This country town was located in the south of the Yangtze River. There weren\u2019t many river tributaries except for one river running through the whole county.<\/span><\/p>\r\n The people in the county town washed clothes and vegetables there, so it was always very lively. Some people from the nearby villages would come to the river by boat after harvesting their vegetables, and would then stop by the river to sell them. Over time, the river had become the county town\u2019s vegetable market.<\/span><\/p>\r\n Just before dawn, there were many people already coming to the river. Some were noisy and were quarrelling loudly; many small merchants took out fresh vegetables from their boats to sell. At this time, a boat appeared on the shore, but there was no one on board. Instead, a piece of cloth was hung on the bow of the ship with several words written on it. However, most of the people present could not read, so they could not understand the meaning of those words.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \u201cWhat is this ship for?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\r\n \u201cYeah, what are they doing, stooping like that?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\r\n Some people looked at the ship curiously, while others came closer and looked inside.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \u201cAh!\u201d a cry of surprise echoed, and a man who approached the boat looked inside with a horrified expression on his face.<\/span><\/p>\r\n The man seemed to be frightened, but it was because of this that more people were attracted and went to see the boat. That was when they discovered that inside the cabin with its curtain lifted lay several bloody men who were tied up. This . . . What was going on here?<\/span><\/p>\r\n \u201cReport it to the officials!\u201d Soon someone ran to report to the officials.<\/span><\/p>\r\n When the people of Ningtang County found the ship and the people lying inside, they immediately reported it to the officials. At the same time, all kinds of guesses about the ship spread rapidly within the county town, but the ones responsible for all this had already left Ningtang.<\/span><\/p>\r\n It was already daybreak. Jiang Zhen asked Wang Haisheng to row while he cleaned the bloodstains on the boat and sorted out their cargo. Meanwhile, Wang Haisheng had been secretly watching him while rowing the boat very inattentively.<\/span><\/p>\r\n When Wang Haisheng looked over again, Jiang Zhen looked back and frowned. \u201cWhat are you looking at?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\r\n \u201cNo-Nothing,\u201d Wang Haisheng said hurriedly.<\/span><\/p>\r\n Jiang Zhen looked at Wang Haisheng. Yesterday, whether he had hit or extorted confessions from others, he did not hide it from Wang Haisheng. Later, when he sent those wounded water bandits\u00a0 to Ningtang on their own boat, he asked Wang Haisheng to carry them. He did that to test Wang Haisheng.<\/span><\/p>\r\n Wang Haisheng always thought that he was a good man, but he was not like Wang Haisheng imagined.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \u201cWhat do you think of what I did before?\u201d Jiang Zhen asked.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \u201cJiang Zhen, I can\u2019t believe you can read!\u201d Wang Haisheng looked at Jiang Zhen with admiration. \u201cI didn\u2019t expect you can read. No wonder you can calculate so fast. You\u2019re really talented!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\r\n The worship in Wang Haisheng\u2019s eyes couldn\u2019t be overseen, but Jiang Zhen was speechless. Did Wang Haisheng keep peeping at him just because he thought he could read and write well?<\/span><\/p>\r\n \u201cI asked you, what do you think of our fight against the water bandits?\u201d Jiang Zhen said.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \u201cThat . . . All water bandits deserve to die!\u201d Wang Haisheng said. \u201cWhy did we have to send them to the officials?\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n People like him, who had no fixed abode, had always stayed away from the government and liked to solve things by themselves, rather than sending them to the officials. At the same time, they had seen too much in life and witnessed\u00a0 too many deaths. In fact, they were much more receptive to killing than modern people. Water bandits would kill them, so killing water bandits in return was nothing to them.<\/span><\/p>\r\n Jiang Zhen smiled. \u201cWang Haisheng, you just follow me in the future. As long as you listen to me, I will let you live a good life.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\r\n \u201cI\u2019ve already been following you.\u201d Wang Haisheng looked at Jiang Zhen with bewilderment.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \u201cAlso . . . By the way, call me boss later,\u201d Jiang Zhen said.<\/span><\/p>\r\n Wang Haisheng agreed, and Jiang Zhen gave him about ten silver. \u201cTake it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\r\n \u201cThis . . . This . . . \u201c Wang Haisheng looked at Jiang Zhen with surprise. He always thought that he would be working with Jiang Zhen for food and shelter. He did not expect that Jiang Zhen would give him money.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \u201cYou did a good job last night. It\u2019s for you,\u201d Jiang Zhen said, thinking that in the upcoming days, he must train Wang Haisheng well and plant some ideas in his head along the way.<\/span><\/p>\r\n This shouldn\u2019t be too difficult. People like Wang Haisheng, who have never been to school or studied, are absolutely easy to fool.<\/span><\/i> Of course, the most urgent thing was to check those bandits\u2019 nest.<\/span><\/p>\r\n The water bandits had already disclosed the location of their old nest the day before. But it was too dark last night, so Jiang Zhen couldn\u2019t go there and look for it until dawn.<\/span><\/p>\r\n This so-called old nest was actually a house in some remote location. The water bandits lived on the boat during the day, but went there to sleep at night. Most of their silver they carried with them, but the stolen goods were piled there. When Jiang Zhen went in the house and looked around, he had a feeling of getting rich. The water bandits were lazy and they were unwilling to sell the goods after stealing them, so there were many goods stacked there. Although a few of them contained food that had gone bad, the rest could still be sold. Moreover, those things were worth more than the cargo on his ship.<\/span><\/p>\r\n Without hesitation, Jiang Zhen carried all the goods to the ship. Because there were so many things, their ship could hardly fit them all. These goods included cloth, porcelain, bundles of candles, and even . . . some books.<\/span><\/p>\r\n There was not a single book in Hexi Village, so Jiang Zhen had never read a book since he traveled to this era.<\/span><\/p>\r\n He sent Wang Haisheng to row, and without anything to do, he opened one of the books and started reading. Then he discovered . . . he couldn\u2019t understand it.<\/span><\/p>\r\n Jiang Zhen was actually pretty knowledgeable in the army. He not only had a good knowledge of firearms, but also knew three foreign languages – English and two languages of Southeast Asia.<\/span><\/p>\r\n English was hard for him to learn, so he listened to tapes when he was reading at school, and he was forced to learn the latter two languages because of an assignment. But even if he could speak three foreign languages, he had never learned traditional Chinese characters.<\/span><\/p>\r\n And now he had a book in his hands. Not only was it written in traditional chinese characters, but it also lacked punctuation. How could people not know how to write words to form sentences?<\/span><\/p>\r\n Can\u2019t you just use colloquialism?<\/span><\/i> At least, he could understand the simplified version of the <\/span>Romance of the Three Kingdoms<\/span><\/i> and the signs hanging in front of those shops in the city could also be guessed. Jiang Zhen looked at the book in his hand and stared at it.<\/span><\/p>\r\n Proofreader: Taalia<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Support translation:<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n <\/p>\r\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ningtang was a small county town. There were only two streets in the county town, the longer one stretched from east to west, and the shorter one stretched from north to south and was called Hengjie by the local people. This country town was located in the south of the Yangtze River. There weren\u2019t many […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":156,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tofuh","entry","has-media"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ontimestory.eu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/14193s.jpg?fit=200%2C280&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ontimestory.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ontimestory.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ontimestory.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ontimestory.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ontimestory.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1563"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ontimestory.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1564,"href":"https:\/\/ontimestory.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1563\/revisions\/1564"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ontimestory.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ontimestory.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ontimestory.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ontimestory.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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