Chapter 66: Subtly Blending In Without A Sound
E Ji is a pure Han person. She has all the advantages of the Han people, as well as most of their disadvantages.
She is as tenacious as wild grass. Even if no one appreciates her, she will firmly spread her leaves and display her unique beauty. When she has no partner, she drums on the wasteland, hoping the drum sound can bring back a man who can reproduce offspring with her.
Yun Ce came, and then he became her man.
This was given by the Dragon God, and she accepts it.
E Ji doesn’t really understand what love is, nor does she know how to express her affection. Giving birth to ten sons for Yun Ce is her ultimate answer to her love for him.
She wants a home. Before, her small wooden house was her home. She hoped to build a home with Yun Ce in the small wooden house. Then Yun Ce wanted to leave, so she followed him, abandoning the wooden house that had sheltered her from wind and rain for many years.
She has been working hard to build her own home. This home needs not only money but also people.
Yun Ce did not ask E Ji, but everything she did was exactly what he wanted.
According to Feng An, he and Liang Kun had become vassals of the Yun Clan.
The craft of carving characters and seals on wood is not rare at all in the Great Han. As long as one is a scholar, this is an essential skill.
1 Yun Ce had Feng An and Liang Kun carve characters in relief on more than a dozen wooden blocks, then adjust the order of these dozen wooden blocks, bind them together with rope, apply ink, and press them onto Feng An’s arm.
1 Feng An looked at the characters on his arm and read puzzledly: “Is it not a pleasure to have friends come from afar?”
1 Liang Kun leaned over to look at the characters on Feng An’s arm and said puzzledly to Yun Ce: “What do you want to do? Just say it directly. When handling your affairs, we two will be diligent, but not for you personally.”
1 Yun Ce looked suspiciously at these two somewhat bewildered people and said: “If you carve all the characters on wooden blocks and arrange them according to the content of a book, wouldn’t you immediately have many books?”
1 Feng An’s eyes lit up. He immediately fetched a blank silk manuscript, took the wooden blocks bound by Yun Ce, pressed them on it, and sure enough, a clear line of characters appeared: “Is it not a pleasure to have friends come from afar?”
1 Before Feng An could express his joy, Liang Kun said: “This is wasting silk manuscript. It’s better to write the characters on silk manuscript by hand, and it’s more beautiful.”
1 Yun Ce said: “Using it on silk manuscript is naturally wasteful, but using it on paper is different.”
1 Feng An immediately pulled a ball of paper from his sleeve. It looked like they had also learned to use this thing to wipe their buttocks.
1 The wooden block was pressed on the paper, and that line of characters immediately appeared, but it quickly blurred. Feng An was somewhat disappointed.
1 Yun Ce smiled and said: “Using Yi tree bark can produce the best paper, which is not only suitable for writing but also for storage. Even using ink and brush on it is very good.”
2 Feng An and Liang Kun both said nothing, just busied themselves disassembling the bound wooden blocks, shuffling them, putting them into a small cloth bag, and having Feng An take it to E Ji.
2 “You don’t believe this can succeed?”
2 Liang Kun looked at E Ji, who had just entered the door, and said to Feng An: “We believe it. Whether it’s papermaking or printing, it will surely become reality as you said. Now, the matter I want to advise you on is that these two things should be known only to the four of us.
2 After you become a hegemon on one side, we can then discuss the possibility of implementing these two things.”
2 Feng An looked at the darkening sky, bit his lips, and said: “We already understand how important these two things are. They are enough to become the foundation of a family for ten thousand generations.
2 But absolutely not now.”
2 Liang Kun stood up and said: “I’ll go to the school now to rally those going to the Prefectural Office to petition. This time, even if there is bloodshed, you must be qualified to participate in the Grand Competition.”
2 Feng An said wistfully: “That woman from the Grand Master Rank family, though her desires are hard to satisfy, is also a fool. I want to pry open a channel for upward mobility for the Patriarch from her.”
2 Yun Ce did not stop them. He also wanted to see if this common method could really work.
2 Through this matter, Yun Ce had already felt that the sky of the Great Han was dark. He also wanted to see how dark the sky of this Great Han could really be.
3 The Great Han on Earth was a hereditary empire, which Yun Ce understood well. If taking Huo Qubing as the time coordinate and himself as the origin, then this Great Han had developed for 2143 years. Not only was it complacent, but it even had some regression, which was unforgivable.
3 The Great Han had become as dark as it is now; Feng An and Liang Kun, these two young men, were somewhat indignant, but after experiencing the riots in Pingyuan City and Sheyang City, their youthful passion had been worn smooth.
3 It was precisely because they saw how dark the path ahead was that they thought to rely on Yun Ce and bet on a different future.
3 Yun Ce had little indignation toward the darkness of Great Han society. As the direct disciple of an old rebel family, he truly felt that the darker Great Han society was, the brighter his prospects were.
3 While eating dinner with E Ji, E Ji clearly felt that Yun Ce was very happy. She refilled his bowl with bean porridge, sat beside him, and said: “What are you happy about? Tell me.”
3 Yun Ce pointed outside and said: “The sky is so dark.”
3 E Ji looked outside and said: “The full moon is shrinking; the weather will gradually get colder. In another fifteen days, there will be frost. Sleep with me at night; it’ll be warm.”
3 She never concealed that she was the matriarch of this group. Even when An Ji and the other women heard it, they pretended not to hear and sweetly sipped from their porridge bowls one by one.
3 “Feng An and Liang Kun, these two people, gave the Patriarch very good advice today. I plan to reward each of them with one hundred coins. What does Young Master think?”
3 Yun Ce saw An Ji, who was eating intently, twitch her ears slightly, and knew that the idea of using rewards to establish hierarchy probably came from her. He was also willing to strengthen E Ji’s position.
4 He smiled and said: “An Ji is also good; reward her as well.”
4 After finishing the meal, Yun Ce felt that he had completely become a Great Han person. He ate Great Han food, spoke Great Han language, followed Great Han customs, and was fully integrated into the Great Han. If Zhang Min called him a pig demon again, that would be too insulting.
4 Zhang Min easily found Liu Chang’an from Pingyuan City among the seven or eight hundred name cards of out-of-town scholars applying for the Grand Competition exam.
4 Seeing the clear seal of Zhang Gong Yaliang on the recommendation letter, she pulled out her own seal from her sleeve, applied some sealing clay, and stamped it all over that silk manuscript recommendation form.
4 When dawn broke, Yun Ce woke up. He had actually woken up long ago but couldn’t sleep twelve hours like Great Han people. With the cold weather, the Great Han rich people’s way to keep warm was to stuff as many women as possible into the bed. With more people and less space, it naturally got warm.
4 E Ji meant to bring An Ji and the group of women to his bed to sleep, but Yun Ce worried the younger ones would wet the bed and politely declined.
4 Seeing that Yun Ce wanted only the older ones and not the younger ones, E Ji simply wanted none. She stripped naked, climbed on, and claimed her body had been like a small stove since childhood, warm and toasty.
4 In fact, during sleep, a woman’s body doesn’t produce much heat. Instead, Yun Ce, covered with only a thin cloth blanket, had a body as hot as the small stove E Ji mentioned.
4 The weather got cold quickly. Unlike what E Ji said about fifteen days before frost, when Yun Ce walked onto the street, he saw a layer of frost covering the stone slabs.
4 His goal today was the school. There were many books there, and he could borrow them to read, though it required payment.
5 He had been studying hard lately, but the family situation didn’t allow him to buy more books. Besides, he always felt that even a horse carriage full of books wouldn’t be enough for him to read in one night.
5 People always said that Qin Shi Huang received memorials weighing two hundred jin a day. Now, truly seeing those piles of bamboo slips and wooden slips, two hundred jin really wasn’t much.
5 Reading and looking at books had become physical labor, which filled Yun Ce with resentment toward this Great Han that had developed for two thousand one hundred years.
5 Two hundred fifty years after Huo Qubing’s death, Cai Lun invented real paper. These people had busied themselves for two thousand one hundred years, and the paper they produced even needed care for use in the toilet.
5 There were already many people on the streets, mainly caravans. It was these caravans constantly traveling outside that supported the food and clothing of everyone in Chuyun City.
5 That’s right, Chuyun City had no agriculture either. It was a pure commercial city, with thousands of caravans entering Chuyun City every day, bringing produce from small villages like Hekou Village into the city.
5 Yun Ce originally thought that an economy without agriculture was a deformed economy. Logically, at this time, farming was the top priority of the world.
5 The strange thing was here: the people of Chuyun City lived very well. Most people seemed quite affluent. Even though there were many slaves, they looked like people, without the brutality of Pingyuan City or the cruelty of Sheyang City.
5 The school was just ahead. After turning past the courtyard of a wealthy family’s house, one could see the school. Just as Yun Ce was about to turn, the gate of the wealthy house opened, and Zhang Min walked out, grinning at Yun Ce: “Pig demon, where do you think you’re escaping to!”
5 The moment he saw Zhang Min, Yun Ce wanted to run, but he forcibly controlled his legs because Doggy told him there were no bystanders around.
6 “I’m not a pig demon, just a poor scholar. Please have mercy and let me go.”
6 “If you didn’t have your hand on your waist, I might have believed your pitiful words.” Zhang Min seemed to be talking to Yun Ce, but her attention was entirely on an exquisite cage hanging from her waist.
6 Yun Ce naturally noticed the cage too. There was no bird inside; it contained a blue-green-colored insect about half a foot long with big, chubby eyes—quite cute.
6 He couldn’t help asking: “What is this?”
6 Zhang Min suppressed her deep disappointment and said: “Spirit Seeking Insect. If you are a pig demon who has contacted Dragon Spirit, its body will turn pink.”
6 Yun Ce was very unaccustomed to Zhang Min speaking to him kindly, so he said vigilantly: “I’ve passed your test, have I?”
