Chapter 193: The First Chicken Coop
Within half an hour, the literacy progress increased by +9, +7, and +3, bringing the current total to 19/100.
Jian Xingxia breathed a sigh of relief. Looking at it this way, learning characters wasn’t all that difficult. She wondered if there were other manor owners who had a hundred employees; if so, wouldn’t teaching just a single character to everyone mean the quest would be completed instantly?
On second thought, looking at the manor’s upgrade requirements, expanding the workforce to a hundred employees would be vastly more difficult than teaching them how to read.
Jian Xingxia looked at the progress bar, feeling quite satisfied. “Well, nineteen is fine… Wait, wait, wait? Why did it just drop to eighteen?!”
How could the system deduct points retroactively!
Jian Xingxia quickly looked over at her three students. Da Hei, refusing to accept defeat, was asking Shang Yue how to write one of the characters. Shang Yue was tracing lines on the ground with a small twig, but as he drew, the character completely lost its proper shape.
System: Literacy Progress -1.
Jian Xingxia: “…”
She knew it. The system would never issue such an easy quest!
Not daring to be greedy, Jian Xingxia quickly ran through the ten characters again to ensure that Shang Yue and Lin Sanniang had mastered them perfectly, so they wouldn’t be led astray by Da Hei.
As for Da Hei, his skill points clearly didn’t lie in academics. His natural physical strength and loyalty were his true assets, so Jian Xingxia didn’t push him too hard.
Jian Xingxia used to work as a private tutor. Although she had been teaching young children back then, the three ancient people in front of her were not much different from toddlers. Their understanding of Han characters was similar to a child’s grasp of English—it was a second language… Wait.
That wasn’t right.
Jian Xingxia stared into the empty air. The system’s virtual panel specified “characters of the current world”; it never explicitly stated they had to be Han characters.
Setting the literacy cards aside, Jian Xingxia used a small twig to scratch directly into the dirt.
“1, 2, 3, 4, 5…”
Lin Sanniang and the others already knew how to pronounce these numbers; they just didn’t know how to write them. Although the Arabic numerals were a bit curvy, they required very few strokes and were incredibly simple.
It was unknown what kind of script Da Hei’s native people used when he was a Kunlun slave, but after being stimulated by the fact that he was the only failure among the three earlier, he actually managed to learn them this time.
Lin Sanniang was the fastest. Having spent time keeping accounts, handling cash, and selling items at the guesthouse, she had already picked up a few things just by looking at them.
Shang Yue was a bit slower, but he was inherently literate, knew how to draft blueprints, and could calculate dimensions, so this wasn’t difficult for him either. He even looked a bit dazed. “One, two, three, four… To think there exists such a simple way to write them. If this script could be passed to the Great Yan Dynasty, it wouldn’t be so difficult for us to build houses and calculate dimensions.”
(Note: “One, two, three, four” does not represent the native script of the Great Yan Dynasty, but is merely used to illustrate the difference in difficulty between traditional characters, simplified characters, and Arabic numerals. This story is set in a fictional universe; while it strives to remain relatable to daily life, details should not be overly scrutinized.)
Jian Xingxia didn’t reply. Almost every employee came from an independent dynasty. Just from what she knew, there was the Great Liang Dynasty, the Great Yu Dynasty, the Great Shang Dynasty, and the Great Yan Dynasty… It was hard enough for her to look after her employees; she couldn’t care less about how parallel worlds developed.
She focused her attention on teaching Da Hei. This silly giant had a massive frame but a tiny brain; teaching Lin Sanniang three characters was faster than teaching Da Hei a single one. Even so, Jian Xingxia didn’t give up. After all, every single point added to the quest progress counted. Whatever could be resolved today shouldn’t be put off until tomorrow.
From four o’clock, she continued teaching until sunset.
Lin Sanniang learned twenty-seven characters, but because she wasn’t entirely fluent, the system retroactively deducted two, leaving a final score of twenty-five characters. Shang Yue learned twenty-three characters, but with three deducted, his score was twenty. Da Hei learned nine characters, with zero deductions.
Jian Xingxia felt she was being a bit biased. She wasn’t surprised that Shang Yue and Lin Sanniang had mastered over twenty characters, but the fact that Da Hei had learned nine made her want to shower him with praise.
Unfortunately, she had to break some unfortunate news to Da Hei today.
“Da Hei, I won’t be summoning you tomorrow. You might have to wait a while before your next turn.”
Needless to say, as formal workers, Sanniang and the plump auntie were mandatory picks. Given Shang Yue’s current situation, Jian Xingxia didn’t dare skip his recruitment, fearing a mishap. It would be terrifying if the man suddenly ended up dead. There was one more temporary worker slot left for tomorrow, and she planned to summon the scholar to give it a try. The scholar had at least sat for the imperial examinations; even if he hadn’t “passed,” a literate scholar should learn things a bit faster.
Jian Xingxia merely exhorted Lin Sanniang and Shang Yue to properly review the characters they had learned once they returned today, lest they forget them immediately. After all, the system’s progress bar kept fluctuating wildly; sometimes it would increase by +1 for no apparent reason, while other times, right after a test with seemingly good results, it would drop by -2. Jian Xingxia felt a distinct weight of pressure on her heart.
Current Literacy Progress: 59.
Considering Sanniang and the others’ capacity to absorb information, Jian Xingxia didn’t increase the intensity further. Before darkness fell, everyone worked together to put in some hard labor.
Da Hei helped chop bamboo, while Jian Xingxia and Lin Sanniang helped split it, cut it to length, and cut the hemp rope. Shang Yue focused his mind entirely on constructing the chicken coop. This was his third day at the manor, and it was the first time he was performing a proper shift of labor, so his expression was solemn, not daring to slack off in the slightest. His brothers back in the Great Yan Dynasty were still waiting for him to bring supplies back!
When Jian Xingxia saw him pulling wild vines, peeling off the bark, rolling them by hand into hemp rope, and then tying the bamboo splits and poles together to create fencing and the “walls” of the chicken coop, she was utterly dumbfounded. At this rate, when would he ever finish!
Jian Xingxia called Shang Yue to a halt. “Wait a second! Why aren’t you using iron wire to bind them?”
On the day Shang Yue came for his “trial shift,” Jian Xingxia had hauled a small cart of tools to the foot of the mountain. She walked over to the tree, cleared away the burlap sacks and bamboo baskets, and pulled out half a roll of iron wire from inside. It was three to four millimeters thick, perfectly suited for binding bamboo poles. There was even a pair of pliers inside the burlap sack, making it incredibly convenient to cut the wire.
Shang Yue gasped in astonishment. “Benefactor, this iron wire… is to be used just for a chicken pen?”
Jian Xingxia was completely oblivious. “Of course. This wire can’t be used for anything else anyway, so it’s perfect for binding things.”
Shang Yue fell silent. Iron was an exceptionally precious resource in the Great Yan Dynasty. The reason their group of forced laborers couldn’t defeat the government soldiers was largely due to their lack of weapon resources, which severely reduced their combat capability. This roll of iron wire weighed at least five or six catties; if it were melted down and forged into blades, it could easily yield several weapons.
Without saying a word, Shang Yue followed Jian Xingxia’s lead, learning how to use the pliers to snip the iron wire and use it instead of hemp rope and vines to bind the bamboo. Needless to say, wrapping the iron wire around and twisting it two or three times was far more convenient and much faster than reinforcing it by tying hemp rope seven or eight times in every direction. Just how wealthy did someone have to be to use iron wire to build a chicken pen!
With the iron wire and pliers, Shang Yue’s speed accelerated significantly. Just as night fell, the chicken coop was completed.
Now, the chickens and ducks could be moved over. Although there was only one chicken pen currently, Jian Xingxia didn’t have many chickens, ducks, or geese anyway; ten square meters was plenty of space for them to live. Once more pens were built later on, they could be released onto the mountain during the day to forage for food on their own, and then driven back at night.
Once the chicken coop was built, Jian Xingxia and Lin Sanniang happened to bring food down from the old house.
There were no guests dining at the farmhouse restaurant today, so there were no leftovers. Jian Xingxia and Lin Sanniang pulled out some savory oil cakes with meat filling and steamed buns, pounding and kneading them into massive meat patties that no longer resembled their original form.
Jian Xingxia: Pounding this is so exhausting!
Lin Sanniang: My goodness! This is far too wasteful!
Perfect buns and oil cakes turned into mashed paste just like that; Lin Sanniang felt so heartbroken her tears nearly fell. But upon hearing that this was the only way Shang Yue could carry them back, Lin Sanniang could only silently wipe her tears away. Oh well, everyone fell on hard times occasionally. The more it was like this, the more Lin Sanniang hoped the manor would officially open for business soon. When there were more guests, there would be more leftovers, and they wouldn’t have to fear a few more miserable souls like Shang Yue showing up.
