Chapter 115

Song Zhe thought of a brilliant idea to copy over 300 copies of the book.

"I told my dad to find scholars from the academy to help."

Li Yao: ... Asking dad for help whenever there's something, this is indeed a good idea.

After the new year, the Song County Magistrate had been busy going around each village. As soon as he heard Li Yao wanted everyone in the village to learn to read, he immediately went to He wan village at the fastest speed.

Teaching people to read can enlighten the people's wisdom, this is a good thing, he naturally wanted to strongly support it.

"Don't worry, I'll mobilize people to copy and learn immediately."

"No need." Li Yao unexpectedly rejected his good intentions, "I already have a way."

"What way?"

In the spacious courtyard, more than a dozen large tables were placed.

On some tables, they were filled with baskets and baskets of... seals?

Were they made of clay?

The Song County Magistrate looked at them, and found that these small seals had almost every character.

And for some common characters, there were made many of them.

He picked up a small seal and examined it carefully for a long time, but could not figure out what the seal was for.

"Are you going to stamp them one by one?"

"Why stamp them one by one?"

Li Yao took a small wooden frame, selected the needed characters from the seals, and arranged them in order in the small frame. The places where characters were not needed were filled with blanks.

After it was arranged, ink was brushed on the seals, then printed on white paper.

The Song County Magistrate knew about block printing, but he had never seen such a printing method before!

"This way, these molds can be reused to layout any desired book page," the Song County Magistrate said, "Moreover, they are clay, no need to worry about deformation! Wonderful, indeed wonderful!"

"Sir," the county magistrate's wife said timely, "With Li Yao's method, it will be much less troublesome to print whatever book in the future."

"That's right!"

"Isn't this considered a great achievement?"

"Absolutely!" the Song County Magistrate said, "I will report to the imperial court later and ask for credit for Li Yao! But..."

"But what?" The Song County Magistrate did not answer, but picked up the paper just printed and asked, "How do you read this?"

"From top to bottom, from left to right."

The Song County Magistrate was startled, even the traditional writing and reading habits had changed.

"Why is that?"

"County Magistrate," Li Yao said, "Haven't you noticed that writing in this order will be more fluent? Also no need to worry about smearing the written words with sleeves."

The Song County Magistrate nodded, it was indeed so.

However, these were irrelevant, because he had just been deeply shocked by reading Li Yao's printed poem from left to right.

"The sky is high, the wind is urgent, the monkeys cry sorrowfully. The shore is clear, the sand is white, the birds fly back... The wine cup is newly stopped pouring the muddy wine."

Why had he never heard such an exquisite verse before?

"Li Yao, where is this poem from? Whose great work is it?"

Li Yao twitched her mouth, knowing things were not good.

Just now in order to demonstrate movable type printing, she randomly picked a favorite ancient poem, and didn't expect the county magistrate to see through it at a glance.

"This is... I saw it in a tattered ancient book."

"Is that ancient book still around? Can I take a look at it?"

"I burned it as waste paper during the last fire."

Song County Magistrate: ...

Why burn it?

How could you burn it?

Do you know that ancient book was most likely a timeless classic?!

Seeing his dad almost beating his chest in frustration, Song Zhe next to him shook his head again and again.

How could this old man be so muddled?

Where did Aunt Li look at any ancient books, this was obviously written by her!

Others might not know about Aunt Li's talent, but he knew it very clearly.

When he and Wang Er encountered problems they didn't understand, and when Teacher Lv was not there, they always asked Aunt Li. No matter how difficult the problem was, Aunt Li could explain it to them clearly.

Isn't it very normal for someone so talented to write a poem?

So after everyone left, he quietly went to his dad and told him what he thought.

"You said that poem was written by Aunt Li?"

"Who else could it be?" Song Zhe said, "Aunt Li's knowledge surpasses those teachers by a lot."

The Song County Magistrate suddenly realized.

That's right!

How could Li Yao make so many amazing things without knowledge and talent? "You must not tell anyone about this in the future, understand?"

"Why?"

"Aunt Li doesn't want others to know, she must have her reasons," the Song County Magistrate said, "You must not make trouble for her."

"I understand, dad."

...

With movable type printing, textbooks for villagers were available very quickly. Looking at the textbooks emitting the scent of ink, the Song County Magistrate affirmed again that his evaluation of Li Yao was right.

Being able to invent such phonetic symbols, and compile such practical textbooks, how could she not be highly learned?

It seemed that his previous evaluation of Li Yao was too low.

"County magistrate," Li Yao said, "The students have all arrived, why don't you say a few words first?"

"Alright."

After speaking to more than 300 villagers and encouraging everyone to study hard, the Song County Magistrate felt extremely emotional.

He couldn't help but think, if Li Yao's method could be promoted, and everyone under heaven could learn to read and write, what would the future of Great Ling be like?

He must also report this to the imperial court and ask for credit for Li Yao!

...

Time flew by, and it was February in the blink of an eye.

The weather god still hadn't thundered or rained a drop, even the water level in the drought-relief well had dropped a lot.

In recent days, the Song County Magistrate had been busy running around between villages.

Baichuan County had 23 villages under its jurisdiction. Since they all dug drought-relief wells, basic living and farming could be guaranteed. Last year's food-for-work program also distributed some grain, so people could barely persevere.

But other places could not hold on.

Especially outside Yizhou Prefecture, since drought-relief wells were not promoted there, and the places that dug wells did not necessarily have sufficient underground water, the local commoners could no longer make ends meet.

The Song County Magistrate received news that a large number of refugees had poured into Yizhou Prefecture.

Prefect Hu ordered to block the passes, but how could that stop them.

Almost overnight, countless refugees appeared in various places in Yizhou Prefecture.

Located in a remote area, Baichuan County did not have refugees come yet, but the Song County Magistrate knew it was only a matter of time.

So the refugee issue had obviously become urgent, but he couldn't think of any way to deal with it.

At this time, he naturally thought of Li Yao.

Why not ask her for advice?

Once he had this idea, the Song County Magistrate could no longer restrain himself.

He had asked her for advice before, right?

So asking her again didn't seem too embarrassing.

Thus he immediately summoned Officer Zhang and the yamen runners, got on his trishaw, and ding-a-linged to He Wan village.