Porter of Two Worlds

Chapter 51: Illiterate

Gedo Village, in the main hall in the old chief’s house, the returned Bai Yang and villagers gathered around in there.

“Chief, and that was what happened.”

Zhao Shi reported back to the old chief about what happened on the trip, including the things that happened when they went to trade in De Yang Town. After that, he silently walked away and stood aside.

After Zhao Shi was done reporting, Bai Yang looked at the old chief and waited for him to express his opinions.

It would never be wrong to listen to what an old man had to say.

The old chief kept quiet for a while and said, “Che Family is one of the overlords in De Yang Town, but so what? So what if we declare war with them? We’ve been living in this forest for centuries, we shower ourselves in a bloodbath, we are not afraid of war! If they even dare to enter the forest, we will kill them all!”

Wow!

The old chief’s reply shook Bai Yang, as he really was hot-blooded to the peak!

But upon realizing that they did not know how many terrifying martial artists like the one that killed the Four Ear Green Ox serving under Che Family, Bai Yang found that this was quite a difficult problem to deal with; all Che Family had to do was send a couple of them here and they would easily mow the villagers over with ease!

Bah! If they are not strong enough, I will strengthen them through equipment, and we definitely have the advantage in numbers! United we stand! Just like what the old chief said, just slash the shit out of them!

Bai Yang thought in his mind and said towards the old chief, “With the power of Gedo Village alone, we are not capable of fighting against Che Family….”

“This is not a problem, this old man can pay a visit to the other villages. As part of the forest, they will not sit aside as they watch us being slaughtered! But in this way, the whole forest will become an enemy of Che Family, and everyone would not be able to acquire basic necessities anymore…”

“This is simple, I reckon that Chief Grandpa knows just how powerful the armour and saber I gave Zhao Shi and the others are, and the salt I brought away back then as well as some other things that the Che Family could not supply. If I can use these things to replace the trade between Che Family and the villagers….!”

This was a win-win situation, there was no reason for the villagers to decline this offer.

And with that, everything came to an agreement!

The old and the young smiled at each other; if Che Family entered the forest, they would probably be swarmed by a human ocean….

“What about these?”

Hu Zi, on the other side, scratched his head and asked as he pointed at the things he stripped away from the Che Family’s martial artist.

There wasn’t much that they took away from the dead man, it was just a bloodied and ragged black robe, a wallet, a little book and a green long sword.

Bai Yang looked around and after noticing the things were left untouched, he walked towards the sword to examine it; to be able to cut the green ox’s horn, this sword was probably quite something on its own.

But just as he grabbed onto the hilt, Bai Yang awkwardly discovered that this sword’s weight was beyond his capability, he couldn’t even move it by an inch….

The sword was entirely jade green, made from some kind of steel, through some sort of arcane method, anyhow, it looked pretty.

“Ughh…. Xiao Mao, pick it up, Zhao Shi, use the saber I gave you and hack it on the long sword Xiao Mao is holding now. I want to see what this sword can do.”

He couldn’t pick it up, but there would always be someone who was strong enough to lift it, so Bai Yang did not feel awkward at all.

The duo did not reply to him, but Xiao Mao wielded the long green sword easily and Zhao Shi unsheathed the titanium saber.

Everyone backed off slightly, and after the two of them stood at a position that would ensure that they wouldn’t break anything in the house, they started swinging the weapon towards each other’s weapon.

Jiang—

After a metal screeching sound that was deafening, sparks were created by the friction and both of them fell backward by a few steps.

And that was when Bai Yang surprisingly noticed that the seemingly gentle and weak Xiao Mao had the strength that rivaled Zhao Shi’s!

Looking back at their weapon, the titanium saber was perfectly fine but there was already a tiny cut on the long sword.

“Nice saber!”

Zhao Shi ignored the green sword entirely and instead, he praised as he moved his fingers around the saber.

To which Bai Yang frowned, What? Titanium is like one of the best materials back on earth already!

Through comparison, apparently the weapons used by these martial artists were not as powerful as he thought they were.

At this point, be it Bai Yang or the villagers, they all realized something and this had their eyes all lit up, which was when they equipped the armor and weapon supplied by Bai Yang, they would be able to run anyone down, even if they were martial artists!

A pair of fists wouldn’t win against two pairs of fists, no matter how strong you were as a martial artist, you wouldn’t be able to win against 100 men who were armed to teeth.

With that, no one batted an eye at the long sword anymore and it was entirely ignored.

Bai Yang then picked up the palm-sized wallet, which was surprisingly heavier than it looked. He tossed it on his palm once and heard some coin clinking sound coming from the wallet.

He then poured everything out from the wallet, finding himself about 40 triangular shaped metal pieces, each with detailed carvings.

They were all 3 millimeters in thickness, each in a different color; more than half of them were green and the remaining ones were red and there were three others that were in blue.

“What are these? Weapons? Projectiles? Or currency?”

Bai Yang picked up one and failed to figure it out after half a day.

The villagers on the other side, were also clueless, telling Bai Yang that no one recognized these things….

Fine, they were all illiterate…..

What the hell is this language? It looks like a seal script… but also like oracle bone script…. Hmmm, now it looks like a mixture of both…. What the heck?

Bai Yang complained in his heart as he looked at the weird-looking texts….

On the first page, he found some unintelligible text, unable to even figure out which part was the start and which part was the end….

On the second page, there was a simple and tiny drawing of a man. There was a sword in the man’s hand, and on his body were rice-sized writings that only God knew what they meant. There were also arrows around the man that pointed towards various directions and the rest were again, writings that Bai Yang couldn’t recognize.

After going through the entire book, a total of 35 pages, 33 of which were drawings of the man holding the sword….

“Shit, this looks like some sort of martial art, but why do these guys always carry these around? Is it because so that they could go through it whenever they want?”

Bai Yang scratched his head and mumbled as he thought that this was a bad habit.

“Young master, what’s it about?”

Zhao Shi asked impatiently beside Bai Yang.

His words had Bai Yang raised his head, only to be shocked by what he saw; at some point, he did not know, he was surrounded by a bunch of people, each eyeing on him eagerly and anyone who did not know what was going on would think that the villagers were staring at food…..

“I don’t know…..”

Bai Yang shrugged.

Though he was very sure that this book was something like an art, he couldn’t understand it at all! Only God knew what it was.

So I, a university graduate, am illiterate? I can’t even read?

Bai Yang was dumbfounded as well, after learning how to speak the language over here, before he could even figure it out if the language was a common tongue or not, he realized that he did not recognize a single word, what the hell?

Most importantly, everyone in the village was also illiterate, and the entire forest was probably the same, but he couldn’t enter De Yang Town just like that; right now, he wanted to learn the language but there was no one that could teach him….

“If you want it, take it.”

Bai Yang carefreely threw the book out, what’s the point of keeping it if he couldn’t even read?

The villagers, on the other hand, treated the book like a newborn baby, though they did not even understand anything, it did not stop them from enthusiastically examining the book.

While boredom overwhelmed him, he looked at the excited villagers and another problem began to trouble him.

I need to learn their language! Reading is the most efficient way to learn about this world, but learning the language can’t be done in a blink of an eye! God knows how much meaning can a word contain….

Speechless, this was the reflection of Bai Yang’s most honest thought right now.

How big was the world? How many countries were there? They can’t possibly use the same language everywhere, right? And just how big was a country? And the local slang?

Holy shit, this is stupid! I want to explore more about this world but it seems like I can’t even go any further than this forest!