In addition, although the students were proud of their work, they were also honest as good scholars tend to be.
As long as whatever happened was beneficial for their studies, they would have no objections.
Professor Guo nodded and pointed toward the files in Tan Mo’s hands. “They are all here. Tan Mo finished her translations over the weekend. She passed my test, and that is why I have brought her here. If she hadn’t passed, I was worried that you guys would cause some troubles for her.”
“So fast?” A boy cried out in surprise. “You finished it all within two days…?”
“Actually, Professor Guo didn’t give me too much. Don’t be fooled by how thick this pile of paper is. This is the finished work. It includes my translations as well as the original text. That is why it looks like a lot.”
She thought her explanation was okay.
Professor Guo took the papers from Tan Mo and handed them over to the boy who had just spoken up. “You are the team leader of the team in charge of “Liye Qinjian” translations. Take a look and see if everything is good.”
Professor Guo had looked them over beforehand. He was sure there wouldn’t be anything wrong.
The boy accepted the stack of paper. “I will do that right now.”
With that, he ran off with the pile.
“Yuemu, would you mind introducing Tan Mo to everyone here?” Professor Guo asked.
“Tan Mo, follow me.” Wang Yuemu beckoned to Tan Mo and walked over to the boy who had just taken all the papers. “Big brother here is in charge of organizing and translating “Liye Qinjian”. “Liye Qinjian” is not a work of literature, but rather the records of Qianling County in Dongting State during the Qin dynasty. It includes records of ancient clan lineages, townships, and land ownerships. I am sure you are rather familiar with this all, but they aren’t easy materials to organize in a book. Still, we organize and translate them all so that they may be valuable references for academic textbooks or simply stored away in files. They could be of use one day.”
“This is the team leader, Ying Siyuan.” Wang Yuemu introduced him to Tan Mo.
Ying Siyuan smiled in greeting. “Tan Mo, welcome to the team.”
“That’s very enthusiastic of you,” Wang Yuemu smiled.
“We hadn’t started translating this part that Tan Mo had worked on yet. This is the original of that part. I just looked it over. I was planning on familiarizing myself with the text before I started the translation.” Ying Siyuan laughed. “Therefore, I know the difficulties in the part she just translated. She did her part exceptionally well. I could tell she put her heart into it.”
Ying Siyuan showed the pages to Wang Yuemu. “Plus, with her efficiency… Finishing the work in only two days over the weekend…! I would beg for her to join us!”
“We haven’t decided yet which team we should put Tan Mo on.” Wan Yuemu reminded him jokingly, “Don’t get your hopes up just yet.”
For efficiency’s sake, they have divided the work up into teams. Some teams’ work wasn’t so complicated, and they were able to finish faster than the others. When that happened, they moved onto the next task.
“Come on. Let me introduce you to more people.” Wang Yuemu grabbed Tan Mo and continued around the room.
One of the girls spoke up, “Here is the team I am in charge of. This is senior sister Chen Shihua, senior brother Ling Zimu, senior brother Shen Hongshan, and senior sister Pu Xinyan.”
“These are texts from the Warring States.” Tan Mo noticed the words on the whiteboard right away, since Chen Shihua and the others happened to be standing right next it.
The whiteboard had been a bit too far away for a close look a moment ago.
With the board right in front of her now, Tan Mo noticed what it said immediately.
“You know about this?” Chen Shihua cried out in surprise.
Tan Mo could translate the original text of the “Liye Qin Slips”. This meant she understood the ancient clerical script.
Everyone had heard what Ying Siyuan had just said.
However, they hadn’t expected Tan Mo to be able to read the texts of the Warring States.
“I don’t know much about the Warring States’ texts. They are just too messy for easy recognition.” Shen Hongshan shook his head ruefully.
Just looking at the words on the whiteboard, Ling Zimu could feel his head starting to ache already, “Since the end of the Spring and Autumn periods, until the Qin dynasty united all the kingdoms, people all used the Warring States script. Before that they used Chinese bronze inscriptions from the Spring and Autumn periods. After that, they used the clerical script of the Qin and Han dynasties.
“During the period of the Warring States, there wasn’t a single alphabet. Writing wasn’t unified until the early reign of Qin Shi Huang. He unified the language, standardized the distances, and consolidated measurements,” Ling Zimu explained. “Before that, the writings of the Warring States included scripts from six different kingdoms and the Qin kingdom. The scripts from the six kingdoms were further divided into Qi system scripts, Yan system scripts, Jin system scripts, and Chu system scripts.
Ling Zimu rubbed his forehead. “Just talking about this gives me a headache. There is just too much.”
“You’re right. As I was organizing all of this, my respect for Qin Shi Huang was growing by the moment. What an amazing feat he accomplished, unifying all the scripts,” Pu Xinyan exclaimed.
Wang Yuemu laughed. “Your brother Ling loves to lecture. That’s an old problem of his. Regardless whether the listener already knows it or not, he will always blabber on.”
Ling Zimu wasn’t angry at what she had said.
Other than liking to lecture, he had a good temperament. Now, despite being criticized, he was still smiling. It even made him seem a bit naive.
“Brother Ling has a good temperament. Other than liking to educate others a bit, no matter what you say around him, as long as you don’t go too far, he won’t get mad.” Pu Xinyan laughed, looking toward Tan Mo.
“Tan Mo, if you can read Warring States scripts, then you should know a bit about this?” Wang Yuemu asked her.
However, Wang Yuemu thought that it was already astonishing enough that Tan Mo was skilled in the clerical script. Warring States scripts were very confusing. Knowing them was already a feat in itself.
She was definitely not expecting that Tan Mo would be gifted in Warring States scripts.
“I’m not proficient. There are some that I don’t know yet.” When the little snow fairy had gained her consciousness, the Warring States period had long passed.
All that she knew had been taught to her by her master.
Master knew everything!
Nonetheless, Master had never taught her everything, and she was too lazy to learn everything.
In the end, what she knew was rather limited.
“However, there are a few characters that I know.” Tan Mo pointed to one of the papers. “This character is qi, as in gods and deities.”
Tan Mo was afraid that they had mistaken it for another character with the same pronunciation. She picked up a whiteboard marker and wrote the character next to the paper.
“This character that looks like ‘tian’ is ‘li’. It’s a character from the Zhongshan state script.” Tan Mo wrote it down as well.
“Zhongshan state’s scripts belong to the Jin system scripts,” Pu Xinyan said, picking up a copy of “Warring States Literature” for reference.
“So this is really ‘li’.” Pu Xinyan quickly made a note of it.
At the same time, Shen Hongshan was double-checking it as well. “It IS the ‘qi’ character!”
“Tan Mo, you know some of these characters without having to look them up?” This was too shocking.
There was no way they could have memorized all these characters.
The different states all had a different way for writing the same character.
Luckily, some of them appeared rather similar.
However, on the other hand, there were also ones that differed greatly.
“This ‘li’ character is so tricky. Under the Chu system, this word didn’t change too much. But in the Jin system, this looks nothing like ‘li’!” Shen Hongshan was getting a headache again. This character looked too similar to ‘tian’.
“Tan Mo, how much do you recognize?” Chen Shihua eyes lit up.
Tan Mo felt a bit creeped out by her gaze. She pointed to the whiteboard, “I know three there.”
“As for the last two, I don’t know them. We’ll have to look them up,” Tan Mo continued.
“This is already amazing!” Chen Shihua exclaimed.
“Sister Wang,” Chen Shihua looked at Wang Yuemu with sparkling eyes, “Such a genius like Tan Mo has to join our team!”
