Munitions Empire

Master Xia was a well-known teacher on Dongwan Island, and it was the dream of many Dongwan scholars to be able to study under him.

Later, when the people from Shenguo arrived on Dongwan Island, those short and clumsy folks burned Qin instruments and cooked cranes, completely ignorant of what civilization was, barbarically tarnishing our culture.

But those beasts hadn't been happy for long before the Tang People came over! Overnight, everything changed, and the rules were no longer applicable.

And so, he was taken to become a private school teacher, teaching a group of clueless children along with a bunch of thick-headed Qiuba soldiers.

The chaps who couldn't even write properly commandeered the desks from the homes of the city's wealthy gentry just to attend classes. On that day, it seemed as if all the culture of Dongwan Island had evaporated, never to be seen again.

Master Xia thought his life was over, and he began to give up on himself while teaching at school.

However, he soon was amazed to find that the barbaric soldiers, along with the children who couldn't write, had changed beyond recognition after a few months.

At first, the children came in with legs covered in mud and skin as black as charcoal from the sun, their speech jumbled and lacking the proper respect when meeting others.

What they enjoyed the most were physical education and military classes, where they would run around wildly on the field with the Qiuba soldiers in the afternoon.

But later, one day, these students suddenly put on new uniforms shipped from Brunas, and all at once, both boys and girls, looked just like the privileged children of wealthy families.

When they walked through the corridors in groups of three or in pairs, they would stand at attention and salute their teachers with crisp and precise movements.

Their faces visibly grew rosier, and their bodies stronger. Most importantly, they began getting used to holding their chins up, as if an invisible force was reshaping their souls.

Light began to shine in their eyes, and they started asking questions that Master Xia couldn't answer in class.

They began discussing geometry and mathematics, challenging each other with ballistics calculations, climbing rooftops to measure the wind direction, and deciding their own student number rankings through fighting—a proud tradition from a certain academy, it was said.

Eventually, Master Xia realized that he had nothing left to teach these children, other than writing.

Especially when the students stood up in unison as he entered the classroom and greeted him with a loud "Good morning, Teacher," he knew there was no longer any reason for him to stay.

So, he copied forty pages of calligraphy homework and gave them to each student, instructing them to practice every character well. Then he left Dongwan Island by boat and complied with the arrangements to move to Tongcheng.

He vividly remembered the day he left, the class monitor came to see him off, a young man named Liu Guozhu, who stood tall and straight on the dock like a pine tree.

Master Xia shed tears, feeling that of all the students he had taught in his life, perhaps only the last 40 from Dongwan Island were pleasing to his eye.

"Teacher..." The young man from the Tongcheng Education Bureau was very polite as he drove the somewhat old-fashioned People's Model 2 car, taking Master Xia toward the school: "Did you get used to the boat trip?"

Compared to the makeshift schools that had been set up on Dongwan Island, the school conditions in Tongcheng were obviously much better.

For one thing, this city was bigger than Dongwan City and had a larger population, thus naturally offering better conditions.

On the other hand, it was because the Great Tang Group had launched a comprehensive infrastructure development mode on the former soil of Zheng Country, with a focus on building schools.

The Great Tang Group needed a large labor force and even more so a pool of talents! Labor resources were easy to find, but talent was scarce. Thus, while labor could be directly purchased with money, talent had to be cultivated slowly.

"What's there to get used to? That iron ship is as big as an island and doesn't rock at all. In the blink of an eye, we reached Linshui as if on level ground," Master Xia marveled at the size of the vessel and couldn't help but praise it.

That's because the distance from Dongwan to Linshui is close... Try traveling from Dragon City to Dongwan Island... The young Bureau Chief thought to himself and chuckled: "It's good that you're comfortable, Teacher."

The Tongcheng Education Bureau had only just been established, or else it wouldn't be possible for a bureau chief of his stature to be driving a teacher around.

It couldn't be helped. The Great Tang Kingdom's campaign against landlords had alienated too many of the scholarly landlord class, effectively wiping out the former scholar-official class of Zheng Country in one fell swoop.

In such circumstances, to employ these Zheng Country scholars who feared neither death nor hardship, who believed themselves wronged, who wouldn't dare to make an overt move but who were always ready to sabotage in secret, would be simply asking for trouble.

Therefore, the pace of training in the area has been somewhat slow, which can largely be considered an after-effect of the destruction process of land consolidation.

No matter how you look at it, graduates from the Great Tang Group's colleges must be employed in the field of scientific education, so the loss isn't significant. What's really troublesome is the most basic literacy education.

That is why teachers from Dongwan Island, who have been vetted for their moral character and have already embraced the concept of Tang Country, have been transferred over as a stopgap measure.

Master Xia, by all accounts, is a teacher with both integrity and capability, although his knowledge sometimes has its limitations due to the era. However, when it comes to language education, he is truly exceptional.

His willingness to come to Tongcheng was actually motivated by his own considerations: he planned to start from scratch here, learning the basic sciences of the Great Tang Group to enhance his knowledge.

When he heard that the Tang Kingdom was preparing to establish an industrial university in the industrial city of Tongcheng, he submitted a report and volunteered to teach in Tongcheng while enjoying the benefit of free education.

Truth be told, he suffered quite a bit on his journey mainly because the railway between Linshui and Tongcheng had not yet been completed...

"Since there's not much scenery along the way, why don't you tell me, teacher, if there's anything that needs to be improved?" The young Director of Education casually asked while driving.

After a few seconds of silence, just when the driving director thought Master Xia had fallen asleep, the old master suddenly spoke up, "I think, in Tongcheng's schools, each class should double the time dedicated to language courses..."

"Oh?" The young director, who hadn't expected much from the question, suddenly found the stubborn and somewhat old-fashioned old man next to him quite interesting.

"Since ancient times, who has ever heard of students graduating after just learning to write and recognizing a few hundred characters?" The old man didn't mince his words and fired away, "I know those students have to learn a lot of other subjects, and they even have to learn how to fight, how to kill! But if they can't even write properly...

if the foundation is not solid, how can they learn anything else well?"
Stay connected with My Virtual Library Empire

"Uh..." The driving director really wanted to tell the old man that fast-track training, time-saving, and quickly training talent to be dispatched to various positions is a strategic directive from His Majesty the King.

But he feared that telling the truth to the old man might scare him to death. So he just smiled and said, "The country is in need of talents, and no one else in the world can train them except us. We're pressed for time... There's no helping it."

"Then I will teach in my spare time! As long as the students are willing! Don't you guys block them! If they come, I'll provide the paper and pens!" Master Xia's stubborn temperament flared up again.

"Fine! As long as you're willing, teacher, our Department of Education will cover the paper and pens!" The director laughed, quite generously.

However, his next words gave Master Xia quite a shock, "But you should be prepared, teacher. In the beginning, you might be a bit busy due to limited manpower. As for how busy... well, let me put it this way, there are going to be 40 classes in Tongcheng, 40 classes per grade, and around 50 students per class."

"How many?" Master Xia felt he might have misunderstood and instinctively asked.

"You're estimated to lead at least 8 of those classes, there's no helping it, we have a limited number of teachers." The young man explained, "We plan to recruit 2000 students at once, and there's also night school... uh, in total, at least 3000 people or more."

In that moment, Master Xia didn't know whether to feel fortunate or to despair. He had long cherished the idea that the world could truly achieve education without discrimination, but he had never truly dared to imagine a school enrolling 3000 students all at once...

In the middle of their conversation, the car arrived at the school. After visiting his temporary accommodation, the young Director of Education took Master Xia to see the class he would be teaching.

The students in this class were in the middle of a lesson, with some simple Chinese characters written on the blackboard, and a young soldier was substituting.

Master Xia recognized this soldier; he was also one of Master Xia's former students on Dongwan Island who had barely studied for over half a year.

However, as soon as Master Xia walked into the classroom, he was so overwhelmed by what he saw that he couldn't speak.

Because he saw rows of young girls neatly seated in the classroom, most of whom came from the countryside and were not particularly good-looking with their dusky complexions.

But they were indeed girls, sitting there chattering like a room full of swallows, and just one glance made Master Xia's head spin, unable to even open his mouth to introduce himself.

Girls already accustomed to school life stood up in unison and bowed together at the class monitor's request, enthusiastically greeting Master Xia in chorus, "Hello, teacher!"

With a glum face, Master Xia responded with a hello to the students, then turned to his young superior, only to find that the latter was seriously examining the ceiling above.

He had once imagined that the experience of teaching on Dongwan Island was the most harrowing classroom he had witnessed. But he never thought that in his lifetime, he would have the chance to take on an even greater challenge...