Learning to Read and Write

On Nostramo, in Quintus Hive City, inside a mine tunnel outside a prefabricated barracks on the middle level of Mine Hive Three.

Only by the faint light of an isotope lamp could anyone see what was inside.

A man in a miner's uniform was teaching a child who sat beside him.

A stone slate lay in front of the boy, densely covered in writing.

Smack!

Han Mingxuan's palm landed on the boy's head.

The child looked no more than six or seven, but his eyes held a light unlike that of an ordinary person.

"You wrote another character wrong."

"Father, I don't lack knowledge, and what you're teaching me isn't even part of the Gothic language family."

"What use is there in learning this obscure language?"

"Wrong again." Han Mingxuan shook his head at the stubborn boy in front of him.

"First, this isn't an obscure language. It's the Old Terra Language, from the 2K era."

"Second, having knowledge is nothing to be proud of. If you have wisdom, you won't be proud."

"Knowledge? Wisdom? Is there a difference?"

Han Mingxuan nodded. "Read out the sentence I just told you to write."

"Wisdom is power, knowledge is a curse."

Han Mingxuan nodded and said something that would have sounded exceptionally obscure and hard to understand to anyone else.

But the little boy understood. It was the Old Terra Language.

"This child can be taught."

It seemed to come from the even older 1K era.

"Curze, I know there's no shortage of knowledge in your mind, but you must always remember."

Curze looked away. His adoptive father, with his knowledge of ancient things, was about to start lecturing again.

"Knowledge is a tool, and learning knowledge is learning how to use that tool."

"Whether that knowledge teaches you to labor, repair, rebel, or rule."

"Wisdom is power. It teaches you to master knowledge and lets you know..."

"It lets you know that knowledge has two sides, and makes you clearly understand that all knowledge has different uses under different circumstances."

Han Mingxuan nodded. "Looks like you really did memorize that."

Seeing Han Mingxuan nod, Curze added, "You have to remember to take it to heart and put it into practice. Slogans are useless; you have to follow through yourself."

Smack!

"Dad, you hit me again."

"Don't think reciting a few sentences means you've passed. You still have homework today."

"Oh."

Curze picked up a book made from scrap materials beside him. It contained fairy tales written by Han Mingxuan.

Ever since Curze had learned to read and write, reading fairy tales to himself before bed had been a must.

Of course, before he could speak, Han Mingxuan had read them to him.

Watching Curze's expression struggle from time to time as he read the fairy tales,

Han Mingxuan knew that Curze's prophetic ability, the one that led him toward self-destruction,

that prophetic ability like the curse of an absolute fate, had begun to manifest again.

Still, compared to the beginning, Curze was doing much better now.

At the very least, he no longer threw the book aside or tore it up partway through reading.

At the same time, this also reminded Han Mingxuan of himself.

Back when he was a miserable teacher on Earth, he had been a pure Warhammer tourist.

His favorite Warhammer content was either the Emperor on top or Slaanesh on top.

Sometimes it might also be Grandfather on top.

He was an absolute heretical fun-seeker.

Then, one night half a month ago, Han Mingxuan had found a picture of a gender-swapped Emperor.

He could tell without looking that it had been generated by AI.

"Tsk, a gender-swapped Emperor, and a picture generated by Abominable Intelligence at that. Pretty heretical. I'll bookmark it first."

Bookmark, save, set as wallpaper.

All in one smooth motion.

Then tragedy struck.

While he was asleep, Han Mingxuan suddenly saw three figures in a dream.

Two golden figures.

One looked like a man, a big golden guy.

The other was a woman, around 1.8 meters tall.

As for the other one, it was a blue sphere.

Earth?

Before Han Mingxuan could ask anything more, he woke up.

He had been woken by the fumes.

Not by the smell of sweat or body odor, but by industrial exhaust.

After waking up, a whole pile of memories appeared in Han Mingxuan's mind.

He had come to Nostramo in the 30K era!

Warhammer!

Damn weasel!

On his very first night there, Han Mingxuan headed for a pile of toxic mine slag.

With the amount of poisonous gas and radiation there, he would be in heaven in no time.

What a joke. Even with a cheat, there was no guarantee he could thrive in the Warhammer World.

If he didn't die now, was he supposed to wait for his soul to be made into a carpet?

Still, if someone transmigrated to the Warhammer World, it proved they had rotten luck.

But not rotten enough.

The worst possible outcome was being unable to die.

Han Mingxuan failed to die.

Just as he was about to jump into the pit and end it all, an incubation pod crashed down right in front of him.

A conspicuous Roman numeral eight appeared before his eyes.

The Eighth Primarch, Konrad Curze, the Night Haunter, the Night Haunter.

To hell with it. I'll jump first.

The Primarch wouldn't die, but he himself had to be done for right now.

But after he jumped, something strange happened.

A curtain of blue light lifted him up. Then his vision blurred, and a planet appeared before him.

Earth!

"You are like that child. The fear of a long journey has left you unable to rest."

"But I am with you."

To be precise, it was the will of Earth.

Then Han Mingxuan woke up. He was still lying in the miners' communal dormitory, but there was now a child beside him.

He didn't sleep a wink that night.

Of course, there was no daytime on that cursed mining world of Nostramo.

He spent the whole time examining the changes to his body.

The result was obvious.

Nothing had changed.

Yes, nothing had changed.

His arms were still arms and his legs were still legs. He had no badass skills and couldn't fire dynamic light beams either.

He was just hard to kill. Besides that, he had gained a book and an empty penholder, both in his mind.

The cheat the will of Earth had given him was to let him live out his natural lifespan and teach while he was at it.

After all, he had been a teacher to begin with.

Forget it. This cheat might be a half-baked one, but it was better than nothing.

Having worked that out, Han Mingxuan began looking at the child beside him.

Konrad Curze.

Only about the size of a one-year-old.

It looked like he and the little guy could only rely on each other.

That worked too. He could raise a Primarch, then go to Terra, secure himself a place in the Plain Yellow Banner of Old Terra, and spend his later years in peace.

And so, Han Mingxuan suddenly became a father and began educating Curze.

Using the Chinese way of thinking.

At first, Curze learned quickly. He picked up Chinese in a few days, though he wasn't very good at writing the characters.

He was especially prone to mistakes with certain words.

Words like wisdom, courage, life, and beauty.

Han Mingxuan noticed it too.

Whenever a word related to those four sea-of-filth maggots, Curze wrote it very slowly.

Sometimes he would even start out writing in Chinese characters, but toward the end they would turn into High Gothic words.

Or simply turn into incomprehensible scribbles.

Curze took plenty of whacks with the ruler for that alone.

After another half a month or so, Curze grew to the size of a six-year-old, and Han Mingxuan rarely hit him with the ruler.

His writing grew increasingly smooth, and he rarely made mistakes with words related to the four gods.

It was just his prophecies about events that still gave Han Mingxuan a headache.

Even in a story with a clearly happy ending, Curze could always see some very, very bad endings.

That was caused by his psychic curse.

All he ever saw was calamity and destruction.

It was also the direct cause of his eventual destruction.