Favorite of the Beast-world: I Got Rich Through Farming-Chapter 314 - 203: These Are Your Names and Teach Me How to Write

Chapter 314: Chapter 203: These Are Your Names and Teach Me How to Write

After all the pulp was removed from the pool, the Beastmen peeled the sheets of paper off the concrete floor one by one, draping them over square wooden frames to bake in the sun.

After a couple of days, the Xuan paper was dry. The Beastmen collected it, trimmed the edges, and brought it to An Jin for inspection.

"Lord City Lord... are these acceptable?" the group asked, their voices filled with anxiety.

This was, after all, their first time making paper. They had never even known what paper looked like before, so they had no idea if their creation would satisfy the City Lord.

Her fair fingertips traced over the smooth, flat surface of the paper. An Jin’s furrowed brow gradually relaxed, joy creeping into her expression as a sigh of admiration escaped her lips. ’...Practically perfect paper.’

The mulberry bark was highly resilient, producing a Xuan paper that was both durable and pliable. It was as soft as thin cloth, smooth and gentle to the touch, with the faint texture of a bamboo screen visible within its fibers...

The quality exceeded her expectations; it was practically a work of art. She suddenly felt a little reluctant to use such fine paper just for teaching handwriting.

"Continue production according to the standards of this batch. The more, the better."

Two or three months passed. The workshop produced several thousand sheets of paper in total. After the edges were trimmed, each sheet measured a standard 1 by 1.5 meters and could be cut down further into various required sizes.

The construction of the academy was also nearly complete, with only the final touches remaining.

In the last stretch of time before the academy opened, An Jin shut herself in her room and began the work of standardizing the written language.

Creating a new writing system from scratch was too much trouble, and she wasn’t even sure she could remember it all herself. So, she decided to directly use the common script from her mother country in her previous life.

Coincidentally, most of the characters that had emerged within the Beastman Tribes were simplified pictographs, and the script of her mother country was also pictographic. This would make it more intuitive and easier for the Beastmen to learn.

In the study of the Stone Castle, An Jin sat at a wooden desk, brush in hand, flanked by three tall, handsome men.

Ink bled onto the yellowish Xuan paper. With a few short, deft strokes, it formed several large characters that were like pictures, yet not.

"What characters are those?" Xi asked, looking up and leaning in as he carefully ground the ink for her.

Gu Yin and Ling Hong also looked over, their curiosity piqued.

"These are our names."

She hadn’t written in a long time, and her brushstrokes were a bit rusty. An Jin dipped her brush in ink again, touched up the edges, and turned around with a smile. "Look. This is my name, this is Gu Yin, this one is Ling Hong, and the one with a single word is Xi!"

She carefully pointed out their respective names to the three men.

In all their lives, they had never seen what their own names looked like. Now, seeing them take form under the hand of their beloved female, a strange feeling stirred in their hearts.

Gu Yin’s gaze lingered on his own name for a brief second before shifting to another—[An Jin]—where it remained for a long time.

"I want to try," he said suddenly.

"Okay," An Jin said, delighted to find an eager student. She happily handed him the brush. "This is a calligraphy brush, which is a bit different from the charcoal sticks I used before. I’ll teach you how to hold it."

Beginners often wrote crookedly with a calligraphy brush, so An Jin guided his hand as she taught him. Beside them, Ling Hong and Xi were green with envy, secretly plotting how they would also get her to teach them personally in a moment.

When he was finished writing,

An Jin realized that Gu Yin had written her name.

"I thought you would write your own name," she said, surprised.

Gu Yin mimicked her actions, dipping the brush in ink and adding a few more strokes to the characters. It was less like writing and more like meticulously copying a drawing of the "words," striving to make them identical to the ones she had written.

Once he was finally satisfied, he lifted the brush again and crookedly wrote [Gu Yin] next to [An Jin].

"This paper has both our names on it. Just the two of us," he said happily, the corners of his lips curling up. His bewitchingly handsome face held a gentle smile.

Bright, reddish-gold light streamed through the wide, floor-to-ceiling windows, casting itself upon the side of the man’s devastatingly beautiful face. It outlined his features with a dazzling golden edge, smoothing away the cold, gloomy aura between his deep-set eyes, creating a gentleness that was simply heart-stopping.

With a soft sound, the man’s long, pale fingers set down the brush. Gu Yin turned to look at her, his magnificent, ruby-like eyes meeting hers with an intense, soul-piercing gaze.

"..." An Jin’s heart skipped a beat. She blinked, her lashes, haloed by the soft light, fluttering gently.

Seeing the air between the two begin to heat up, Ling Hong and Xi could no longer sit still. Xi, who loved to push his luck, simply grabbed the brush again and wrote his name on the paper.

"Now there are three of us! Ah Jin, look! Isn’t my handwriting beautiful~?"

Gu Yin frowned. His gaze fell on the paper, now blemished with a few extra drops of ink and another name. A vein throbbed on his forehead, and his expression instantly darkened.

Ling Hong followed suit, dashing off two more words with a wave of his hand. He raised an eyebrow at the murderous-looking Gu Yin and said with a smile, "And now there are four."

Gu Yin: ’...’ ’These two nuisances. Sooner or later, I’ll deal with them.’

An Jin: ’...’ ’Help me, I’m going to die laughing at these three squabbling like little kids.’

Unable to hold it in, she covered her mouth and let out a chuckle, breaking the dead, murderous silence in the room.

The snake, the wolf, and the fish all whipped their heads around to look at her at once.

"Alright, alright, how about I write a separate one for each of you? Don’t let such a small thing ruin the peace." Playing the peacemaker was her specialty.

’This isn’t a small thing, this is a male’s pride!’

The three of them thought silently, but as if by a shared, unspoken understanding, none of them said it out loud.

The farce finally ended when An Jin finished and slapped three sheets of paper—each with her name and one of their names—into their arms.

...

Once all the preparations were complete, the academy opened.

As previously agreed, the Clan Leaders from the surrounding tribes sent over many of their idle Beastmen, and An Jin was in charge of teaching them.

The curriculum was divided into specialized courses and compulsory courses.

Due to time constraints and a lack of thorough preparation, the only specialized course offered for now was agriculture, which the Beastmen needed most urgently.

The compulsory course, naturally, was literacy.

Only by popularizing a written language could other knowledge be spread more quickly and effectively, advancing the civilization of the Beast World by a great leap.

And so, An Jin’s daily schedule suddenly became very hectic.

In the mornings, she led the Beastmen in the academy to recognize characters; in the afternoons, she took them to the fields for hands-on instruction.

Soon, however, she discovered some problems.

The first problem was that she was the only teacher, but the first batch of Beastmen sent to study numbered over a hundred. She didn’t have three heads and six arms; she simply didn’t have the energy to manage so many students at once.

The second problem was that the energetic Beastmen simply couldn’t sit still in class. Forget about getting them to quiet their minds and study—they would start getting antsy if they had to sit quietly on a bench for just five minutes.

---

I see all you darlings’ tickets and beans! A big hug and a kiss for every one of you, mwah~

Let’s keep up the great work in this new month.