Chapter 7: Divine Book, Save Me!
Yuan Ye didn’t know the burden perilla oil placed on the farmers. After Yayoi left, he kept the lamp burning late into the night, a display of extravagance.
Firstly, it was only eight o’clock in the evening, and even if he was tired from climbing mountains all day, he couldn’t sleep; secondly, in his current situation, he was under immense psychological pressure and simply couldn’t sleep.
Suddenly transmigrating to the Japanese Warring States period, where should he go?
What should he do?
The current time is approximately 1550 or 1551 AD. China should be under the Great Ming. Which emperor is on the throne? Is his historical mission to fight the Manchus and save Chinese civilization?
With his excellent high school history knowledge, Yuan Ye counted on his fingers for a long time, estimating that it seemed to be the reign of the Jiajing Emperor, who was known for “every household being clean.” Then… the Jiajing Emperor reigned for over forty years, followed by the Longqing Emperor, who reigned for about six or seven years, then the Wanli Emperor, who reigned for about fifty years, and after the Wanli Emperor was the Chongzhen Emperor, who also reigned for about ten years…
He couldn’t calculate any further than this. It was still nearly a hundred years and four or five generations before the Manchus entered the pass. If converted to Peng Zu’s lifespan, he might live until—Peng Zu lived for eight hundred years, but he used the sixty-day cycle for years, so one year was sixty days, meaning he lived for about one hundred and thirty to forty years. Perhaps he could last that long?
But even if he did last that long, going to support the Ming and resist the Qing at over a hundred years old… that’s a bit too absurd!
Then should he go back and raise the Red Flag?
Life for commoners in the mid-Ming Dynasty seemed to be bearable, barely enough to eat. Later, there was Zhang Juzheng’s reform, which eased class contradictions. Moreover, with the current level of productivity, there was no working class. Relying solely on farmers in a state of subsistence and old intellectuals, could they raise the Red Flag?
It felt like the timing was wrong, lacking a foundation, and the possibility of success was very small, while the probability of being beheaded as a heretic was quite high.
Then, should he return to the Great Ming and become a wealthy man, a great landlord, make a large sum of money, and then promote scientific theories to start an Industrial Revolution? It’s a bit risky. Without destruction, there can be no construction. Feudal dynasties are likely to be unable to adapt to the progress of science and technology, and will definitely face various open and hidden attacks. It may not be as smooth as in transmigration novels.
What if he dies? Perhaps those scientific theories would instead benefit European countries, making China’s future even more dire. But it seems there’s no other path. If he must take this path, then… he must proceed cautiously and weigh things carefully.
How to return to the Great Ming? The straight-line distance alone is over two thousand kilometers…
It’s impossible to buy a plane ticket now and be back in China in three and a half hours.
Yuan Ye pondered for a while, and the more he thought about it, the more difficult it seemed.
Given the transportation and living conditions of this era, traveling alone, even with anti-inflammatory drugs, he wouldn’t be too afraid of getting sick, but continuous jolting and unfamiliar environments could still be fatal. Moreover, the current Muromachi Shogunate had basically lost control of the entire country. Many farmers on land were half-civilian, half-bandit. The sea was even worse; pirates and water bandits were likely everywhere. He might be served up as a dish before even reaching Southern Kyushu.
Even if he was extremely lucky and made it all the way to Southern Kyushu without incident, it was still the “Kan’go Trade” period. How to get onto a tribute ship to the Great Ming would be a problem. This was a guaranteed profitable venture, and blood was shed every year to compete for spots. Could a foreigner with no connections get on an official ship?
Perhaps Sino-Japanese trade had already been severed at this point, and there was no legal way to go to the Great Ming…
Then, what about smuggling in on a smuggling ship? Zhu Yuanzhang’s Yellow Registers and Baojia system were unlikely to be mere decorations. Mandarin Chinese and Ming Dynasty Chinese would likely have significant differences. What if, due to language barriers, he was mistaken for a Japanese pirate and beheaded…
He couldn’t rely on luck. The “foreigners from overseas” trope popular in webnovels wouldn’t work. Without household registration and a travel permit, if you tried to sneak into coastal areas, you would definitely be reported. Otherwise, anyone who harbored such a “foreigner from overseas” would be implicated. At best, they would lose their fortune; at worst, they would be classified as colluding with pirates, and their entire family would be enslaved.
Right, he didn’t have money for a boat ticket either. Smuggling ships and pirate ships likely wouldn’t support card payments. Even if they did, there would be no guarantee of personal safety. Anyone with a shred of sense wouldn’t board such a ship—what good could pirates be? They’d make your life a living hell halfway through!
Traveling alone was already so difficult, and now he had to bring along an unconscious, fair-skinned, plump, quite handsome, and completely defenseless foolish son. The difficulty would increase tenfold.
No matter how he thought about it, this was hell difficulty!
Yuan Ye pondered back and forth, only to realize he seemed to be trapped in Japan. Moreover, he was a pauper, with nothing but a foolish son, no gold, no silver, not even a single copper coin.
Reality was despairing.
However, he had a difficult childhood and a very resolute disposition. Before long, he forcefully extinguished negative emotions like fear and dejection.
The sixty-four hexagrams of the I Ching, the first being Qian, begins with the line: “Heaven’s movement is strong; thus the superior man makes himself strong and untiring.”
Would being afraid prevent him from being beaten? Would dejection improve the situation?
Never!
Living in this world, fear, weakness, and dejection are useless. Only by facing difficulties directly and striving relentlessly is there a path to survival.
No matter how difficult, he had to live well. Living meant hope. Perhaps one day, when the mountain mist rose again, he could carry his foolish son back to modern times.
Given his current conditions, directly taking his foolish son back to the Great Ming was unrealistic, with a 99% chance of annihilation along the way. Yuan Ye immediately began to check his available resources, changing his primary goal to survival. He had to ensure they could survive safely first, then worry about other things.
He opened his hiking backpack and started to take things out.
A set of quick-drying clothes, a bottle of sports drink, a bottle of purified water, a pack of compressed biscuits, two Snickers bars, a bottle of tooth cleaning gel, two large-capacity power banks, a bag of trash bags, a small bundle of rescue rope, a small flashlight, a box of carbon fishing line, a taser, a signal flare gun, and a first aid kit.
Inside the first aid kit were a small pack of bandages, a can of Yunnan Baiyao spray, a packet of quick hemostatic powder, a roll of sterile bandages, a can of insect repellent spray, a small pack of sunburn mask, a small bottle of loratadine, an injection of cardiotonic, a blister pack each of painkillers, anti-inflammatory antibiotics, and fever reducers, a pack of cooling patches, and a pack of alcohol wipes.
In addition, he and his foolish son carried two smartphones, two genuine leather wallets （ with some paper money, Suica cards, credit cards, membership cards ）, and a small half-pack of wet wipes.
These items were more than enough for short-term hiking and mountaineering, but for turbulent times, they were somewhat insufficient.
After inventorying the items, Yuan Ye pondered for a while, estimating the uses of each item. He found that there weren’t many useful items, nor many that could be sold for money, and even fewer that were valuable. At most, they could only provide temporary relief for an urgent need…
Of course, being able to provide temporary relief was enough. He didn’t need to worry too much about money. If he couldn’t make money with knowledge beyond this era, it would be impossible. The main problem now was how to establish a foothold and how to protect the lives of two people in turbulent times.
Personal safety was the top priority.
His gaze swept over the medicines in the first aid kit, and he felt that being a doctor would be good. Generally, no one would want to kill a doctor.
On the contrary, most people liked to be friends with doctors, just as the 《Kojiki》 of Japan states: In life, one needs three kinds of friends: a wise person, a noble person, and a doctor.
With this halo, the mortality rate in turbulent times would be reduced by at least 80%.
It’s just that these medicines are too few. Even if he saved them, they would probably only be enough to treat seven or eight people.
Then, should he specialize in treating dying noble samurai?
Should he wander around in turbulent times with his foolish son looking for them?
Yuan Ye’s thoughts raced, making various assumptions and rejecting them one by one. Suddenly, he remembered something and quickly took out his mobile phone to turn it on—after realizing he had most likely transmigrated, he had turned off his phone. It still had a little over 70% battery.
The phone still had no signal, of course. Small apps like the bus app were useless. Even using it as a map was difficult; five hundred years had passed, rivers had changed course countless times, and hills might have been leveled. Its reference value was greatly reduced. At this moment, he remembered a book in his reader.
His gaze quickly scanned through trash books like 《My Girlfriend is a Villainess》 and 《Absolute Ichiban》, which were of no help to his current situation—although those characters also transmigrated to Japan, they were at least in modern society. Even if they couldn’t make it, they wouldn’t starve to death by working construction. It could only be considered ordinary, very basic transmigration. His situation was much more serious. Not only was he on the verge of starvation, but his personal safety was also not guaranteed, and he had a foolish son with him, with the possibility of total annihilation at any moment.
His gaze finally fell on 《Barefoot Doctor’s Manual》. This was the life-saving book he was looking for.
He used to ask for books in reader groups frequently. Once, he saw group members discussing “The Three Great Books of Transmigration,” and a kind person even uploaded the e-books for everyone to appreciate and browse. Out of curiosity, he downloaded and took a look.
《Militia Military Training Manual》 and 《Friend of Military and Civilian Dual-Use Talents》 were useless to him. He never thought he would actually transmigrate one day. He flipped through them to satisfy his curiosity and then deleted them. However, because he liked hiking, he found the part about Chinese herbal medicine in 《Barefoot Doctor’s Manual》 quite interesting and kept it in his reader.
Now, this book was truly life-saving, in every sense of the word.
Unlike traditional Western medicine training that first explains anatomy, pathology, and pharmacology, this divine book focuses on specific problems, simplifying complexity with the most straightforward language and the most practical methods to popularize disease diagnosis and treatment. It covers everything from observation, listening, questioning, and pulse-taking to acupuncture techniques, from the collection and preparation of Chinese herbal medicine to practical surgical operations in Western medicine, achieving the goal of “as long as you can read, you can be a barefoot doctor and quickly diagnose and treat 99% of common diseases.”
This is a divine book that has saved hundreds of millions of lives, and now Yuan Ye had to rely on it to survive.
Thank you, ancestors, thank you immensely!
After confirming, Yuan Ye turned off his phone. The phone + two large-capacity power banks could support the phone working in power-saving mode for seven to ten days. He would save as much battery as possible and quickly transcribe the book.
Of course, this is the crystallization of the wisdom of the ancients, involving the ancestral secret prescriptions contributed by nearly a hundred master TCM practitioners. It must absolutely not be leaked in the medieval period of Japan. Secrecy must be maintained.
If he copied it using Pinyin, as long as his foolish son didn’t wake up, he would be the only one in the world who could understand it. Even if he accidentally died, there would be no need to worry.
With a plan in mind and having roughly outlined his strategy, Yuan Ye felt fatigue creeping in. He covered Meng Ziqi with his jacket, then covered himself with the quick-drying clothes, curled up, and slowly fell asleep.
He hoped his foolish son would wake up naturally tomorrow!
He hoped the mountain mist would rise again tomorrow, and he could return to modern times!
