One morning while Niu Tan was training his sword swings, Yan Qi came to the courtyard with a bunch of papers. The Yan family had compiled a list of scholars that Niu Tan had asked for.
“We tried finding the ones that matched your criteria the most but we could only find 7 of them. There are just too few scholars around and even fewer that match your criteria.” Yan Qi tried explaining why there were so few candidates.
Niu Tan waved his hand to indicate that it’s fine. “I was expecting at most two or three of them. This is already much better than my expectations.”
He really hadn’t expected to get so many candidates. After quickly skimming through the details about them, he already had three favorites.
Jia Yang a 15-year-old genius scholar who passed the provincial test but ended up offending a minister’s son by standing up to the bully who was beating some poor kid. The moment his palm smacked the face of the minister’s son, his fate was sealed.
Zhou Yi, a 19 year old who was said to be a rising star but gave up on taking the final test. He had decided that the politics capital was not for him and went back to his hometown to become a teacher.
Wan Niu, a 22 year old genius martial arts Master who thought martial arts wasn’t exciting enough so he went ahead and aced the scholar exams just for the excitement. It was rumored that he was already very close to reaching Grand Master stage and it was only a matter of time.
Compared to these three, the others on the list looked somewhat bland. They were all above average and were scholars with great righteousness who had been wronged by people or circumstances. But they could only be considered satisfactory in Niu Tan’s eyes.
He especially wanted to recruit Wan Niu, a Grand Master realm martial scholar would not only be smart but also can be used as school security. He could also trade pointers with him and improve his own martial arts.
Niu Tan wanted to invite these guys over immediately to assess them in person but he knew that these people wouldn’t be swayed with just gold and riches. So, he needed to cast some bait that would make them come to him on their own.
He quickly got a pen and a piece of paper and wrote a simplified explanation of the Pythagoras theorem with an incomplete proof. At the foot of the paper he gave the address of a shop owned by the Yan family.
“Send a copy each of this to the seven of them. And place someone you trust in that clothes shop to keep an eye on when those scholars arrive. They will bring this letter back with them so it will be easy to identify them. Bring them straight to me.” Niu Tan ordered.
Although Yan Qi had studied arithmetic as all the Yan family kids were required to do so, just looking at the complex mathematical equations and diagrams on that piece of paper made his head dizzy.
He nodded and immediately went to execute the orders. To think that just a few weeks ago, he had sat down with this terrifying youth with even scary background to drink wine acting like a big brother. The ignorant truly are fearless.
Niu Tan went back to his training. He had nothing to do for the time being so he might as well train more.
////////////////////////////////
Yan Mo looked at a copy of the theorem that was sent out to the scholars. He didn’t understand all of the diagrams and calculations but he could vaguely understand the gist of it.
“This seems to be about measuring distances of triangular diagrams.” He concluded after straining his brain. He thought if he was given enough time he could figure it out but decided against it. It was a waste of time.
Niu Tan had kept most of it vague but still easily solvable if one were to just think hard enough. The theorem itself wasn’t very complex to begin with. It was only meant to lure the scholars to him with new knowledge.
Yan Mo handed back the paper to Yan Qi. “Try solving it in your free time. It might help you make your brain sharper. Just don’t let anyone else see this until the scholars have arrived.”
Although Niu Tan didn’t seem to care too much about hiding it, it was still written by him for the scholars he wanted to recruit. So Yan Mo didn’t want to upset him by publicizing this thing.
Yan Qi nodded and asked, “I will be careful. But how did the discussion with the king go, uncle?”
Yan Mo had gone to the capital and returned without even staying there for two days. In his other trips to the capital, his uncle would at least be gone for two weeks. So this trip to and from capital that ended within a single week made Yan Qi nervous.
Yan Mo sighed, “It was a tough battle. But thank the heavens that this king is a greedy pig. We ended up having to hand over half of the fleet we build to the palace but in return we got a decree from him to raise our personal armies by 40% and the royal guards will help secure the shipyard for the first two years.”
This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.
Although they could just hire more martial artists without letting the palace know about it, having a decree that allowed you to recruit more gave the Yan family more maneuverability.
“He didn’t ask for the blueprint itself?” Yan Qi had thought that they would be forced to hand it over.
“Although he is greedy, the king is not stupid. He knows that if he pushes too much we could just as easily sell it to the neighboring kingdoms. And anyway he can get the ships we build free of cost so he can have his people study it to replicate later. So he isn’t making any losses.” Yan Mo explained.
Yan Qi nodded in understanding. So for the next two years, the palace and the secret consortium that his family had created with the other three families would be working together as allies. After the two years, if his family wasn’t strong enough, they will have a bitter end.
Yan Mo then delegated some tasks to Yan Qi while he got busy with the preparations to start building the ships.
////////////////////////////////
Wan Niu was resting at the Beggars’ Inn that was smack-dab in the middle of the slums of the capital. He stayed in this cheap and smelly place every time he came to the capital. This was the place he had met his beautiful and loving master.
He was just one of the street rats thrown into the gutters at birth by his mother. The powerless baby could only stay there and cry. If he was unlucky like most other kids, he would be mauled to death by some rabid dogs.
That was when a beautiful woman who he could only describe as a fairy who looked out of place in these slums happened to pass by and see the child crying out loud in the gutter.
For unknown reasons, this celestial fairy took the crying kid and entered the nearby Beggars’ Inn to nurse him. For the next 10 years she took care of the kid she named Wan Niu for the innate strength in his body that made him much stronger than kids his age.
She worked as a cook in the run down, dirty inn hiding her beautiful appearance under dirty rags and scarves. Aunty Wan who owned the inn was sharp tongued but very kind and she let the new mother and son duo live there. It also had to do with the fact that his mother cooked great food.
Wan Niu never really got to know much about her and he only addressed her as ‘fairy mother’ because Aunty Wang would tease him saying his mother was a fairy.
When he was about 10, one day his mother disappeared without a word. He tried finding her everywhere but he had no clue where she went. As a 10 year old with strength of an adult, he didn’t have much trouble traveling around the country searching for her.
Six years of travel later he still had no clue about his mother but something started to change in his body. He was always much stronger than his peers but as the day of his 16th birthday got closer, his body kept hurting more as if it was breaking apart and being reconstructed.
The night of his 16th birthday, the transformation ended and he gained new memories. He was a Divine Master realm martial artist who had tried to ascend into a higher realm when he was at the end of his lifespan at 540 years.
When he thought his soul was about to be sublimated, he felt like he crashed into a thick barrier before hurtling back down.
With these new memories, Wan Niu took the path of creating the best foundation and practicing the best martial arts. With his qigong enhanced brain, he also restored the memories from right after he was born.
Even after assimilating the over 500 years of the past memory, he couldn’t find anyone who could compare to his fairy mother in terms of appearance, aura and temperament. It was as if she was really a celestial fairy cast down from heavens.
Becoming a Divine Master again was almost a certainty, he would even do it in the next decade at the latest. So his goal now was to search for the traces of his fairy mother.
He explored the world and trying out new things while searching for her because even though his fairy mother rarely ever spoke, something she repeatedly told him was to be happy and live to the fullest.
While the half a millennia old geezer reminisced about his mother, he heard a paper being slid under his bed. With his Master realm senses he could tell that it was just the waiter Aunt Wang had employed who had delivered it.
He leisurely waved his hand while still on the bed and a gust of wind suddenly picked up the paper and brought it to him. He read the contents of the paper and was intrigued. It wasn’t too big a deal for him to solve it after some careful thought.
Despite the ease with which he solved it, he was awed by the person who could think of things in such a mathematical way and even devise a formula. He had to meet the person! So he set out to the address given on the paper.
/////////////////////////////
Jia Yang was walking the streets with blank eyes. He had been expelled from the clan a few days ago because his family didn’t want to be implicated in the minister’s wrath.
His path was cut off and even his family had abandoned him out of fear. He had lost everything and didn’t want to live anymore. He just wanted it all to end.
Clutching the last silver tael he had carefully hidden in his pocket, he decided to buy a quick poison and be done with it. But before he could get to the apothecary shop, someone tapped on his back. When he turned around, he saw a man with his face hidden.
Is this it? Am I going to be assassinated? The minister is as ruthless as the rumors.
As various thoughts were forming in his head about the masked man in front of him. The masked man put his hand inside his clothes and brought out a… paper?
After handing him the paper, the man walked into the crowd and disappeared.
////////////////////////////////
Zhou Yi had just ended the class for the day. Although they didn’t have resources that were anything close to those in the big cities, his students still worked very hard. He felt gratified after every class.
He had never regretted not taking that test or not being an official at the capital. He didn’t believe that only a select few should have control over knowledge. Everyone should get a chance to study.
Although he was alone, he kept following his ideals and teaching more kids every year while imparting his ideals to them. He never forced them though. There wouldn’t be a difference in him and the people he was fighting against if he forced the kids to be like himself.
Just as Zhou Yi was about to close the doors of the school, he saw a student running at him waving a paper at him.
“An old uncle said that this was a letter for you.” The kid cutely said as he handed the paper and turned around to run back.
He smiled helplessly at the kid who was probably going to run off to the pond by the town with his friends.
He then turned his attention back to the paper.
////////////////////////////////////////////
Similar scenes occurred in four other places as mysterious letters were handed over to unsuspecting scholars. A letter that had nothing but a mathematical theorem and a location written on it.
And without fail, after having read it, all those who received the letter left for the location mentioned in it as soon as possible.