Chapter Thirty-Four: Advancement

Zhang Yue continued his daily routine of copying texts during daylight hours and, after the Shen hour, would go to the Hall of Daylight Honors to study. Guo Lin had finally managed to scrape together enough money—after several months of copying, he had saved over eight strings of cash, and Zhang Yue also handed over the two strings he had saved in recent days, giving them all to the teacher’s wife as a “prepaid tuition fee.”

Through these efforts, they had just about managed to collect the necessary funds.

To treat Master Guo’s illness, the villagers had to call in a lot of favors and invite a renowned physician from the county town to come and examine him. The county town was a long way from Wuxi, and the physician was initially reluctant, but after much persuasion and offering ten times the regular consultation fee, he finally agreed.

Along the road from the village to the county town, several groups of villagers were sent to receive him. Guo Lin set out early in the morning to accompany the physician, with a villager carrying food and supplies. The physician insisted on frequent rests, and Guo Lin would serve him fine food and wine each time, never touching any himself. Even the ferry was reserved in advance so that they would not have to share it with others. After three or four such stops, they finally managed to bring the doctor to Wuxi.

The physician walked over ten li of mountain roads, examined Master Guo for less than a moment, prescribed several packets of medicine, and then departed, the same elaborate process performed to see him back to the county town.

Regardless of whether the treatment worked, this was the ordeal they had to endure. Fortunately, after a few days of taking the medicine, Master Guo’s condition stabilized. However, the effort was immense, and the consultation fee and the subsequent cost of medicine flowed out like water. Master Guo was still not well enough to teach, so Guo Lin and Zhang Yue continued copying texts at the Zhang family’s clan school. Master Guo often sighed that Guo Lin earned more copying texts than he did teaching, but this was not a long-term solution.

Yet Zhang Yue and Guo Lin both urged Master Guo to focus on recovery; this was not something to be rushed.

Since Master Guo fell ill, Guo Lin no longer had time to study, spending day after day in the cramped study copying texts. He would often rub his eyes, and Zhang Yue would urge him to rest, but Guo Lin would always say it was nothing.

After finishing his copying for the day, Guo Lin would return home utterly drained, unable to resist the combined exhaustion of body and spirit to continue his studies, no matter how strong-willed he was.

Thus, Guo Lin’s academic progress finally ground to a halt, and he found it difficult to continue.

Each night, Zhang Yue would study the Book of Changes after returning home, reviewing the Classic of Filial Piety, the Analects, the Mencius, and the Erya, revisiting each in the extra six hours he had each day, jotting down any parts he didn’t understand.

So the days passed, one after another.

When winter set in, the temperature plummeted, and the mountains grew cold. Though no snow had fallen in the county town, two light snowfalls had already dusted the mountains. After the snow, the weather was not yet cold enough to freeze water solid, but by dawn each day, a thin layer of ice would form on the inkstone pool at the clan school.

While copying texts, the ink in the inkstone would freeze if one was careless, so Zhang Yue had to bring the inkstone to the stove to thaw. The worst part was that his fingers became too stiff to bend; after a short while, his hands would be frozen numb, so he would have to rub them together and blow warm air on them.

If there was any spare time during the day, Zhang Yue would borrow books from the study attendant to read.

What he read was not the classics, but his interests were broad. If he came across something he did not understand, he would ask Zhang Youzhi the next day.

After the Book of Changes, Zhang Yue began to study the Classic of Documents on his own. The Classic of Documents was also known as the Shangshu.

In the Ming and Qing dynasties, the Four Books were likened to cooked rice, and the Five Classics to raw grain. Scholars, following Zhu Xi’s study sequence, would first read The Great Learning, The Analects, Mencius, and The Doctrine of the Mean, and only then proceed to the Five Classics.

Even the Three Character Classic says, “Once you have mastered the Classic of Filial Piety and the Four Books, you can begin to read the Six Classics.”

But in this era, The Great Learning and The Doctrine of the Mean had not yet been extracted from the Book of Rites, and Mencius had not yet been elevated to the status of a classic. Therefore, Zhang Yue’s order of study was the Classic of Filial Piety, The Analects, Erya, the Book of Changes, and then the Classic of Documents.

The Classic of Documents did not have as many principles as the Book of Changes, but every sentence was difficult, the language awkward and obscure, as the ancients described it.

Some characters were not only impossible to memorize, but even to pronounce; Zhang Yue was seeing them for the first time in his life. Others he recognized but did not know how to read aloud.

In this era, without modern search engines, self-studying the Classic of Documents was extremely difficult for Zhang Yue. Luckily, the study room had reference books such as the Jade Chapters and Explanations of the Classics, which Zhang Yue could consult at will.

One day, Zhang Yue and Guo Lin set out early; the night before, heavy snow had fallen in the mountains, the sky still dense with crimson clouds. After winter set in, fierce winds often swept through the mountains, and the roads were covered in snow—one careless misstep could send someone slipping into the ravine below.

When they reached the book tower, both were freezing, their faces blue and red from the cold.

At the entrance stood the attendant’s granddaughter, holding a large chessboard, waiting.

“Big brother! Big brother!” The little girl waved from afar.

“Will you play chess with me?”

“Play chess?” Zhang Yue felt nauseous at the thought—he had spent the entire previous night drawing chessboards, and now he couldn’t stand anything in the shape of a grid.

In recent days, after Zhang Yue taught the little girl to play Five-in-a-Row, she had become addicted, bringing her Go board every day to play with him.

“Big brother has to sweep snow today!” Zhang Yue replied.

It had snowed the previous night, and the ground was slick. The attendant was elderly, so Zhang Yue volunteered to do the task. When he picked up the icy broom, a searing pain shot through his fingers.

Zhang Yue stepped outside with the broom, but the little girl trailed behind, hugging her chessboard, looking at him with a face full of grievance, teary-eyed, and with a little snot hanging from her nose.

“You promised yesterday, you said you’d play five rounds with me today.”

Zhang Yue glanced around for his senior, but he had vanished—clearly, he’d learned his lesson.

“Let me finish sweeping the snow first!” Zhang Yue said.

“You’re just making excuses—you heartless traitor!” she pouted.

Zhang Yue’s back stiffened. What? Did little girls nowadays have such a big vocabulary?

Braving the cold wind, Zhang Yue cleared all the snow from inside and outside the pavilion gate. By the end, he was sweating, but his hands throbbed with pain.

From a distance, the attendant approached and saw Zhang Yue sweeping.

“Grandfather, big brother is mean to me!” The little girl immediately complained.

“How is he mean? I’ll scold him for you,” the attendant said, feigning sternness.

“He promised to play chess with me, but he won’t!”

The attendant chuckled, then turned to Zhang Yue with a serious expression: “The professor wants you to go to the study hall!”

“For what reason?” Zhang Yue asked.

“You’ll see when you get there.”

Zhang Yue put down the broom at once and hurried to the study hall, the attendant watching him with a faint smile.

Upon arrival, Zhang Yue saw not only Zhang Youzhi but also Zhang Heng.

He greeted them both: “Greetings, Teacher. Greetings, Head of Study.”

The professor smiled, “Have a seat.”

Zhang Yue nodded and sat.

Zhang Heng was about to speak, but Zhang Youzhi said, “Take it slowly; don’t startle him.”

Zhang Yue tensed up.

Zhang Heng asked, “How long have you been at the Hall of Daylight Honors?”

“Nearly four months.”

“Four months!” the head nodded.

“Did I do something wrong?” Zhang Yue asked anxiously.

Zhang Youzhi smiled, “Not at all. In just four months, your handwriting is utterly transformed!”

So that was it.

Zhang Yue relaxed. “I didn’t practice much before, but after months of copying, my writing improved.”

Though he said four months, it was actually eight—copying by day and practicing at night. And in terms of effectiveness, it wasn’t simply cumulative; practicing five hours today and five tomorrow didn’t have the same result as ten hours in one day.

Why did Zhang Yue know this so well? Anyone who’s crammed for university finals understands this principle.

Moreover, practicing calligraphy in dreams was especially effective; Zhang Yue felt that these four months’ practice equaled two years' work for others.

Zhang Youzhi said kindly, “The Head and I have discussed it. From today, your pay will be raised—three and a half qian per page!”

“Thank you, Professor!” Zhang Yue was thrilled—this was real money.

And it was earned through copying and practicing calligraphy.

Zhang Youzhi smiled, “No need to thank me. The Head suggested it to me; otherwise, I wouldn’t have known.”

Zhang Yue looked at Zhang Heng, who replied coolly, “It wasn’t my idea either. The academic secretary mentioned it to me, and I brought it to the professor.”

“Thank you, Head.”

Zhang Heng laughed, “Just make a note of it.”

Zhang Youzhi smiled warmly, “The Head compared your copies from four months ago to now. The difference is like night and day. In my life, I’ve never seen anyone progress so much in calligraphy in so short a time. Have you any special methods you could teach me?”

He spoke with great courtesy, which only made Zhang Yue more embarrassed.

“This… this…”

How could he explain? Lying wouldn’t do.

Zhang Heng said, “Professor, I think his writing imitates the Xuan-style stele script—there’s an ancient Jin dynasty flavor! Did you copy from some other model?”

Zhang Yue was full of disdain. Did Zhang Heng think a calligraphy manual was some martial arts secret, and having a unique manual made you invincible? Calligraphy comes from diligent practice.

He replied after a moment, “Not really. Didn’t the professor teach us to practice seal script by drawing chessboards and archery targets? I used my spare time to practice that, and to my surprise, it improved my regular script.”

“This…” Zhang Heng was astonished. Zhang Yue knew he must be thinking, “Isn’t this the trick you used to fool Lin Xi? How could this boy actually succeed?”

Zhang Youzhi said, “There’s no large paper here—try it on small sheets.”

“Yes, Teacher.” Zhang Yue sat at the desk where the head usually wrote, selected the thinnest brush from the rack, dipped it in ink, and began to write.

Calligraphy is a marvelous thing; when first learning, the brush feels alien, but now Zhang Yue wielded it as if it were an extension of his body.

With deft fingers he drew nineteen vertical and nineteen horizontal lines, sketching out the chessboard, completely absorbed in the act, forgetting the two watching him, pouring himself entirely into the tip of the brush.

Then he drew archery targets, large circles followed by smaller ones, each concentric, from large to small.

At that moment, he recalled his math teacher drawing circles on the blackboard—freehand, without a compass, yet perfectly round.

To draw a circle, one must complete it in a single motion, without the slightest pause; where the mind leads, the brush follows.

When Zhang Yue finished drawing ten circles, he was fully immersed in his work. Though not as good as what Zhang Youzhi had drawn that day, he was pleased to see he had improved a little compared to yesterday. That is the way of scholarship—not to seek speed, but daily progress.

When he finally set down his brush, the study hall fell into silence.