Chapter 67: Extreme Limit (Part 1)

  The next morning, in the eastern wing of the Shen family's large compound, the clan school surrounded by bamboo groves was still filled with the sound of reading.

  Shen Jing was the only one who didn't study diligently, he looked out the door with anxiety in his eyes... It's almost time for Mr. to return, why hasn't that kid Shen Mo come yet? Could it be that he didn't finish writing and is too embarrassed to come? He must be, he's so concerned about saving face.

  Just as he was lost in thought, a white shadow flashed in from the door and sat down beside him with a whoosh. He was about to praise "Brother, great lightness skill." But then he saw Shen Mo panting heavily, gasping for breath on the table.

  "Can't you get up a bit earlier?" Shen Jing said with some satisfaction, he never thought there would be a day when he would say this to himself.

  Silently flipping his eyes, just about to speak, he saw Mr. Shen with a stern face appearing at the door, and hastily sat up straight, not even wiping the sweat on his face.

  Shen Lian walked up to the desk and stood still. Shen Xiang led the students in rising, bowing to their teacher and wishing him peace.

  Mr. Shen's gaze swept over everyone before he sat down and said in a low voice, "Sit down."

  After the students sat down, he said in a concise manner: "Check your homework."

  The first student in the right row stood up, walked to the front of the teacher, put down his book like yesterday, and recited what he had memorized the day before. Then he recited what he learned yesterday, stumbling a bit in between, and finally couldn't avoid getting hit with a ruler.

  The silent discovery was that this gentleman always started with a few heavy blows, then raised his hands high and brought them down lightly, making a sound but not hurting anyone.

  "Maybe he's just waiting for tomorrow to continue." He suspected this old guy with the worst intentions.

  After finishing writing, Mr. Shen also guided the student to read and recite the sentence, and after the student followed him in reading, he considered today's teaching task basically completed, and went back to his seat to recite repeatedly.

  Then comes the next one, and the next one, Shen silently noticed that the number of sentences taught by the teacher to each student was vastly different, some had fifty or sixty sentences, while others only had a dozen or so... 'What a great arbitrariness indeed.' He couldn't help but mutter to himself.

  Among these people, Shen Xiang was the most well-read and had already read "The Book of Rites". The others were mostly around the same age and were working hard on the Four Books. The younger ones were still reading primers... Private school education started with recognizing square characters, and after several months or half a year, they would move on to books like "Three Character Classic", " Hundred Family Surnames", " Thousand Character Classic", " Collection of Famous Sayings", " Divine Poems for Children" as well as "Five-character Miscellaneous Characters" and "Seven-character Miscellaneous Characters".

  It takes about one or two years to complete literacy education, and then start reading books seriously. According to Zhu Xi's regulations for saints, first read the "Great Learning" to determine its scope; next read the "Analects of Confucius" to determine its foundation; next read "Mencius" to observe its development; next read the "Doctrine of the Mean" to seek the subtlety of the ancients.

  In the Four Books, the Analects has 12,700 words, Mencius has more than 34,600 words, and adding "Daxue" and "Zhongyong" is about 50,000 words. Moreover, you have to memorize Zhu Xi's annotations as well, so it takes a bit longer. However, this is the most important foundation for writing eight-legged essays. This effort must be made before the age of ten or so.

  Then read the Book of Songs, Zuo Zhuan, Book of History, Rites of Zhou and I Ching etc., naturally also want to read familiarly, and can recite. These familiar books, in order to prevent forgetting, must be reviewed regularly, especially the Four Books, which must be memorized with both the original text and Zhu Xi's annotations, forever etched in one's mind. Quoting from memory as naturally as speaking, without this basic foundation, it is impossible to discuss writing eight-legged essays.

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  After a long time, twenty-five out of the twenty-seven students in the school had gone up, leaving only Shen Jing and Shen Mo, two brothers who were not called by the teacher and did not dare to go up either.

  "Shen Jing, come up here." Fortunately, Mr. Shen didn't have any bad intentions and quickly gave the order.

  "Yes." Shen Jing hastily responded, still holding a stack of high-quality rice paper in his hand.

  Mr. Shen took over the stack of paper, and upon seeing those crooked, incomplete, and smelly characters, he furrowed his brow and sighed, "What a waste of such good paper."

  Shen Jing's face turned bright red with embarrassment, and she lowered her head, saying in a low voice: "Sir, this is the last one, writing too many words will be tiring..."

  Shen Lian let out a soft "oh" and flipped to the first chapter to take a look, then sighed and said: "Still blind."

  Shen Jing was finally speechless...

  Mr. Shen frowned and read through the papers with great perseverance, putting them down and saying: "The school rules were copied fourteen times, but not a single word of the Thousand Character Classic was written."

  Shen Jing said with a bitter face: "Yesterday, the student went back and wrote words, didn't even eat dinner, and later fell asleep while writing. Today, he came to the school early and wrote another draft."

  Shen Lian's face was stern as he stared at him for a long time, making Shen Jing's whole body hair stand on end... Who would have thought that Mr. Shen's ancient, unchanging wooden face would suddenly reveal a hint of a smile.

  Shen Jing rubbed his eyes hard, he had never seen Mr. smile before.

  Shen Lian's smile flashed and disappeared, his expression turned serious again: "Considering you've tried your best, I won't punish you this time."

  Shen Jing rubbed his ears again, hardly believing it: "No more hand board?"

  "If you're willing, I won't object," Mr. Shen said coldly.

  "No, no." Shen Jing hurriedly waved his hand and said, feeling that today was already a lucky day, he should go to Daxing to touch it.

  Next was the lesson time, but Shen Lian didn't let Shen Jing take out his book. Instead, he called him forward and personally taught him the correct posture for writing, as well as how to hold the brush and move it. Finally, he handed over a copybook saying: "Start with horizontal, vertical, left-falling, right-falling, and turning strokes, write one million characters, and hand it in to me tomorrow."

  Shen Jing almost fainted, took over the letter, and went down with a thud.

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  As soon as Shen Jing sat down, there was only one person left who hadn't been called by name - Shen Mo.

  Shen Lian's expressionless face stared at him for a long time before he said in a low voice, "Come up."

  Shen Mo then stood up with a thick stack of manuscripts in both hands and walked steadily towards him.

  Under the curious gaze of the students, he stood in front of the grand case for the first time.

  "Is the task done?" Shen Lian said without even looking at him.

  "Back to you, sir, it's done." Shen Mo said softly.

  "Oh?" Shen Lian said coldly: "What about the hundred copies you wrote? No matter what you say, I want to see the 8,800 characters."

  Silence can already ignore his prejudices, he cannot ask everyone to like himself, he only asks himself, with both hands to win dignity... He believes that he will definitely be able to do it, as long as this gentleman does not go against his conscience.

  "So he said in a deep and steady voice: 'Eight thousand eight hundred words, not one less!'"

  Division line

  Today is Teachers' Day. There's a Chinese teacher at my high school who has always been displeased with me, and I've also been very dissatisfied with his character, to the point where we don't even exchange messages on Teachers' Day. However, it can't be denied that more than half of the credit for my writing skills, which you all think are "not bad", goes to him. Okay, Teacher Y, happy holidays, although it's already eight minutes past midnight.