Chapter 2213

Thin smoke drifted upward, and ash fell continuously within the dim and cramped cage. Outside the window, which was shaped like golden grapevines, a hand opened the lid of the incense burner, took out the burnt-out spices, and replaced them with freshly pressed incense powder. The heavy scent of sandalwood in the room was replaced by a light, salty fragrance.

The heavy curtains fell, revealing a layer of gauze behind them. High-altitude sunlight pierced through the heavy obstacles and landed on the black-haired man who was burning incense.

He was wearing the soft undergarments worn inside deep blue armor, with his golden helmet placed at his side and his staff leaning upright against the door. When the door was pushed open, he was almost bumped.

Walking in was Strange, who wore a high-collared white silk shirt, with a deep cyan Tibetan robe over it. The hem of the skirt and the cuffs were embroidered with patches of Gesang flowers in silver thread, and he wore a belt inlaid with dzi beads.

"Are you resting, Loki?" Strange stepped back a pace, poked half his body in, and asked.

"I just came from Asgard and am preparing for class. If you have something to say, come in."

Strange walked in, holding a large stack of papers. He walked to the opposite side of Loki and sat down. Loki looked over his attire and said, "Is there another traditional festival in the village?"

"Yes, today is the New Year's Eve of the Tibetan calendar. The Sorcerer Supreme needs to hold a mask dance for the four villages." Strange picked up the teapot on the table, poured a bowl of hot tea, gulped it down, and let out a long breath.

"This outfit is nice," Loki praised sincerely. "Blue suits you better."

"It's a good thing I didn't bring the Cloak; it wouldn't like hearing that." Strange smiled and said.

"You seem to be in a good mood." Loki also flipped over the teacup at his side and poured himself half a bowl of tea.

"Because the village's harvest this year is good, and there are 32 newborns. This breaks the record of the last ten years, and two college students even returned."

"Before coming here, I thought Kamar-Taj hardly dealt with ordinary people," Loki recalled. "I thought you were that kind of transcendent organization."

"A very realistic point: what we eat." Strange tapped the table and looked at Loki. "We need to study magic and hone our skills. Mages can spare time to farm, but we can't spend all our time doing this. Besides, if we want to practice martial arts, we need to consume enough protein from meat, and grazing is not something that can be done on the mountain."

"The village supports you, and you help the villagers." Loki tilted his body slightly, resting one elbow on his knee. "It reminds me of very, very early Asgardian history. Back then, every time we made landfall, it was almost always to celebrate traditional festivals with the villagers along the coast."

"In fact, we are the villagers. You can think of the surrounding villages as a tribe, and we are the tribe's leaders and shamans, helping them maintain unity and follow the seasons. The translation of 'Sorcerer Supreme' in Tibetan is 'Great Shaman'."

Strange dug an oil-paper bag out of his waist pouch, handed it to Loki, and said, "These are butter pastries fried by the village elders; they are a kind of snack to go with tea. There are also highland barley cakes and highland barley wine, but to prevent the children from stealing a drink, I left them downstairs."

Loki opened the oil-paper bag and found that it was indeed filled with one pastry after another. Most were not crafted very exquisitely; the edges were a bit rough and crumbly, but as soon as it was opened, there was a fragrance of butter.

"You were actually able to carry them through the dormitory of that pack of little hungry wolves?" Loki picked one up, put it in his mouth, and said, "Last time I took two cinnamon rolls from home, intending to finish them before class, but they were in their stomachs less than two seconds after I took them out."

"They are always hungry when they are growing." Strange started digging in his bag again and said, "There is a bumper harvest this year, and the village decided to hold a banquet. I want to take the children, but I must not let them get all this so easily."

Loki laughed and said, "I think you still have fresh memories of their essays. I told you not to read them."

Strange pressed his forehead. He recalled the catastrophic day before, when he had a sudden whim to check the little mages' homework, focusing on the 12-16 age group; the older and younger children didn't have to write essays.

Then, as expected, Strange received some essay assignments with quite avant-garde writing and brilliant content.

Although Strange couldn't be considered a master of theory and hadn't been studying magic for long, his attainments in surgery were extremely high. Before becoming a surgeon, he was also a top student in medical school. If he hadn't been gifted in surgery, he would also have been an extremely excellent physician; writing essays was naturally a piece of cake for him.

However, the former Sorcerer Supremes, specifically the Ancient One and the great mages of her generation, mostly groped for the path to success through practice first, then taught the students by personal example. They lacked systematic teaching foundations, which led to the half-grown children who had been studying with them for several years not even knowing what written assignments were.

After Strange took over, he required them to combine theory and practice like students in most ordinary schools. At the very least, they had to spend half a day studying magic theory, and the older children also had to study economics, sociology, and finance, with small essay assignments every day.

Although Strange assigned them this way, he didn't have much time to check them, and the pillars of the teaching community were mostly pure-blood mages who had gone up the mountain in childhood. Most had never been exposed to this type of education. After the assignments were collected, they would glance at them a few times, feel that what was written made sense, and let it go carelessly.

So much so that when Strange checked, they had already accumulated a pile of strange papers filled with writing. When Strange read them, he used not magic knowledge, but archaeological techniques.

This brings us to the biggest problem with Kamar-Taj education—they don't use a unified language or script.

Because Kamar-Taj is built on the Mount Ximalaya, the students here are mostly of three nationalities: Chinese, Indian, and Nepalese.

Chinese students use Mandarin and Tibetan, Indian students use Hindi and English, and Nepalese students use Nepali and Newari dialects.

The vast majority of Kamar-Taj's magic theory requires students to master Classical Chinese, Sanskrit, and Persian.

The children who go up the mountain are not old. They learn many languages in conversations with their peers and teachers, remember many technical terms that cannot be accurately described in their own language families, and use them creatively in their writing.

Most of the essays Strange saw were mixed with Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Devanagari, and Tibetan.

Strange was a typical American who only knew the 26 letters of the English alphabet for the first half of his life. Any one of these scripts was like a heavenly book to him, and when they were mixed together, combined with the children's uninhibited handwriting, it made Strange want to hire a code-breaking expert several times.

"This is indeed a big problem," Loki said. "As far as I know, most of the teachers here are much more knowledgeable than us. They have mastered at least five languages and scripts and can answer all the children's questions."

"But this also allows them to mix complex languages," Strange took another sip of tea and said. "We must establish a sufficiently standard education system, which in normal circumstances can only be based on 1-2 languages."

"Then what do you think that would be?"

"The Ancient One believed it should be Chinese, because the vast majority of magic theory knowledge she understood was written in this language. Certain ancient cliffs and stone tablets record magic history composed of ancient scripts such as Bronze Script, Clerical Script, and Small Seal Script."

"But we cannot abandon English," Loki spread his hands and said. "There are many students from other countries. As far as I know, English is the easiest language to learn."

Strange waved his hand and said, "This doesn't depend on which language we want at all."

After finishing, he finally pulled a stack of papers out of his bag and said, "The most important problem is actually the teachers, and what makes me happiest is that I just learned that a group of teachers will come to the village in a few days, from big cities in China."

"What are they coming here to do?" Loki asked with some confusion.

"Help the village make money." Strange flipped through the stack of papers in his hand and said, "At least that's what I read from these things. They think the village here is a bit poor, and they hope the villagers can earn more money, so they came here to help them."

Loki took the things from Strange's hand. Actually, he only had a smattering of knowledge about Chinese, but he tried hard to recall the knowledge he had almost forgotten in his mind and pieced together some meaning.

"They are going to build a school here?"

"I heard they have already built many, but none so remote. This time they seem to intend to make a big move. Coming are traffic designers, railway workers, satellite base station staff, teachers, and officials."

Loki frowned and thought for a while before saying, "They intend to actually control this place? Do you think this is a good thing?"

Strange looked at Loki with slight contempt and said, "Don't tell me you are sitting here quietly burning incense and meditating because you like it. Do you know how fast the internet speed is in the city closest to here?"

"They are going to connect this place to the internet?!" Loki widened his eyes in surprise and said, "Good heavens! This is halfway up the Mount Ximalaya! Where are they going to connect the internet to? Asgard?"

Strange excitedly changed his posture and pounded his slightly numb legs. "I asked the Sorcerer Supreme of the Hong Kong Sanctum. Yes, they are preparing to fully connect satellite signals here, all the way to the other side of the mountain."

"But that's not the best news. The good news is that they seem unsatisfied with railways and intend to build a high-speed inter-space transport system over the entire Mount Ximalaya, completely phasing out airplanes and ships."

"Cough, cough, cough..."

Loki coughed for a long time and said, "They intend to build a high-speed railway across the Mount Ximalaya?! Passing over our heads?!!"

"That's right." Strange rubbed his hands and said, "I discussed it with the village chief. If we propose it together, perhaps we can get a station on that mountain peak nearby, solely for mages and villagers to travel. It would take about ten minutes to reach the nearest town and only three hours to reach Chengdu."

"Then what are the conditions?"

"We use Chinese for teaching, and we have to help the four villages near us earn a lot of money."

Strange stared at Loki and said, "This is the reason I came to find you. Help me think of a way, quickly."

"You found the wrong person." Loki drank a sip of tea and said, "Shouldn't this matter be taken to Schiller?"

"He is busy with a banquet. Did you receive an invitation?"