The Empress’ Livestream

Chapter 287: Three Character Classic. Who Is Wang Yinglin? (II)

Duola Aimeng: “At least the host didn’t say she wrote it. She put John Doe on that.”

Xiaojuanzide Juanzi: “In fact, I think that was the smart way to do it. After all, the literati in ancient society all scorn each other. The only way to convince others that you are valuable is to equip yourself and have a profound literary foundation. It is too sketchy to just copy things… That will eventually expose your weakness.”

The truth was, there were plenty of viewers encouraging Jiang Pengji to put her name on the first page of the book. Three Character Classic was a book for elementary education, after all. If it was published all over the country and was the first book that a kid would read. She would be guaranteed to have her name recorded in history.

But her answer made her viewers embarrassed.

Host V: “According to the protection act of the copyright of the original literature in Federal Law, it is a felony to plagiarize. The sentence could be a minimum of three years served in jail or a maximum of a life sentence. Even if the original creator is not going to sue you, ninety percent of the interest still belongs to the original creator and there will be a big fine to pay for mental damage.”

Besides that reason, Jiang Pengji had something more important to do. She targeted the remote future instead of petty profit at the moment.

The Three Character Classic viewers in the streaming room provided was too short. It didn’t take Jiang Pengji much time to finish copying it down. She asked Taxue to dry it off with an incense burner.

Feng Jin had nothing to do anyway, so he collated the dried paper in an order and made it into a book. Compared to the books he used to read, the small Three Character Classic was rather coarse, but easy to comprehend.

“Eh, there must be humongous missing treasures in the chaotic world in the Period of Sixteen Kingdoms.” Feng Jin read the Three Character Classic in his hands over and over again. A smart guy like him had the hunch of the real usage of it.

Because of Jiang Pengji’s misdirection, he was convinced that it was a missing, inclusive book in the Period of Sixteen Kingdoms and who knew what corner Cheng Cheng sought that one from. It was not easy to have a relatively complete content of it and no one cared much about who the author was.

That was another reason why Feng Jin appreciated and respected Cheng Cheng. In his eyes, that was what true literati were supposed to be like, instead of trying to cheat or outwit the others.

Jiang Pengji answered to him casually, “They are all inclusive versions. Once this book is ruined or the person who has read about it is gone, our descendants will never see what is in the books. If we can spread them around to make sure there are more people who have the chance to read them, it will be much easier for us to pass them on to our descendants.”

An era that wanted development meant books couldn’t be the possessions of only one family or a small portion of people.

But the current situation was that most of the priceless, inclusive books were possessed by one family or few gentry clan families that had a long history. If the gentry clans perished or something bad happened to them, the inclusive books in their possession would go missing or entirely disappear, which would cease the heritage.

There were multiple things that could cause that problem, but there were two main reasons in Jiang Pengji’s opinion.

First, the craft of producing papers was still in an immature period. The bamboo slices were heavy, but the papers were handy and light. The productivity and technology in the current society was still at its beginning stages, which made the cost of books too high. The average citizen had trouble affording their food. How could they have spare money to afford to buy a book?

Secondly, there was a monopoly on books for the special classes.

It was not extremely hard to solve the first problem, but it wouldn’t work the same way with the second problem. If they intended to break the infrastructure of passing the knowledge and popularizing education, it was inevitable that they would confront gentry clans who monopolized the knowledge.

She could only imagine the stress, but she also believed that as long as they put effort into it, there was nothing they couldn’t do.

Feng Jin didn’t continue the conversation, but looked at Jiang Penji in a different way.

Jiang Pengji noticed his change but she didn’t care much about it. Instead, she kept copying down with painstaking brush strokes the various versions of Three Character Classic.

She missed the virtual internet at the moment. She could get whatever she wanted. Why did she have to get a copy manually?

“System, are you dead yet?” She was multitasking while making a copy of the book, reading through the bullet screens and waking up the System.

System muttered, “Yeah, I’m dead. If you have some affairs that you need to discuss with me, send a message by burning incense. If there is nothing you want from me, just go check on my graveyard.”

Jiang Pengji secretly swore a bit at him and ignored him for a while. It seemed like the System had grown some temper recently.

“Is there any way you can make a copy of the bullet screen? Just show me some sympathy since I’m doing this manually and laboriously.”

The System replied to her in a cold tone, “I’m sorry, host. Your streaming level is too low to be qualified for this. You have to rank up at least three levels.”

Jiang Pengji took a peek at her points in the background and she frowned. Her collective points were way more than the 1,000,000 a long time ago, which happened to be the exact amount for her to rank up from the second-level host to the third-level. But if she did it, it meant all her points would be gone. That would put her in a disadvantage position.

The System had been drooling about the points for more than one day. It lured her to spend some of it, but Jiang Pengji was never tempted. Thinking of that, Jiang Pengji suppressed the idea of ranking up right away.

She intentionally tantalized System and said to it, “Oh, then I might as well do it myself to practice my handwriting.”

The System went mute. Okay, you are teasing me now.

In order to not cause Feng Jin’s suspicion, besides rewriting Three Character Classic and the explanations, Jiang Pengji did seriously dictate the the several rolls of Warcraft books from Cheng Cheng. It was a coincidence that Feng Jin’s family had that book collection, but they were missing a rather important half roll.

He couldn’t get his hands off the book after Jiang Pengji finished the copy and he read through the missing content of book collection with great care.

“Mr. Cheng is truly an awesome man.” Feng Jin couldn’t stop appraising him like he had accidently dug some treasure out. “My father has a special affection with this book. He has always said that he feels sorry that he won’t be able to see the complete version of the book while he is alive, even though he searched many different places. I cannot believe that I am reading the complete version now.”

Time flew fast while Jiang Pengji focused on writing and copying. The evaluation was at the door in the blink of an eye.

The evaluation was the cadre-election system in current Dongqing Dynasty resembled the nine-rank system that viewers were familiar with. But there were big differences between the two as well.

The evaluation occurred every three years. There were six categories of the evaluation criterions, which were family ground, moral conduct, knowledge, appearance, ability, and personality.

Family ground meant a competition of who had better parents and ancestors. Being born in a decent family outweighed studying well. Moral conduct was a category that they could cheat. Paying off the evaluation would normally exchange a pretty score for them. For knowledge, the General Evaluation Officer gave the questions and the testers had to answer in a limited time. For appearance, they looked at one’s face and the way they dressed. It was sure they would see a group of flaming effeminates.

Ability was a vague criterion. Basically it requested the tester to write a self-estimate report, which they could brag as much as they wanted. It was linked with knowledge. If one happened to boast too high about themselves but their knowledge was not recognized by the General Evaluation Officer, they were going to fail.

Personality was an interesting one. It was all up to the General Evaluation Officer’s preference. He would give a good grade if he liked the person. The tester would basically get a pass if the General Evaluation Officer liked them, but it would be other way around if he didn’t. It was the easiest item for people to cheat on.

Overall, the General Evaluation Officer played a critical role in the evaluation.

This evaluation was more like a large scale scholar gathering hosted by the royal family. It was nothing like the isolated examination room that the viewers in the streaming room were imagining.

Jiang Pengji received the invitation, as well as Liu She’ son. Jiang Pengji stared at the invitation for a while and finally said, “I have never seen any examination as childish as this.”

She convinced herself that it was necessary for her to show the people in the current era what an examination was supposed to be like.