Chapter 4 The Young Literary Genius

  When he was almost five years old, Ma Teng finally arrived at Jizhou Prefecture and after his promotion, he sent a maid to serve his mother.

  A few months later, another playmate was sent to me.

  At that time, given my age, this young man who was five or six years older than me couldn't be considered a playmate, but rather a follower.

  "Zhao Cheng, from now on you'll follow the eldest young master." The one who came to see me off was Deng Shan, Ma Teng's personal bodyguard. He rarely spoke or laughed, and when he saw me, he just nodded in response. I always had a feeling of being ignored.

  "It's... " The child named Zhao Cheng was pale and thin, looking like a starving ghost reincarnated, staring at me with a mixture of fear and timidity, his head bowed two heads lower than mine.

  "Didn't you give me any?" asked Ma Wen, also with a timid look.

  Deng Shan shook his head with difficulty.

  "Wen'er, don't be naughty." Mother pulled over big sister and nodded at Deng Shan.

  "The humble man withdraws." Deng Shan bowed slightly towards his daughter and then quickly left.

  The girl looked at Zhao Cheng and sighed: "Go take a bath first, I'll get someone to bring you a set of clean clothes."

  Zhao Cheng looked up and gazed at her: "Thank you, madam."

  A newly arrived attendant, no one gave him the treatment of bathing. Zhao Cheng hastily washed and put on a set of hemp robes.

  "Seems like he's perked up a bit." I said, crossing my legs and sizing him up.

  "Master!" He hastily nodded and bowed to me.

  I waved my hand: "Don't be like this, I don't have so many rules!" Nonsense, I'm just a poor man's eldest son who has just become the county magistrate, where did all these rules come from!

  "Uh-huh!" He nodded repeatedly, even though he didn't understand.

  "I asked you, do you know kung fu?" Although I could tell from his build that this kid probably couldn't even afford a full meal, I still asked with a glimmer of hope.

  "What's with all the fuss?" he stuttered in response to me.

  "Alright, fists and feet," I changed my words, "Can you fight?"

  "A fight?" He was startled and shook his head hastily. "A small person has only the lot of being beaten, how dare he engage in a fight!"

  I silently cursed myself for asking such a question. Anyone who could be taken in by Ma Teng must be a useless good-for-nothing...

  "Okay, then what will you do?"

  He dazedly shook his wet head, and water droplets from the ends of his hair splashed into my eyes.

  I couldn't help but rub my eyes: "You can't do anything?" Then why am I raising you?! "Cooking? Washing clothes? Sweeping the floor? Riding horses? Throwing spears? Shooting arrows?"

  He shook his head like a rattle drum, launching a fierce and stormy attack.

  I couldn't resist and had to retreat repeatedly.

  His hair was finally dry: "I still expected you, young master, to teach me!"

  I sat down on the ground with a thud.

  So I led the entourage who didn't know anything and started living.

  －

  Childhood time always seems very short.

  Looking back, there won't be many memories anyway.

  The Western Liang was indeed desolate and barren, and even though Wuwei was a county in the province of Liangzhou, there were only about 8,000 households within and outside the city walls of its administrative center, Jincheng. The total population, including soldiers, was barely over 600,000, and the entire Wuwei County had less than one million people. It's worth noting that although Western Liang also had some scattered villages and counties, more than 70-80% of the population was concentrated in the administrative center, after all, humans are social animals and everyone likes to live in groups.

  This district with a population of only 600,000 is not even comparable to a third-rate town in modern times, let alone a county seat. Take my hometown, a small county located in Hedong, which has been one of the poorest counties in the country for over a decade, with a population of nearly 3.5 million. Not to mention the four provinces with large populations - Shandong, Henan, Sichuan and Guangdong - where a single county can have a population of 7-8 million, and the common people will break through the 10 million mark if they are not careful. This is still the case after the implementation of the family planning policy for over 30 years.

  However, the land of Liangzhou is vast and sparsely populated, and in this era, environmental protection is extremely good. The legendary great desert is still thousands of miles away from me, so there are only vast grasslands and dense forests, which are perfect for horse riding and dog racing. As a native-born young man of Western Liang, galloping horses has become a compulsory course for me every day.

  My body in my previous life, although not weak and frail, was also unable to lift its shoulders or carry heavy loads. It basically belonged to the category of people with no combat experience who would turn pale at the sight of fire and whose legs would go soft at the sound of fighting. This lifetime, however, has been spent running in the strong winds every day and jumping through the forests all the time, so my physical strength is naturally incomparable to that of my previous life.

  As for "cultural refinement", everyone should know that Xi Liang is a godforsaken place. It's the westernmost and northernmost corner of the Great Han Dynasty, excluding the Western Regions Longshu Prefecture, and it borders the Xiqiang minority group on the border. When they feel like it, they would charge in and loot, so it's already a blessing for ordinary people to be able to survive. How could they possibly hope to improve their cultural level and cultivate their moral character through reading and writing?

  Of course, although Lao Die's official position was still very low at this time, he could be considered a parent official in the city of Guzang. It was not difficult to invite a teacher to educate his own children. So, after discussing with his wife, they invited Jia Fu Zi, who had some reputation in the city, to teach the few young horses of the Ma family and the two sons of the Pang Wing family.

  Who is Pang Yi? I didn't know him in the past, never heard of such a person, now he's Dad's deputy, but Dad treats his family so well, it's truly achieved communism within the Ma and Pang families, except for wives can't be shared, what's yours is mine, what's mine is yours, it makes me feel grateful and speechless.

  The eldest son of the Pang family is called Pang Rou, who has no impression, with a very weak body, and can only develop in the direction of reading books. He is more steady and gives people the feeling that he is not easy to get close to. Compared to the unknown eldest son, the second son is famous and renowned - Pang De!

  Damn it, when I first heard him introduce himself, my two legs shook with excitement for a long time, and I almost wanted to hug him and cry for several hours: Brother, you are the first cow X general I've seen since I came to this ghost place!

  Of course, my cheap father can't be considered a famous general. Although he barely qualified as a regional warlord, it's not easy to attract attention in this ghost place. Later, he was also killed by Cao Cao. Throughout his life, except for the occasional fight with Han Sui, there's nothing else that I remember, so I've long since automatically ignored him.

  And this Pond brother, later must become a powerful assistant under my command, at least for a very long time in the early period should be considered as our first general, you say, how can I not be excited!

  But... how did this little brother become even more quiet than his older brother? Although he's only three years older than me, his words are usually less than a third of mine, often making me feel uninterested when I approach him with good intentions.

  Yeah, actually, the ones who studied with me initially were also Big Sister Ma Wen and her follower Zhao Cheng. As for Big Sister, there's no need to mention it. In our Western Liang region, we're too close to the Qiang people, and the local customs are already quite bold and uninhibited. Being mixed with even bolder ethnic minorities has inevitably influenced us, making us more and more unconventional. Many things that people from the Central Plains might consider sacred or absolute are often ridiculed by everyone here. Many habits aren't from the Han ethnicity, nor are they from the Qiang ethnicity or other minority groups - they've just been passed down in a strange and quirky way. As for girls going to school, no one cares about that either. Generally, people can barely survive, who would have the energy to care about the general's daughter going to school?

  As for the later rumors that Ma Chao's grandmother was a Qiang woman, so Ma Chao had one-quarter Qiang blood, ignore it; there are even people who dragged in the sky, and I don't know where they got their evidence from. After examining it for half a day, I finally discovered: Why did the famous general Ma Chao of the Three Kingdoms have such a great reputation? It's because the elite soldiers under his command were all descendants of defeated Roman soldiers who had fled to the other side! His grandmother's, don't be so contemptuous of Chinese people, okay?! We're just different from you in terms of water and soil, and our lives are a bit more rugged, which is why we have bigger eyes, higher noses, and coarser skin. Is that enough reason to demonize us?! Has the world lost all sense of justice?!

  It wasn't until later that my younger brothers Ma Tie and Ma Xiu, those two little rascals, also followed us to class, which was already three or four years later.

  After all, after rebirth, I have lived for many years and can be said to have basically adapted to the life of this era. In fact, it's not a matter of adapting or not adapting, because as far back as my previous life, until I was reborn, I was only an undergraduate student, and I only had a little understanding of society at that time. As for adapting to society, there is simply no way to talk about it.

  After attending a private school for two or three months, I finally learned to write Han Dynasty's broken characters. The strokes are really complicated, but some characters can be recognized at a glance - after all, there are still simple characters passed down! Our Chinese characters are pictograms after all!

  At the end of the Han Dynasty and the Three Kingdoms era, I don't recognize the font used at that time. I only know the most basic Song typeface and Kai typeface, as well as the Huawen Xwei font that I liked to use when typing... I don't know how it is, but anyway, in an article, with my current level, I can basically understand more than half of it, because I have a "solid" foundation in Chinese characters and strong reading skills. When Jiafu first started teaching, he often praised my "intelligence". The Pang brothers didn't react much to the praise, but surprisingly, my older sister was a bit jealous. This sister is proud and arrogant, never willing to lower her head to men.

  But my pride and satisfaction ended there. Apart from this, I had nothing to brag about, and in other aspects, I was just average. Once they recognized the characters, no matter how "genius" I was, I didn't have the chance to show off. Moreover, due to the terrible habit of relying on rote learning that had been formed since ancient times, I couldn't stand the professor's lecturing style, which was like a big class. Often, I felt like I was in a large classroom with hundreds of people, listening to the professor on stage shaking his head and talking about Marxist theory, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory, and Three Represents, my eyelids were not mine...

  It's okay, since I performed well in the early stages, Mr. Jia had a very good impression of me, and basically didn't care about me, turning a blind eye to my subjective laziness, what a considerate and humanized teaching style!

  In the education of the late Han Dynasty, Confucian classics were naturally the absolute mainstream. After all, during the reign of Emperor Wu of Han, Dong Zhongshu was reused and "abolished the hundred schools and respected only Confucianism". Everyone could only learn from Confucius and Mencius. At first, when I listened to this "Analects", I could only feel that Confucius' thoughts were very good, but indeed useless. I came and went, and I could only learn the most common and easy-to-understand sentences of "The Master said" that I had learned in junior high school. In a chaotic world, is this important?

  I like them very much.

  But I don't bother to learn.

  Given my disdain for Confucian classics and my boundless love for literary pursuits, I have taken a moment from my busy schedule to indulge in writing memoirs and expressing the pent-up emotions of my heart, aside from leading Zhao Cheng on a rampage everywhere.

  I remember the first thing I wrote was a pretty thin book, which I called "Records of the Three Kingdoms". Yeah, we cultured people don't bother with things like "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", we're proper and serious people, so we write proper and serious history books. This book was written when I was four or five years old, at that time I didn't even recognize many Chinese characters, of course using simplified Chinese made it easier to write, so the hundred or so pages of stuff I wrote became like a heavenly scripture to others.

  I often sigh: "A book is useless until it's needed, and then you wish you had read more. The ancients were indeed truthful with me!"

  This "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" is actually quite simple, because I only know and can write about a few dozen people who have been influenced by the novel and sometimes also influenced by Yi Zhongtian's interpretation of the Three Kingdoms, and what comes out is very... objective and fair.

  At the same time, in order to enrich its content, I had no choice but to think deeply and revise the classic scenes that could be recalled from the novel into it. As a result, this serious historical book also contained a touch of martial arts elements.

  Yes, I have always been quite fond of martial arts novels. What a pity.

  Then came the great second work, I had been thinking for a long time and finally decided to write a long epic.

  This should be a series of grand works, telling the story of a group of young people in the last dynasty who fought with swords to protect their loved ones, old-fashioned but touching, with passion and warmth, with power struggles and wars, with brothers and organizations, with fierce and cruel confrontations between forces, and also with silent calculations. At that time, my heart was stirred for a long time, and I didn't know how to name this work that would shine forever in my life. After thinking hard for three hours, the pen finally fell down, and five big characters appeared on the snow-white paper.

  "Jiuzhou Yanyu Lu"