Chapter 1814 — Tidings from an Old Friend
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 4
The spirit-energy transit bridge of the Southern Heaven was small in scale, and could hardly bear a powerhouse such as her; it took more than a month before Bai Yuqiong and her party emerged at the transit bridge of Jingping.
The Heavenly Master's Treasure Carriage flew through the sky, not far above the ground. Bai Yuqiong looked down at the towns and walled cities below, studying the life of the people of Jingping. She was in no hurry to see Emperor Yanfeng.
The ills of the Southern Heaven were far too many. Much as she wished to carry on Meng Yungui's last wishes and awaken the people of the Southern Heaven, after nearly thirty years of bloody war the people there still dropped to their knees at the mere sight of a god, without a spark of defiance in them, and this left her with a deep sense of helplessness.
Another purpose of this visit to Jingping was to observe its livelihood and its education, to absorb what experience she could, and to spread it through the Southern Heaven.
Jingping too had endured a great war, and its hundred undertakings likewise awaited revival; yet in the dozen-odd years since the war's end it had already just about caught up with what it had been before.
"Had it been the Heavenly Court, after a war like that, I fear a thousand years would not suffice to recover its strength."
She traveled in fits and starts, going into the villages to inspect primary education, then up to the Divine City in the heavens to look at higher education. She gained much, and her heart was full of feeling.
Yet she also discovered many problems.
The villages of Jingping had a problem: most of the able-bodied young went to the cities to work for a living, and as often as not husband and wife departed together, leaving only the old and the young behind. This not only drained the villages of vitality, but bred no small amount of disorder.
Emperor Yanfeng had noticed the problem and sent many divine-ability practitioners into the villages to bolster education, compensating them for it; but those willing to go into the villages were usually of no great attainment, while those of real ability generally stayed in the Divine City.
The quality of village education was deeply worrisome, plainly lagging far behind that of the cities.
The children in the villages, with no parents to discipline them, were mostly left to run wild, which boded ill for the next generation.
"How is Jingping to solve this?"
One day she entered a village primary school and found the atmosphere of study there very strong. The school was famous throughout the surrounding villages; the country children studied desperately, wanting to rise in the world, and she was much moved.
"A country child may have to spend ten times the effort of a city child, and ten or even twenty more years, before he can stand on equal footing with them. Still, that road upward has not been blocked, and that is a good thing."
She had only just thought this when she suddenly caught sight of a young village lecturer, and her heart stirred.
The youth was clever and quick, and was instructing the children in divine abilities, with views of his own on how such powers should be used.
What moved Bai Yuqiong was that she felt a sense of familiarity about this young lecturer.
"Learning lies in its use. If you learn and never use it, you have learned nothing. Between learning and using there is a road, and that road is called thought."
The young lecturer spoke fluently and with real insight: "Thinking. Rote memorization of runes is no good; you must think about the principle of each rune, the principle behind their combinations, and from there think about the dao they contain. Then it becomes much simpler..."
Bai Yuqiong waited quietly. Before long the bell for the end of class rang, and the young lecturer came out with his books under his arm.