Chapter 203: Mission Accomplished
When Jian Xingxia woke up first thing in the morning, she saw the mission progress bar sitting at: 89/100.
She was utterly dumbfounded. “What’s going on? Did I sleepwalk last night and teach people how to read?”
But she quickly reconsidered and realized that was impossible.
It wasn’t that she couldn’t sleepwalk, but rather that no ancient employees ever came around at night.
The ancient employees’ hire hours were from five o’clock in the morning until twelve o’clock at night, but the maximum duration could not exceed sixteen hours. Regular temporary workers could stay for a maximum of six hours, not exceeding thirty-six hours a month.
Thus, by nine-thirty at night at the latest, the ancient employees had all “clocked out” and gone home.
Utterly perplexed, Jian Xingxia checked the time. It was five in the morning, the hiring slots had just refreshed, so she tried to summon Shang Yue first.
Yet, Shang Yue failed to appear even after a long wait.
Fortunately, this wasn’t the first time Jian Xingxia had encountered this situation. It seemed that if there were people around them, Shang Yue had no way to suddenly vanish right before everyone’s eyes.
It wasn’t until the sky was bright and clear, after Jian Xingxia had finished tidying up the vegetable patch and eaten breakfast, that Shang Yue still hadn’t arrived.
For a brief, fleeting second, Jian Xingxia couldn’t help but wonder if Shang Yue had lost his life during some resistance operation.
Thankfully, the system displayed “Target individual currently unavailable for hire,” which indicated that at the very least, the target was still around, just unable to come.
Jian Xingxia still had a mission to finish. Waiting until past nine o’clock, she decided not to wait any longer and called over Lin Sanniang and Fatty Aunt. At the same time, she posted a recruitment notice for a temporary worker, summoning the scholar whom she hadn’t seen in ages.
Having not met for several days, nearly two months had passed on the scholar’s side, and his appearance had changed drastically.
Jian Xingxia stared at him for a good while before recognizing him. “Oh my god! How did you end up like this?!”
When he came the last time, the scholar had already finished his imperial examinations and had been wandering outside for a month or so after the results were posted, looking thoroughly wretched.
Now that another two months had passed, he looked practically no different from a beggar or a vagrant.
Lin Sanniang hurriedly brought over the morning’s noodle porridge. The skeletal scholar held the food basin and inhaled it into his mouth with loud slurps, nearly choking himself to death.
Jian Xingxia said in shock, “Didn’t I give you some supplies last time so you could pawn them for silver and head home early?”
She had given him a fair amount of food too; it should have lasted him a while.
The scholar finished off a massive basin of noodles in one breath, let out a burp, and then said with a thoroughly sickly, gaunt face, “The young lady does not know… we scholars value our integrity and face above all else… If I cannot return home in glory after succeeding, I truly have no face to meet the elders and folks back home…”
Jian Xingxia: “…So starving and drifting out here like a stray gives you plenty of face?”
The scholar let out an “uh,” freezing in his tracks.
“Then what about the food given to you?”
“Eaten up within a few days.”
“What about the supplies given to you?”
“First I was swindled by a scoundrel… then I was swindled by another scoundrel… Even my scholar’s robes were pawned off.”
The scholar threw his hands up, and coupled with his innocent expression, he looked rather asking for a beating.
This was Fatty Aunt’s first time meeting the scholar, and she truly looked down on men like him.
“You young fellow are really so thoughtless! If you failed, you failed. At least go home and let them know, don’t leave your family worrying!”
Fatty Aunt thought to herself that Da-hong was still the best. He had been sensible since he was a boy, telling his parents everything.
He certainly wouldn’t wander outside for three months just out of wounded pride and losing face.
The scholar shrank his neck, indeed looking a bit ashamed.
But still, he simply wouldn’t mention the matter of going home.
Under Lin Sanniang’s management, the scholar slowly finished a second basin of noodles before he finally seemed to recover.
Jian Xingxia felt that the scholar smelled even worse than Da-hei. “Have you not taken a bath in these two months?”
At this, the scholar’s face flushed red, and he shook his head. “No.”
Left with no choice, Jian Xingxia could only find an identical set of “scholar” ancient clothing and tell him to take a bath in the bathroom in the backyard.
The scholar actually accepted the bathroom quite well.
“This house is built excellently—bright and tidy.”
He quickly mastered how to use the faucet, and he was full of praise for the fact that hot water poured out with a single twist.
“To think such an ingenious mechanism exists beneath the heavens! Truly a masterpiece of nature!”
Jian Xingxia, Fatty Aunt, and Lin Sanniang stood outside, listening to the scholar sighing, exclaiming, and shouting inside the bathroom.
The scholar certainly knew how to enjoy himself; it was only after half an hour that he emerged with his hair draped loosely over his shoulders.
Jian Xingxia was already getting anxious. The literacy progress that had surged up last night was rapidly ticking down again during the day today.
She didn’t know whether it was Da-hei, Shang Yue, or one of the three little ones on Lin Sanniang’s side who had forgotten their words again, but it kept going -1 here and -1 there. Right now, it was back down to 67/100.
Back when Jian Xingxia was a student, she had only thought her teachers were tedious, wishing they wouldn’t seize every single morning self-study, evening self-study, and long recess to explain the knowledge points over and over again.
Now, she finally understood.
Presumably, every teacher had a progress tracker in their mind too: taught just today, mastery level 98%; the next day, 75%; the third day, 50%…
That was probably why they couldn’t help but repeat it constantly.
Jian Xingxia called Fatty Aunt and Lin Sanniang over as well. “Let’s all learn together.”
Fatty Aunt had barely learned two characters before she cried out that her head was throbbing.
“Young lady, I really can’t learn this. You can have me cook, wash clothes, raise chickens, or herd cattle, just don’t make me read books!”
Fatty Aunt held the literacy card, her expression a complete blank as if to say, “The card knows me, but I don’t know the card.”
Jian Xingxia tried her hardest to persuade her, but Fatty Aunt used her short, chubby hands to cover her head.
“Oh, Villa Mistress, I’m already at this age, what characters am I still learning for! If I learn a few more dishes, I can still serve the guests. I’m just a cook, what’s the use of learning characters?”
Having said her piece, she swung her chubby legs and scurried off in a flash.
Jian Xingxia had long known that Fatty Aunt wouldn’t be easy to persuade. There was no helping it; people with real, practical skills weren’t easily influenced by others.
Fortunately, she still had Lin Sanniang and the scholar.
Jian Xingxia was full of anticipation.
But after a night had passed, Lin Sanniang had also forgotten a few words and was currently reviewing them furiously.
The scholar, on the other hand, picked up the literacy cards and turned them over and over to look at them.
He clicked his tongue in wonder. “What material is this? The paper is smooth and clear, silky to the touch. Though the strokes of this drawing are childish, the coloring is rich and highly appropriate.”
Because the scholar kept staring at these things, his literacy progress wasn’t fast either.
Jian Xingxia urged him, “Never mind those for now, read after me first…”
But the scholar also looked highly conflicted. “In our land, books and characters are not pronounced this way, nor are they written this way…”
To ask a man who had begun his elementary education at the age of four and spent over a decade reading books to suddenly overturn all his past knowledge and relearn how to read was indeed asking a bit much.
Jian Xingxia’s heart began to tremble.
Although the previous four missions had their difficulties and thrilling moments, they had all been completed smoothly.
Who would have thought that this Mission Five, which seemed the absolute simplest, would end up completely stuck?
Jian Xingxia did have one more slot for a temporary worker today, but with no news from Shang Yue’s side, she didn’t dare to rashly hire anyone else first.
Watching the scholar, who was now full of food and drink, standing there muttering to himself and being nitpicky, Jian Xingxia’s fists were beginning to harden.
Just as Jian Xingxia was about to lose her temper, Lin Sanniang pulled out the legal document and the contract she had brought along.
“Young lady, why don’t you look at the characters on these two documents? If there are any that are identical to what the villa and the scholar have learned, you can pick them out for us to recognize?”
Lin Sanniang didn’t know why Jian Xingxia was in such a hurry to have them learn characters, but she believed literacy was a good thing, and she was also desperate to learn.
Lin Sanniang recalled, “Yesterday when Shang Yue was learning characters, there were also several words that were identical. He learned those very quickly and never made a mistake.”
Jian Xingxia blanked out for a moment, instantly filled with joy. “That’s right! There might be overlapping characters!”
Jian Xingxia immediately dragged the scholar over, and the three of them gathered over the contract to start recognizing characters.
They actually managed to pick out quite a few words. According to the scholar, ninety percent of the characters on Lin Sanniang’s contract were identical to what he had learned.
To Jian Xingxia, they looked very similar to the Traditional Chinese characters from her own world. After checking online with her phone, there were a few subtle differences.
The ones that were exactly identical to modern Chinese characters only accounted for about thirty percent.
But that was more than enough. The total word count on the two documents was over four hundred words, so thirty percent still meant more than a hundred characters.
This made things convenient. She didn’t even need to teach; the scholar read them off one by one, recognizing every single one.
Lin Sanniang had gained yet another teacher.
An hour later, the scholar was able to write out seventy to eighty percent of this document from memory using the characters from his own world.
Because it was closely tied to her own life, Lin Sanniang was incredibly focused. Over the course of the morning, she recognized more than twenty new characters.
Jian Xingxia stared intently at the mission progress bar on the virtual panel.
Ding!
[Congratulations to the Villa Owner for completing Villa Management Mission Five: Within 24 hours, have three or more employees recognize > 100 characters of the current world. Reward obtained: Villa Academy * 1.]
[A good cultural atmosphere is an indispensable step in villa management. Villa Owner, please claim your reward and place it appropriately.]
Jian Xingxia breathed out, “It’s done!”
