Chapter 79: Seventy-Ninth Day of Living Like a Salted Fish

The evening literacy class fared slightly better.

Most of the attendees were adults. Once the reasoning was explained clearly, they didn’t harbor any strong resentment toward learning. As long as the content wasn’t something ridiculous like a kindergarten self-introduction, people were quite willing to show their support.

This was especially true since it was the first day of class. The people of the Desolate Planet, who had never attended school, held certain fantasies and expectations about what a lesson would be like.

Consequently, people began gathering at the designated location long before the scheduled time. The venue wasn’t anything fancy – it was simply the marketplace.

The market was located near the center of the district, consisting of a vast, open space. There were no buildings on it, so naturally, there were no obstructions to one’s line of sight.

For the sake of the class, Goudan had specifically asked Old Fourth for help in constructing several large screens. Immediately after dinner, he and Old Fourth arrived to set up the equipment, ensuring as many people as possible could see the images on the screens clearly.

His reasoning was sound. While the general knowledge course could be listened to like a story, literacy was different. One had to see exactly what the characters looked like to learn them. Therefore, functional screens were essential.

This was also why the literacy class was scheduled for the evening. People had to work during the day and couldn’t spend their time staring at a single object.

While he was busy calibrating the equipment, the “students” arrived one after another. Some of the curious ones pressed closer to watch the setup. Most, however, sat in small groups nearby, chatting and waiting for the lesson to begin.

On the Desolate Planet, people typically sat directly on the ground.

This wasn’t just true for the market; it was the same at home.

Chairs were unnecessary luxuries, as were cushions. Although the ground was far from clean, the people of the Desolate Planet didn’t mind the dirt. Even if they did, there was no alternative. Cleaning tools were scarce resources, and trying to maintain a pristine environment was nearly impossible. A germaphobe couldn’t survive here; one had to accept the grime just to scrape by.

After being on the Desolate Planet for so long, Lu Yuan had almost forgotten what the clean streets of the outside world looked like.

Sitting in their small groups, the people began to talk. There wasn’t much worth discussing, yet they chatted happily nonetheless. Every face bore a trace of a smile.

The person responsible for the camera made a point of filming these harmonious and pleasant scenes, and Goudan later made sure to edit them into the footage. Everyone felt that this kind of happiness was a precious thing.

In passing, they also recorded the moment the projection screens lit up – every head turned instantly, eyes sparkling with wonder.

The first lesson covered numbers and basic mathematics.

These were highly practical in daily life, so the people’s enthusiasm for learning was high.

But the biggest problem was…

A lack of proper tools.

Paper and pens were almost non-existent on the Desolate Planet. Consequently, Goudan could only have everyone use tree branches dipped in water to write on the ground.

Fortunately, there were plenty of branches around.

The ground was incredibly hard. Years of wind and sand had not eroded it, nor had rain or snow softened it. This earth could hardly be described as “soil.” There was no real dirt here, only a layer of surface dust that blew away with the wind.

This was also why there weren’t many herbaceous plants. Their delicate roots could hardly penetrate such earth, making it impossible for them to take root and grow.

However, writing on the ground with water meant the marks dried quickly. It was somewhat difficult to judge the correctness of the characters written.

It was especially inconvenient for the “teaching assistants” to check.

The teaching assistants were the only literate people in the entire district.

There was Goudan, for instance, along with Old Fourth and the Captain’s group of five. Er Ya and a few others had also managed to learn some characters. Added to them were a few individuals with an unusual passion for learning who had previously bought literacy books from Lu Yuan and learned some writing.

Scraping everyone together, Goudan managed to assemble a team of twenty “teaching assistants.” They paced back and forth across the grounds, correcting the characters the students wrote.

The assistants’ task was heavy.

There were thousands of people attending the class, but only twenty assistants. On average, each person had to teach hundreds of students. While not every student asked questions, it was still overwhelming.

Furthermore, the assistants’ own proficiency was limited. The few outsiders like the Captain were fine, but among the locals, even Goudan had only been learning to write for a year and a half. Er Ya and the others had been at it for even less time.

Thus, the learning was difficult, and the teaching was no easier.

Simple digits were manageable, but more complex formal numerals¹ – or even the character for “number” itself – proved to be significant hurdles for the students.

In Goudan’s footage, he used a technique similar to a montage for this sequence. The camera panned through the crowd without recording any sound, yet it captured countless images.

Teaching assistants weaving back and forth, elderly people and children writing earnestly, study groups pointing at each other’s “works” in discussion, and the sky gradually darkening as the stars shifted above.

The lens also captured the predicament everyone faced during the latter half of the lesson.

As night fell, the already faint water marks on the black earth became even harder to see.

Fortunately, the characters learned in this lesson were relatively simple. Everyone did their best to write as large as possible, then bent over to look closely by the light of the Milky Way and the screen.

When they grew truly anxious, they simply grabbed a teaching assistant’s hand and wrote directly into their palm.

Er Ya was suddenly pulled over by a young girl.

Lu Yuan clearly saw the flash of bewilderment in her eyes on screen, and her reaction as someone wrote in her palm – she instinctively wanted to pull her hand back from the tickling sensation, yet she forced herself to stay still.

The video ended with the conclusion of the lesson. Goudan turned off the projection equipment and stood dazed beside the darkening screen.

The person filming had chosen a very clever angle. Silvery starlight poured down from the sky, with the brilliant Milky Way occupying a vast area at the top of the frame. However, the screen still cast a small patch of shadow, and Goudan stood within that darkness, frowning.

“What are you daydreaming about?” the Captain asked, stepping up beside him.

“Teaching like this…” Goudan said worriedly, “it’s a bit too difficult. Especially after dark, the class is almost impossible to conduct. The only way might be to install lighting equipment… but we don’t have that much energy.”

“…” The Captain let out a sigh as well.

“To be honest, I’ve never seen such a harsh learning environment.” He patted Goudan on the shoulder. “It’s tough.”

While they were at their wits’ end, a woman’s voice rang out.

“Actually, we could have classes in the morning. In spring and autumn, we don’t start working until the sun is high in the sky, but the sun actually rises much earlier. There are at least two or three hours at the start of the day that could be used for lessons,” she said.

It was the mother of Er Ya and Si Ya.

She had even brought Si Ya along to learn. The little one’s physical health wasn’t great, but her spirit was fine. Even though the sun had been down for half an hour, she still had her round black eyes wide open, looking around with bright, energetic curiosity.

Goudan poked the little girl’s cheek.

“When summer comes, we can even study at noon,” the woman suggested after a moment’s thought. “It’s too hot at midday for anyone to do anything else. Sitting together to have lessons and practice writing seems like a good idea to me.”

“It’s just that people rarely get up early, right?” Goudan said with some hesitation, scratching his head sheepishly. “I usually don’t crawl out of bed until eight or nine.”

“It’s for the sake of learning.” The thin woman gave a gentle smile. “Getting up a bit earlier is perfectly fine.”

The video went black. Lu Yuan turned his head to ask Goudan, “So you changed the lessons to the morning after that?”

“Yeah.” Goudan had finished sending his messages by now and leaned in next to Lu Yuan to watch with him. He nodded at the question. “You didn’t hear about it?”

“I was probably too far away,” Lu Yuan said helplessly. “Though I did notice you’ve been getting up quite early these past few days. I thought you were just busy.”

“I was busy too,” Goudan chuckled. “Keep watching.”

In the next segment of the video, the scene shifted indoors.

Lu Yuan recognized it as the venue for Goudan’s regular meetings. Ever since he started managing this sector seriously, Goudan had established a rule to hold a meeting once a month to summarize the month’s work and set plans for the next.

Lu Yuan had even used his Mental Power to listen in on one of their meetings once. The content wasn’t particularly interesting – at least not to Lu Yuan.

But since Goudan felt it helped with his management, Lu Yuan naturally wouldn’t criticize it. Moreover, proper communication, review, and planning were inherently good things.

It was a fairly large hall, capable of holding thirty or forty people without feeling crowded. This was roughly the total number of people in Goudan’s “management team.”

It was evident that during this video, the cameras had been placed in fixed corners. Although there were cuts between shots, the camera angles didn’t move.

This was because Goudan’s management team was also his film crew. Since they were all in the meeting, no one was free to operate the cameras.

Goudan stood at the very front of the hall. Beside him was a small chalkboard – something he had scavenged from the items dropped by the Garbage Ship last summer.

On the small chalkboard, words were written in a crooked hand:

“Seminar on Teaching Issues.”

The character for “Teaching” looked a bit off. But as Lu Yuan looked closer, he realized it seemed to be an archaic form of the character². Though it was likely a mistake, it unexpectedly made this “seminar” look somewhat sophisticated.

During the seminar, everyone earnestly summarized the day’s teaching, identified the problems, and formulated a new plan.

First, they had each watched several episodes of kindergarten general knowledge videos. They discovered there were indeed things worth learning, but the teaching format was far too childish and embarrassing. Furthermore, the videos were filled with so much meaningless chatter that it was a waste of time. There was no need for everyone to watch them together.

After some discussion, they decided that Goudan would lead the Captain and Jian One, Two, Three, and Four in forming a Common Sense Outreach Group. They would be responsible for watching all the general knowledge videos, extracting the parts useful to the people of the Desolate Planet, and then teaching those specific points.

Secondly, the schedule for the literacy classes needed adjustment. They decided that starting the day after tomorrow, classes would begin at seven in the morning and end at nine.

The reason they weren’t starting tomorrow was primarily because the people of the Desolate Planet had no precise concept of time. There were no clocks here. Aside from Goudan and his group, very few people used external methods of timekeeping.

However, since they were going to have unified classes, the method of keeping time had to be unified as well.

Goudan arranged for Old Fourth to work through the night to make five gongs. The five children from the band would be responsible for striking the gongs³ to announce the time every hour on the hour.

“So that’s why I’ve been hearing gongs every day lately,” Lu Yuan said. “I was wondering why they’d switched to a new instrument… and why they were playing it so terribly.”

Goudan blinked and scratched his head with a grin. “So you actually heard that, huh?”

Lu Yuan replied helplessly, “It’s so loud, how could I possibly not hear it?”

Translator’s Notes