Chapter 53: An Unconventional Enlightenment Lesson

As a transmigrator whose soul hailed from the twenty-first century, Li Boyang was well aware of the importance of knowledge.

Therefore, even though Li Jingshu’s physical training was grueling, Li Boyang would still set aside half a day for her to read and learn characters.

"What kind of teacher uses medical texts and herb manuals to enlighten a child..."

Sitting on her custom-made small stool, Li Jingshu flipped through the books on the desk and complained.

Yes, what Li Jingshu was flipping through now was not animal hide, bamboo slips, or silk, but a scroll of paper.

In fact, when the Deceit Rabbit tossed these books in front of Li Boyang, his perception of this era was thrown into disarray once again.

In Li Boyang’s ingrained impression, papermaking had always been a unique, proprietary invention of ancient China.

On Earth in his past life, Western civilization had still been using parchment as a recording and writing tool until the early fourteenth century.

After Li Boyang’s careful study and analysis later on, he noticed that these sheets were not made through the papermaking process.

This type of rolled paper was actually closer to the papyrus invented by the ancient Egyptians.

It was not made in the conventional sense by soaking and breaking down fibers into paper, but by directly pressing a certain type of special natural plant.

Thus, these sheets were thin, brittle, and fragile, and their production was extremely limited.

Even with the heaven-reaching means displayed by the Deceit Rabbit.

When handing these books over to Li Boyang, it had worn an expression of genuine heartache.

In the Deceit Rabbit’s own words at the time, these were rare treasures that only true priests could ever hope to use.

In terms of preciousness alone, these scrolls were perhaps even more valuable than the knowledge recorded upon them.

"Who else is to blame but us for only having these medical texts and herb manuals?"

Although he was only as tall as Li Jingshu while she was sitting, every word and action of Li Boyang was filled with the dignity of a teacher.

"Today we are going to learn human anatomy; at the very least, you must memorize the names of those organs and tissues..."

"First, here is the heart, which is also the center of the human body's blood supply."

"It is responsible for the circulation of blood throughout the entire human body; once this is damaged, a normal living creature basically cannot be saved."

"And here is what is called the liver; although it is not as important as the heart, it bears the most vital detoxification function of the entire body."

"These two characters are read as 'bladder,' and it is..."

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Perched on a nearby tree branch, Xi Luo quietly listened in on Li Boyang’s enlightenment of Li Jingshu.

Unlike the oblivious Li Jingshu, Xi Luo had long known that Li Boyang was mixing in quite a bit of his own private agenda during the enlightenment process.

For instance, the classification of human organs, as well as knowledge regarding various meridians and acupoints.

Although the medical texts brought back by the Deceit Rabbit did indeed contain content regarding human anatomy, the level of detail and precision was enough to make one’s hair stand on end.

Yet, most of that content remained superficial and did not delve into the specific roles and functions of those organs.

Not to mention, Li Boyang would occasionally teach Li Jingshu how to perform self-rescue in emergency situations.

Cardiopulmonary resuscitation, where one forcibly grips the heart to make it beat...

Emergency hemostasis performed through compression and pressure...

Piercing the trachea directly to allow a suffocating person to breathe without using their mouth or nose...

Even though she had never seen Li Boyang perform these in practice, Xi Luo did not doubt the accuracy of the knowledge he taught for a second.

Sometimes, even Xi Luo felt a bit suspicious while listening.

Was Li Boyang teaching Li Jingshu medical arts, or was he teaching her ways to kill?

Any of the knowledge points he spoke of could be turned into excellent methods for killing or torture if the application were simply changed.

Especially when combined with the various medicinal effects in the herb manuals, it often created an option where "death is harder than living."

Fortunately, Xi Luo was not human and did not experience that sense of empathy for her own kind; instead, she listened to Li Boyang’s explanations with great interest.

While the structures of animals and humans were certainly different, the basic principles remained the same.

Let alone ordinary animals, even those formidable monsters, once their vital points and weaknesses were attacked, would not perform much better than common beasts.

Of course, the reason Xi Luo was able to listen patiently.

Besides Li Boyang mocking her for being illiterate that morning, there was actually another more important reason—learning the mantra incantations.

Li Boyang had actually realized long ago.

This world was different from the Earth of his past life; some things could not be taught by rote.

For example, the twelve mantra incantations left behind by the Huaijiang Witch were things that simply did not exist on Earth.

At first, Li Boyang had simply understood them as some kind of text imbued with mysterious power.

After all, wasn't that how it was written in all the fantasy novels of his past life?

However, it was only after Li Boyang began to conduct more in-depth research into the mantra incantations that he realized his thinking had been far too shallow.

The twelve incantations were merely the surface; the mantras were the foundation that constituted them.

If one were to break these twelve incantations apart, each one was composed of countless mantras, and these mantras could also be taken out individually to exert their effects.

From this perspective, these incantations were essentially a form of high-dimensional text.

The concept of "high-dimensional text" might be a bit abstract.

It is much easier to understand if one simply views them as text containing more information, or even energy.

To make a perhaps slightly inappropriate analogy.

English is a phonetic language, and at the same time, a standard linear-thinking language.

Theoretically, English can express different meanings through different combinations of twenty-six letters.

Yet, the flaw of this phonetic language is that whenever a new thing appears, a corresponding new word must be created.

Especially when delving into a specific professional vertical field, or when two regions have been isolated from each other for too long.

Those newly created words will become a barrier to mutual understanding.

Invisibly forming a professional barrier that greatly hinders cultural exchange and dissemination.

In contrast, Chinese characters are an ideographic language that combines character form, pronunciation, and rich semantic and cultural connotations.

Every Chinese character is not just a pronunciation; it also contains information from history, culture, philosophy, and other aspects, possessing strong inclusivity and extensibility.

Even for new things they have never seen before, ordinary people can roughly judge what this new thing is through the combinations of characters.

Three vertical lines and one horizontal line look like "mountain," a horizontal line above a baseline is "up," and a horizontal line below a baseline is "down."

Sun and moon combined make "bright," two trees combined make "grove," and more than a grove is "forest."

It is precisely because of this characteristic of containing more information.

As long as a person has learned simplified Chinese characters, they can likely understand the corresponding traditional characters without needing too many additional learning barriers.

Of course, the trade-off is that the learning threshold for ideographic languages is extremely high.

For English, one only needs to memorize words and their corresponding meanings, at most adding some local slang.

Whereas for Chinese, one must also combine it with the corresponding culture and context to avoid too much ambiguity during the process of reading and comprehension.

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(End of Chapter)