Crossing to Live in the Wilderness Plains 097
Chapter 97
The beastmen looked at each other and shook their heads blankly.
Chen Qi did not explain it further. Instead, he looked at Azhu sitting next to him and asked, “You have been listening to Ajing tell stories every day recently. Do you know why he can tell so many stories?”
Azhu, who was suddenly asked a question, was a little panicked. He turned a helpless look at the old female sitting next to him. The older female nodded to him encouragingly. Then, Azhu turned his gaze back to Chen Qi. “Is it because of those characters?”
Chen Qi nodded approvingly. He took out Ajing’s pile of gum tree leaves that were filled with stories and placed them on the wooden table. He waved to Ka Luo, who was pretending to be a good student in the crowd, and motioned for the other party to come over. Then he continued, “The three of you should have seen these gum tree leaves filled with words many times these past few days, and what is written on them are the stories Ajing was telling you.”
Chen Qi asked Ka Luo to pick up a gum tree leaf at random. “Now, do you think Ka Luo can retell these stories word for word?”
Aside from the youngest Ajing, all of the beastmen in the tribe worked together on the tribe’s construction. When the three younger females worked, they would always share the new stories they heard that day with others in the tribe. Sometimes, when the one describing the story forgot a part, the other two would chime in, so everyone knew that they were learning from Ajing.
As Chen Qi’s words fell, everyone’s eyes uniformly moved to Ka Luo. This feeling of being in the focus made Ka Luo a little nervous. He covered his lips with his fist and coughed softly. After receiving Chen Qi’s signal, he began to recite the words, one by one, according to what was written.
The text used in the fairy tales were not difficult, and Chen Qi also intended to use the stories they were most interested in to guide them to learn. In just one short winter, Chen Qi had given a brief account of all of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales and the four great classics. Unfortunately, he did not have a photographic memory. Otherwise, he would’ve just directly brought out the One Thousand and One Nights compendium and would’ve been able to share them to these story-loving beastmen, without repetition, for a long time.
Crossing to Live in the Wilderness Plains (CLWP) is translated by Betwixted Translations. The site you’re reading this chapter on stole our translation.
Later, in order to have them take the initiative to learn to read, Chen Qi switched from speaking to writing instead, and he forbade them from telling each other about them in private. He’d tell the beginning of the story out loud and then mercilessly throw down a gum tree leaf full of characters to the few pairs of sparkling eyes. Want to know the follow-up? Sure! Read it yourself. Therefore, even Ka Luo, who was the least fond of learning amongst the few of them, did not find it difficult to understand the words in his hands after a winter of this abuse.
Although Ka Luo’s tone during his narration was very flat, it didn’t deter the story’s novelty to these beast people. Even if they had heard it once, they still enjoyed it when they listened to it again.
Although the beastmen had very good memories, not everyone could have a photographic memory. At least, it was certain that Ka Luo didn’t. Next, Chen Qi asked Ka Luo to retell the story again, but this time without reading the words. The result was that the retelling this time was not as smooth as before. Especially when it came to the dialogue between the characters, he stuttered and occasionally missed a few sentences and was corrected by Azhu and the other younger females, causing Ka Luo to roll his eyes at Chen Qi resentfully.
Chen Qi ignored Ka Luo’s pitiful gaze and after he finished the broken telling of the story, he asked him to once again read the words on the gum tree leaves. After he finished, he looked around at the crowd and asked, “Do you know what words are for now?”
After such an operation, even though the beast people did not quite understand Chen Qi’s purpose, they still vaguely realized that these characters could help them remember things.
“Chen Qi, can they help us remember things?” Ale and Chen Qi were quite familiar with each other, so he directly raised his own question out loud.
Chen Qi nodded, “Words can not only help you remember things.” Chen Qi took out a palm-sized wood board that Aze had made, dipped a brush into the prepared black dye-fruit liquid, and wrote the character “Le” on it. Blowing at it a little, he then handed it to Ale only after the writing had dried a little.
“For example, this word is the character for ‘Le’, which is also your name. If you keep this board with your name written on it, your future mate, your children, your grandchildren, or the descendants who still have your blood in their bodies hundreds of years later, as long as they see this board, they will know that their ancestor was a female named Ale. If you have something you want to tell future generations, just write it down. Even if you cannot meet, even if you are thousands of miles apart, they will know what you want to say to them.” Of course, the premise was that the board did not get lost or broken.
Crossing to Live in the Wilderness Plains (CLWP) is translated by Betwixted Translations. The site you’re reading this chapter on stole our translation.
After hearing Chen Qi’s explanation, not only Ale, but also the other beastmen present gasped. For beastmen like them, who could only pass down information by word of mouth, it was already good enough to remember the name of their dad and father, and it was almost impossible to remember the name of their father’s father. After all, the environment here simply did not allow the beastmen to die of natural causes.
But now, Chen Qi was telling them that this thing called writing could let people know their existence all the time and even speak to future generations who they would not be able to meet. This incident completely shattered the beast people’s previous understanding of the world.
The scene fell into silence. Chen Qi was not in a hurry to continue his brainwashing, but patiently waited for them to digest this information.
It was not so easy to accept a completely new mindset. More than half of the beastmen Chen Qi now had to teach were older females. Their average age was almost over 150 years old. It might’ve been okay for them to learn manual work, such as cooking or sewing, but there was no way to ask them to take the initiative to learn to read or write, which neither seemed usable nor edible to them. Perhaps they would learn to give their patriarch some face, but naturally, that kind of passive learning could not be comparable with active learning. Chen Qi had thought about it for a long time before he came up with a reason that he thought they would be very interested in.
After all, there was no one who did not want to leave a trace of themselves, hoping that the future generations could remember them, even if just a little bit.
After a long time, the old female sitting next to Azhu raised his head and looked at Chen Qi with a slight squint on his cloudy eyes. “My name is Acheng. Can you write my name for me?”
The old female named Acheng is over 200 years old this year. He was the oldest female in the tribe, and was also the one who brought Azhu home and raised him. He should not be judged by his head of gray and face full of wrinkles for his posture was upright and he was still very strong. Chen Qi had seen him easily move a stone slab that he could not lift the other day.
Chen Qi smiled and handed the board with the new written character to the other party. The old female gently touched the character strokes with his dry, wrinkled fingers. “Is this what my name looks like?”
“Yes. No matter who it is in the future, as long as they see this, they will know it is the character for ‘Cheng’.”
“Then, how can I learn to write my own name?” The old female raised his head and looked at Chen Qi expectantly.
Crossing to Live in the Wilderness Plains (CLWP) is translated by Betwixted Translations. The site you’re reading this chapter on stole our translation.
“Tomorrow, go to the school next door and I’ll teach you how to write it.” There were too many people here at the moment, so it was not suitable for one-on-one teaching. Anyway, the school rooms had been built. It was better to open them up in advance.
At this time, the others couldn’t sit still anymore, and started gathering around, one after another, hoping Chen Qi could help write down their name.
Chen Qi smiled gently and responded to everyone’s request, one by one. He did not intend to teach them anything advanced on the first day, so he aroused their interest in learning, handed them their written names, and then asked Ajing and Ka Luo to read them a few stories before disbanding.
“What’s the matter?” After sending the tribe’s people away, Aze helped to pack up the things in the courtyard. Ajing also took the little wolf cub with him and moved the hides and blankets piled up together back to the house.
Chen Qi was frowning, and only came to his senses when he heard Aze’s question. He shook his head. “I just didn’t expect so many of them to have night blindness.”
Chen Qi didn’t notice it at first. After all, according to his original cognition, when people got older, their physical strength and eyesight would naturally decline. However, although these beastmen were old, they were able to do a lot of things during the day, and were not inferior to a young man like himself. But now, it was just a short distance away, and there was even a well-paved road, yet they still needed someone to help them back. Their eyesight obviously worsened, and not just by a little bit, compared to during the day.
Aze was stunned, and was just about to ask something, when Chen Qi took his hand and said. “Don’t worry, it’s not a big deal. Next time, we’ll find some food to fit everyone’s diet.”
“En.”
As long as the beast people set their mind to wanting to do something, their ability to take action was amazing. They gathered in the classroom early the next morning and Chen Qi, who arrived on time, wondered if he was late. Chen Qi had arranged for lessons to be in the morning. After all, the brain was the most flexible in the mornings and the learning efficiency would be greatly improved.
Chen Qi distributed a writing brush and several wooden boards to each of them, and then, with Ajing assisting, he taught them, one by one, the posture of holding the brush and the order of the strokes for their names. There was no other way. Everyone was more interested in how to write their own names. Even if it was not easy to write because the character had more strokes, they could only be taught this first.
The effect of using wooden boards to practice writing was naturally not as good as that of using gum tree leaves. But the gum tree leaves in summer were green, so it was not conducive to use them to write on. It would be great if paper could be made. It was not winter anymore, so there was no need to worry about paper pulp getting frozen. Chen Qi recalled the paper making process in his mind while correcting the beastmen’s mistakes.
Chen Qi also moved the funnel used to measure time intervals to the classroom. He did not want the beastmen to get bored with studying, so they were dismissed after one hour of class. Those who wanted to continue to practice writing could stay and continue practicing, and those who did not want to practice could leave to do their own work.
However, the tribe was now in the construction stages. Even the beast people who wanted to continue to practice could not stay. They asked Chen Qi if they could bring the writing brush and dye-fruit liquid home then hastily tidied things up before diving right back into the tribe’s construction work.
The two brick kilns were fired all day and night, and another batch of materials had been burned. Seeing that things were almost ready, Azhang led his men to dig the foundation for the city wall along the position discussed with Chen Qi previously.
The city wall did not just have two doors, one in front and one in the rear, like the previous wall. Because the area was large enough, each of the walls, front, rear, left and right, had a gate, though the other three gates were half the size of the main gate, since they would be used for escape in case of the threat of an attack and the like. Meanwhile, the main gate was made large enough in consideration of the size of the prey in the forest, otherwise it would be very troublesome if the prey that they put in so much effort to hunt down was not able to be brought in.
Words from the Translation Crew
Miiya: Extra post~
Translator: Miiya
Editor: MushroomNight73
Proofreader: Yume
Editor stepping into the realm of MTL translating, starting with CLWP. Support this translation with a Ko-fi. Three Ko-fis will add an extra chapter from the stockpile to the next weekly release.
Thank you for the update~