Chapter 689: Simplified Characters

After a period of sailing, Zhishou and his group finally arrived at the Xuanyuan Tribe. However, the scenery on both banks had changed so drastically that they could hardly tell where they were supposed to dock. The only thing they could use to judge the distance was the time spent sailing; the landmarks they had previously used along the way could no longer be found.

As they neared the Xuanyuan Tribe, everyone was on the deck, searching for traces of the tribe. Fortunately, they encountered several small boats from the Xuanyuan Tribe along the way. After calling out to communicate, one of the boats chose to guide them, as it was indeed very difficult to judge the distance now.

After rounding a familiar bend, Zhishou and his group knew they were about to arrive. The Navy promptly slowed down. After traveling for a while longer, they saw the once-busy, well-constructed Matou of the Xuanyuan Tribe, which had now become very dilapidated and small—extremely crude, clearly having just been rebuilt.

Seeing this, Zhishou sighed with some emotion. They had worked so hard to develop it, yet it had become like this. He just didn't know if the city had been affected; most importantly, the farmland—the farmland must absolutely not be damaged.

The Soldiers dropped the anchor, and the boat slowly pulled up to the Matou. Because they did not know the specific water depth, they did not get too close to the shore and had to rely on the Xuanyuan Tribe's small boats to ferry everyone over. The Matou was also too small now, making everything quite inconvenient.

Seeing Zhishou return, the tribespeople of the Xuanyuan Tribe were very happy. They did not want to lose such a Sage.

The Construction Teams disembarked in an orderly fashion, and the apprentices they had brought to Huaxia also followed behind their teachers. They had learned a lot in Huaxia over this Winter; in addition to theoretical knowledge, they had also learned Huaxia's writing and arithmetic. During the construction process, this knowledge would be very helpful to them.

They even learned a bit of carpentry. These people from the Construction Teams were all excellent Carpenters. A true good Carpenter knows how to build houses; Carpentry and masonry are basically interchangeable, though Carpentry tests one's talent more and the training period is longer.

As teachers, these Artisans applied for a set of carpentry tools for their students. That is, they could use them, but the tools did not belong to them and would have to be returned later. The students were extremely grateful and excited about this. Although these Ironware items were not Weapons, they were Iron—extremely precious—and they had obtained them without paying any price.

The people from the Ministry of Works were naturally willing to do this because they had their own plans. Only by letting the apprentices come into contact with and use the tools as soon as possible could they finish their apprenticeship sooner. Moreover, after these students completed their studies, they would have to work for Huaxia for several years for free, so how could the people of Huaxia not be attentive? They trained the people of the Xuanyuan Tribe according to the same standards as their own people; by letting them finish their apprenticeship sooner, Huaxia would have Workers available sooner.

As for the tools, that mattered even less. The Ministry of Works had plenty, and they could afford the tools for these people. Iron was precious to other tribes, but it was not so urgent in Huaxia. As long as these apprentices remained in Huaxia for a day, there was no need to take back these tools. Once they worked for free for a few years, the value they created would far exceed these tools. Giving them away wouldn't matter, and it could even help foster their connection.

At this time, Xuanyuan and his people were still busy in the tribe. Xuanyuan did not have the habit that Baifeng had of sitting in an office to work, processing everything based on various reports and documents, mainly because the writing of the Xuanyuan Tribe and the things that carried the writing were too backward.

Cangjie's Dictionary project had not yet finished, but with the help and coordination of Huaxia officials, the progress was very fast. Moreover, the compilation followed the rules, so the part of the Dictionary that had already been compiled did not show any signs of confusion.

All the characters created by Cangjie had been copied down. Those few Huaxia officials had already learned all the characters Cangjie had created. The vast majority did not have the slightest similarity to Huaxia's characters, but if one looked at the logic of their creation, one could indeed find many commonalities.

And those few officials, after learning the principles of character creation, finally understood why Baifeng said they should learn the method of creating characters. Only by learning the principles could they create more of the characters they needed.

Cangjie also learned Huaxia's characters and discovered the similarities between the two. He was the one who created the characters, and no one knew better than he did what a character represented. He discovered that Huaxia's characters were like the product of simplifying his characters several times over. As long as one generally understood the principles of Huaxia's characters, for him, learning Huaxia's characters was much faster than Huaxia's people learning his.

At the same time, in this process, he also simplified his own characters, following this logic of Huaxia. Now, the characters Cangjie had improved again were even more similar to Huaxia's; nearly half of them had no major differences.

But Cangjie always kept his original intention; he believed that the characters he created could not be exactly the same as Huaxia's. Therefore, after the improvements, there would always be a tiny difference. For example, the character for "King," which had already been simplified to the extreme: Huaxia's "King" had the three horizontal strokes evenly spaced, but in Cangjie's modified version, the second horizontal stroke was close to the first, and the distance to the third was widened. In terms of appearance, Huaxia's "King" character was like a sturdy, fat man, while Cangjie's "King" character was like a tall, thin man.

It was precisely because Cangjie's characters were still being constantly modified that the Dictionary, which did not have many characters, had not yet been finished. He also had not taught the characters he created to the people of his own tribe; they had to be completely improved before he would teach them.

The greater advantage of Huaxia's characters was that they had fewer strokes, were easy to learn and remember, and the consumption of paper and ink was much smaller. What Cangjie was actually more worried about was how to handle the subsequent use and promotion after the characters were improved. The ink problem was easy to solve, but what about paper? Huaxia would not teach them papermaking, and constantly purchasing paper from Huaxia was a huge expense.

Upon learning of Cangjie's concerns in this regard, the Huaxia officials did not hide anything and taught him a method: bamboo slips and wooden tablets.

Being able to promote the Xuanyuan Tribe's writing was also beneficial to Huaxia, but papermaking could not be discussed, so they let them use things that they themselves had already phased out.

Before paper was manufactured, Huaxia used bamboo slips and wooden pieces. There was plenty of bamboo and wood, which the Xuanyuan Tribe did not lack, and the production was not difficult. Aside from being somewhat heavy and taking up space to store, there were no other disadvantages.

Paper was also made from bamboo and wood; the disadvantages of bamboo slips and wooden pieces were the same as those of paper, so the Xuanyuan Tribe could use them perfectly well. Upon hearing this, Cangjie hurriedly tried it out, and subsequently, his concerns in this regard vanished completely, and he even felt some gratitude toward these few people from Huaxia.