The Creation of Writing

Two days and nights passed quickly. The moment Blade Tusk returned, he proposed to the witch doctors that they establish a set of standards for length, using the need to standardize clay tablet sizes as his reason, and he presented his own plan.

Using his own height as the benchmark, he made a long clay tablet and declared it to be a "meter (m)." Using that as the basis, he then "created" millimeters (mm) (only as a concept), centimeters (cm), and decimeters (dm) according to the decimal system.

Obviously, for his own convenience, Blade Tusk copied the pronunciation, writing, and abbreviations wholesale from his previous life.

As for the difference between the current "meter" and a "meter" from his previous life? He had absolutely no idea. Even if he subjectively felt that his height was roughly one meter from his previous life, the change in the object being measured had rendered all comparisons meaningless.

Who the hell knew whether he was one centimeter tall or a hundred meters? But who cared? At any rate, he did not.

Of course, units alone were not enough. They also needed matching numbers.

Under the somewhat bewildered gazes of the witch doctors, Blade Tusk held out his hand, raised ten fingers one after another, then folded them all back and wrote a "0." After that, he gestured in sequence and carved "12345" into the clay tablet. After "5," to make things clear, he did not mind the trouble of setting down his bone stylus and using both hands to clearly show the exact number of fingers before picking up the stylus again and carving a "6." He did the same for the following "78910."

Then came "20," marked by flipping through both hands twice, then "30" with three turns, and so on until "100." Only then did he stop and look at the witch doctors.

He felt somewhat uneasy. Though he was used to all this and could make up the shapes of the numbers however he pleased, he had no ability to clearly explain the concept of "0" or the idea of carrying one for every ten.

Fortunately, the witch doctors were all wise men. They seemed to understand the numerical symbols, the definitions of the units of length, and the profound significance that followed without needing any further explanation from Blade Tusk. Their changing expressions alone made that clear; confusion turned to excitement in an instant.

Blade Tusk let out a quiet breath of relief. As an arts student who knew the what but not the why, he had no ability to teach such things clearly. It was best that they could understand them on their own.

At that moment, the witch doctors shifted their gazes from the clay tablet to Blade Tusk, as though they wanted to see just what made this little Troll so special that he could think of such obvious yet profound things. Their expectations grew even greater.

"Blade Tusk, good! Useful! More? Have?"

"Yes. Courtyard, house, size; stone tablet, carving stylus, in hand, feel; small wolf skull, large wolf skull, hold water, how much. Fix, measure. But, no rush."

"Rush! Useful!"

The Old Witch Doctor disagreed with Blade Tusk. How could it not be useful? These things were far too useful.

"Hard. Length, easy to set; those, hard to set."

"Mm, right, understand."

"Speech, also symbols, more important."

The witch doctors truly deserved the title of "wise men." The instant Blade Tusk finished speaking, they had already understood what he meant. The oldest witch doctor stroked his beard thoughtfully and said,

"Harder."

As the three witch doctors exchanged glances in pairs, all wore expressions of deep agreement. "Writing" was a good thing, but it would not be easy.

"Hard, but useful."

The witch doctors agreed with that as well. Long-standing habits could not conceal the inconvenience of the current witch doctor inheritance system. Once the outermost layer of something had been peeled away, what remained became only natural. It was one thing not to bring up the concept of "writing," but once it had been raised, longing for it was inevitable.

"I'll try."

After receiving the witch doctors' approval, Blade Tusk took a clay tablet and picked up a water-holding bone vessel from nearby. He slowly poured water over the tablet. A moment later, when the clay had softened to just the right degree for carving, he set down the vessel, drew his bone stylus from his waist, and carved several symbols into the tablet.

Some were clearly "pictographs" with roughly square-shaped structures; the others imitated an "alphabet" system.

No matter how clever the witch doctors were, all they could understand at the moment was that these were symbols with certain meanings. They eagerly waited for Blade Tusk's explanation.

Blade Tusk did not keep them in suspense. Pointing at one of the "pictures" that looked like a tree, he read,

"'Tree,' 'shu.'"

The character was not a Chinese Character, merely a pictograph; the phonetic spelling was not any Pinyin system from his previous life, merely something he had scribbled down at random as an example.

Blade Tusk was mainly showing them two ways to establish writing: one through pictographs, the other through recording sounds.

Of course, the pronunciation used was still Troll Language.

After all, no matter how primitive their society was, they already had clear concepts and corresponding names in their language for common objects. It would not be appropriate to invent them from scratch.

Originally, he had considered doing it all in one step and directly transplanting complete modern Chinese Language—even copying over everything from the character forms and pronunciations to the grammatical structure.

After all, how convenient would that have been? He could practically push Troll Language thousands of years forward in an instant.

But in the days since that thought first appeared, whenever he fell asleep at night, one—no, countless—warnings from his subconscious would arise, as though the knowledge he had forgotten from his previous life was gathering together to tell him, Don't do this.

Whenever he woke from dreams at midnight, he would break out in a cold sweat and begin thoroughly reflecting on his selfishness and recklessness.

Is it really appropriate to transplant Chinese Characters and Chinese Language just for my own convenience? The Trolls might grow stronger quickly, but would they become a civilization without a soul? Is that really what I want?

Only after this painful reflection did he settle on this restrained push forward.

He did not directly teach them Chinese Characters. Even "pictographs" and "alphabetic writing" were merely broad ideas;

he told them that they could "create" writing this way, allowing them to standardize the things they recorded.

As for the rest, he left it to the witch doctors themselves.

The witch doctors were intelligent. Their wisdom truly could not be underestimated, and they quickly accepted this convenience.

For a long period afterward, whenever they saw anything, their first reaction was to write it down.

Every evening, once everyone had finished their work, they would bring out the writing each had "created," compare them with one another, and determine which "character forms" everyone accepted as the official Troll Script.

Thus, in a relatively short time, the witch doctors had preliminarily established a writing system based on Primitive Troll Language.

Though crude, and though its number of characters was pitifully small compared with his previous life, it had at last stepped onto the proper path.

After their excitement gradually cooled following their many attempts, the three witch doctors soon frowned. The oldest among them pondered for a moment before slowly speaking.

"We learn, very easy; but warriors, cannot learn in long time."

That was inevitable. Even at the pictographic stage, Troll Script was quite difficult for tribal Trolls who were not witch doctors. Still, Blade Tusk thought they were already impressive.

But the witch doctors were not satisfied. They remembered the "phonetic writing" Blade Tusk had once used as an example.

"This good, warriors can learn!"

Having decided to combine the strengths of both systems, the witch doctors created a crude set of "phonetic letters" based on the pronunciations of existing words. Together with the meaning-based pictographic Troll Script, they formed a Troll writing system in which the two could correct each other.

Seeing that there was suddenly so much more to learn, Blade Tusk silently complained,

So even after transmigrating, I can't escape the fate of learning a foreign language?