happy to see Yun Ce come to pick her up; all the way she jili gulu talked to Doggy; since Yun Ce couldn’t understand, he planned to learn after Doggy standardized the local language.
4 What if he learned a mouth full of something like later Tianshui dialect from E Ji, and when he went to a big city, people still couldn’t understand—wouldn’t that be learning in vain?
4 E Ji still liked treating Yun Ce like a donkey to boss around; today’s task was still carrying tree bark; this tree bark was very long, the fiber very long too—from the large amounts of tree bark fiber drying in Hekou Village, their main occupation should be tree bark fiber weaving.
4 Very close, E Ji’s face full of joy was seen very clearly by Yun Ce; she was very much like a young girl version of Lin Qingxia, her eyes too, especially when smiling—her whole face would come alive, even the dim forest would instantly brighten; the only flaw was no chest, no buttocks, body like a hairless beltfish.
4 After drumming, E Ji was already very tired; Yun Ce was willing to help carry more tree bark back for her; halfway, seeing E Ji’s unsteady steps, Yun Ce did a tiger leap, dropped the tree bark, and darted into the grove; when E Ji anxiously called for him, Yun Ce came out of the forest, holding a little wild boar already gutted.
4 E Ji’s gaze at the little wild boar was very scary; Yun Ce felt he should feed E Ji outside first, lest she, craving meat, dismember him that night with her family’s broken chopping knife.
5 Yun Ce was already expert at roast suckling pig; no need to deal with the pig hair on the skin—find some sticks to prop up the little wild boar, dig a soil trench on the ground, wait for tree branches to burn down to charcoal fire, then put the little wild boar on to roast.
5 From the little wild boar’s appearance, E Ji’s gaze never left it; she watched Yun Ce put the little wild boar on the charcoal fire to roast the hair, watched him take out a very nice, very sharp knife to scrape the roasted pig skin to golden brown, watched him sprinkle several kinds of powder on the sizzling oily little wild boar; after that, she only remembered Yun Ce giving her a big pig leg.
5 Finally, she remembered nothing.
5 When she woke again, she was back in her wooden house, stomach full, body warm, mouth fragrant…
5 Yun Ce was shocked by E Ji’s huge appetite; for a nearly ten-jin roast pig, he only got one leg, the rest all went into E Ji’s stomach.
5 If it was just gluttony, fine, but E Ji while eating the roast suckling pig often made woo-woo sounds from her mouth like Doggy when guarding food.
5 Seeing E Ji still lost in reverie, Yun Ce laughed; the gene for loving good food was still strongly expressed in this branch of Han people.
5 “Jili gulu, gulu”
5 “What did I eat earlier? Delicious, 90%”
5 Doggy’s analysis this time was quite accurate.
