I Was a Man of Culture

Huang Shang opened the Analects and spread it out on his desk.

Line after line of neat, small characters met his eyes. They were square and clean, written with meticulous care, so orderly they looked as if they'd come off a printing press.

But since they only looked that way, they clearly hadn't been printed.

Though woodblock printing had already appeared in the Tang dynasty and Bi Sheng had later improved and developed it during the Song, giving rise to movable type, it was still beyond the means of ordinary scholars.

This copy of the Analects had been transcribed by hand, using the standard examination script familiar to later generations: the Three Academies Regular Script.

But "Academy Script" was a term from the Qing dynasty. In this era, it was called the Three Academies Regular Script.

Huang Shang turned the pages one by one.

These were the characters "he" had written.

They were not only beautiful and orderly, but also held a sharpness beneath their surface, with the air of a master.

The only flaw was that the paper was coarse, and the brush and ink set beside it was low-grade as well.

There was no other reason.

He was poor!

Huang Shang had not come from a good family.

If he had been born into a distinguished family, given the influence of literati in the Song dynasty, his family could not later have been slaughtered by people from the martial world.

The cramped room was stacked with books and scrolls, all copied out by Huang Shang, character by character.

He studied through the hottest days of summer and the coldest days of winter.

He had not slacked off for a single day.

This was the future top scholar!

It had been half a month since he became Huang Shang.

In that time, Huang Shang had successfully inherited Huang Shang's knowledge.

As it turned out, his judgment had been right. Duan Zhengchun's path was that of the martial world, while Huang Shang's was the path of history.

If he hadn't known this world was Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils, he would have felt as if he'd traveled back to the Song dynasty.

He had thought immersing himself in ancient life would be dull and tedious, but unexpectedly, it had a real charm.

Huang Shang spread out a sheet of paper, ground the ink, took up his brush, and wrote four lines:

To establish the heart of Heaven and Earth! To secure the lives and livelihoods of the people! To carry on the lost teachings of the sages of old! To bring peace to all generations to come!

His brush swept like a dragon and snake, the four lines flowing from his hand in one breath. As Huang Shang looked at the characters he had written himself, he couldn't hide his grin. He murmured, "I'm a man of culture now!"

Back on Earth, he had been a hopeless student.

If he hadn't been unable to keep up with his studies, he would have gone to university. Instead, clutching a dream of becoming a star, he'd gone to Hengdian to seek his fortune.

Stars, after all, didn't need to know what CNKI was. Cultural knowledge was secondary.

Before Huang Shang came to the Heavens Consciousness, his knowledge probably hadn't even matched that of an elementary school student.

His handwriting, in particular, had been like a dog scratching in the dirt.

He had imagined the glorious moment when he walked the red carpet and scrawled his name again and again, and had even practiced his signature.

He had been determined to make it as imposing as "Emperor."

But his foundation was so poor, and he hadn't been willing to pay someone to design it for him. His signature came out crooked and twisted, looking more like "yellow eel." It was truly an eyesore.

The past was too painful to look back on.

At last, one day, the little dummy had changed.

He had become widely learned and full of knowledge!

With that foundation, Huang Shang had decided to keep studying as soon as he entered this world.

The general trend of the age made it inevitable.

All other pursuits were lowly; only study brought honor.

That was the idea Great Song had promoted throughout the nearly hundred years since its founding.

Emperor Zhenzong of Song had even penned a verse passed down through the ages: "Within books lie houses of gold; within books lie beauties like jade."

It wasn't a metaphor. It was damn well the truth.

Those two lines were only a shortened version. The full poem went like this:

A wealthy man need not buy fertile fields; within books lie a thousand measures of grain.

To live in comfort, one need not build a grand house; within books lies a house of gold.

When going out, don't lament having no companions; within books, carriages and horses gather in throngs.

When marrying, don't lament having no good matchmaker; within books lies a beauty like jade.

If a man wishes to fulfill his life's ambition, he should diligently read the Five Classics by his window.

There was no exaggeration in these words. One could imagine the status and privileges enjoyed by scholar-officials.

For a more practical example, everyone in later generations knew that the Song valued civil officials over military ones. But just how much did it favor one and slight the other?

In the Song dynasty, the glory of passing the imperial examinations as a scholar outweighed the merit of a general's opening up new territory.

Passing the examinations meant earning the jinshi degree. And mind you, that didn't mean becoming the top scholar; the top scholar was the first-place candidate, while jinshi graduates were far more numerous.

Each time the Song held the examinations, it awarded around three hundred jinshi degrees.

Over the years, a tenth of the civil officials in the entire court had earned the jinshi degree.

Of course, this was still a case of sifting through great numbers to pick the very best, but how many people could open up new territory for an entire country?

Those were the deeds that won a place in the history books!

Yet in the Song, the rewards were still inferior to those of a jinshi!

Given all that, abandoning the brush for the sword or throwing oneself into the martial world before earning a title was simply idiotic.

Even if one wanted to change the system, one had to stand at the summit to do it. From the bottom, it was impossible to change injustice. Only by rising above others was there even a sliver of a chance!

As he reveled in the thrill of his brush sweeping like a dragon and snake, a soft knock sounded at the door.

"Come in!"

Huang Shang called out, and a man dressed as a servant entered.

There was no gentle maid, no adorable little sister, and no sworn enemy locked in a fight to the death.

Huang Shang had only one servant, and even he was hired.

That was convenient, since they weren't especially close.

These past few days, Huang Shang had taken the place of the original Huang Shang, and the servant hadn't noticed a thing. After entering, he bowed with meticulous care. "Young master, it's time to eat."

Huang Shang nodded and put down his brush. "Let's go."

For modern people, three meals a day were a habit, but in ancient times, people generally ate only twice a day.

Only in the whole of Great Song, from the emperor to the common people, did the capital, Eastern Capital Kaifeng Prefecture, make a habit of eating three meals a day.

Luckily, this was Kaifeng Prefecture.

As Huang Shang stepped out of the shabby courtyard, a tide of people swept toward him.

Huang Shang had adapted quickly to this dignified, stately city.

After all, he had spent his days roaming from one film studio to another, had worked on ancient-drama sets with meticulous costumes and props, and had even visited Shuntian Prefecture, the capital during the Qing dynasty. The differences weren't that great, except that this place felt far more real than Along the River During the Qingming Festival.

Of course, it was still quite different from what he'd seen on television.

The Qing dynasty's most obvious misconception was the queue braid. The Song dynasty's most obvious misconceptions were sedan chairs and horses.

Civil officials rode in sedan chairs and military officials rode horses—or so the old custom was said to be. But in reality, civil officials in the Song didn't ride in sedan chairs. They all traveled on tall, handsome horses.

The Song dynasty was short on warhorses, after all. It would have been perfectly reasonable to find an excuse to ride in a sedan chair, but scholars of the time hated treating people like beasts of burden. They were nothing like the Ming and Qing of later generations, when horses were plentiful but civil officials were so feeble they couldn't even climb onto a horse, and couldn't go anywhere without a sedan chair.

Of course, since Great Song had few horses, keeping one was expensive.

At Huang Shang's current means, he couldn't afford one.

So when he went out, he either walked on his own two long legs or rented a horse.

At Huang Shang's signal, the servant glanced around, then hurried toward a man at the street corner.

The man stood beside several horses. When he saw Huang Shang and his servant approaching, he immediately smiled. "Sir, need to rent a horse?"

The servant nodded, handed over the money, and picked the strongest-looking horse. Huang Shang swung himself into the saddle.

Horse renters like this were the equivalent of taxi drivers in later generations. They waited with several horses for people to rent them.

Huang Shang wasn't the only poor person, and horses were much faster than walking, so the business had sprung up naturally.

Horse renters like him could be found all over Kaifeng Prefecture, and they made a tidy income.

Huang Shang was only going out to eat, so there was no real need to rent a horse. But once he sat upright on the tall horse, his view opened up at once. His gaze swept constantly across the streets, committing them to memory as he put himself in another's shoes.

If he were a Reincarnator who had come to Kaifeng Prefecture, where would he usually go besides his assigned destination?

This would determine whether, when a Reincarnator appeared, he could blend in naturally without realizing it—and reveal his identity as Huang Shang.

Jiang Taigong had fished, waiting for the willing to take the bait, but he'd still done it on the banks of the Wei River.

If he'd gone to some forgotten corner, he could just see who would invite him out of retirement...

As he planned out a few possible scenarios, a loud voice suddenly called from behind:

"Huang Shengzhong! Huang Shengzhong!"