Since they’d finished hunting ahead of schedule, the two men got back earlier. The gate for the ice wall was made to open up a lot wider in order to facilitate the transportation of giant prey. The wooden door Chen Qi made had two sides, one that was normally closed, and the gate would only be fully opened when larger prey were brought back from the hunt.

Before he got to the door, Aze heard a burst of cheers coming from inside the house. He shared a puzzled look with Azhang and set down the several filled hide backpacks he was carrying in the yard. Then he and Azhang lifted the door curtain and entered the house.

“Chen Qi, is this my name?” Ka Luo asked excitedly, holding a bamboo strip.

Chen Qi nodded and handed a bamboo strip with the character for ‘Ke’ on it to Ake next to him. The bamboo strips were roasted all night. Aside from a few pieces that had been placed too close to the fire which were a little scorched, the other bamboo strips were baked very well. The few beastmen had very diligently polished them last night, so the bamboo strips had an unusually smooth surface. Chen Qi simply made a brush out of wool and couldn’t wait to try the effects of these props. Which led to the current scene at hand.

“What are you guys doing? I could hear your voices from far away.” Azhang asked with a loud laugh as he went over.

Ali handed him a bamboo strip with the character for ‘Zhang’ written on it. “Chen Qi is helping us write our names. This is the character for yours.” Ali waved the bamboo strip in his hand again. “Look, it’s not the same as mine.”

The beastmen have no written language. They could understand numbers and some complicated words, but there were no written records. For thousands of years, all of them passed on information by word of mouth.

“Name?” Azhang looked at his bamboo strip, then at the strip in Ali’s hand. There were some black crooked marks on them. Azhang could not understand the characters, and he looked at Chen Qi questioningly.

Chen Qi rubbed his nose, feeling a bit embarrassed. He’d only used an ink brush in some childhood art classes, but had never studied it systematically. Therefore, the characters he wrote were a little crooked and he himself could not bear to look directly at them. Only Ka Luo and the other beastmen, who had never seen characters before, would be so excited with the characters he wrote.

“This is a character. What you have in your hand is the character for ‘clear’, which has the same pronunciation as your name.

Azhang looked curiously at the bamboo strip in his hand and asked, “What’s the use of these characters?”

“It can be used to record things. Later, even if you forget what you recorded, as long as it is written down, no matter how much later, you can read it again.” Chen Qi explained.

“Can you understand the characters?” Azhang asked.

Chen Qi nodded. How could he have written it if he couldn’t understand it? However, considering that this was their first time seeing written characters, he explained, “There are many characters. Each character is different, and the meaning of each character can be different. They can also be combined with other words to form a sentence.” Chen Qi handed the first bamboo strip he’d written on earlier to Aze who was in the back, then picked up the brush and wrote four characters on another bamboo strip. “For example, for Aze’s name, I only wrote the ‘Ze’ character on this strip, so it only represents Aze’s name. Then on this piece I wrote “Wen Run Er Ze*.” Chen Qi looked at Aze and smiled. “Although there is the ‘Ze’** character there, it is not a name and has a different meaning.”

*温润而泽 wēn rùn ér zé – Warm and bright

**泽 zé  – lake