Song Anxin paced a few steps and stood on a rock to the side. He addressed the students below in a loud voice: "You, as candidates for the imperial examinations, are the reserve officials of our Great Yin Dynasty, the hope of our nation!"
If a nation's hopes are all tied to currying favor with the powerful and wealthy, what hope does our country have, and what can our people expect?
You study diligently day and night, enduring hardship and toil, all for the sake of realizing your ambitions to govern the country and bring peace to the people, for the vision of ensuring that our beautiful land endures forever, and for the grand aspiration of enabling all people in the world to live in peace and prosperity!
She said, word by word, "Cultivating oneself, managing one's family, governing the state, and bringing peace to the world are your enduring pursuits and aspirations! Please also remember that 'the people are the foundation of the state, and when the foundation is firm, the state is secure.'"
The students below were completely silent, all staring wide-eyed with their mouths slightly open.
They were beyond shocked; their hearts were churning with emotion, and their blood was boiling. "Cultivate oneself, regulate one's family, govern the state, and bring peace to the world"—what a grand vision!
The most fundamental saying, "The people are the foundation of the state; when the foundation is firm, the state is secure," conveys the most essential phenomenon, along with "Water can carry a boat..."
What Song Anxin didn't know was that her words today were being spread by the students present, and some of them would even use those words to admonish their students when they became teachers in the future.
In this way, it influenced countless students generation after generation, and also cultivated good officials who served the people for the Great Yin Dynasty.
On the street.
Song Anxin and Song Anbang walked side by side, while the two younger children lagged behind. Song Anbang kept muttering to himself, repeating exactly what Song Anxin had just said.
He grew increasingly agitated, his face flushed, and asked, "Sister, from which book did you read this? Why have I never read it before? Do you still have that book?"
Song Anxin, feeling a little guilty, tried to evade the question by saying, "I don't know which book it is. I just heard Father read it and memorized it. Why don't you go back and look for it?"
Upon hearing this, Song Anbang quickened his pace, eager to return home immediately and search for his father's books.
Lin Fengnian and Lin Fengshou whispered behind him, "Second brother, do you know what Mother meant by what she said later? Why are all those scholars blocking our way and not letting us leave?"
Lin Fengshou said, "I can count a few things, but I don't know anything about those things. However, seeing how stunned those scholars were, Mother must have said something very impressive. Mother truly deserves to be the daughter of a scholar and the older sister of a student."
Let's see if those arrogant scholars still dare to bully our uncle. We'll ask Fenghe later; he's the best student in the family.
Lin Fengnian nodded in agreement, as long as those people stopped bullying his uncle.
The college.
Zhang Ping followed behind Jiang Huai and said, "Jiang Huai, what was that woman saying? Why didn't you refute her? She's just a peasant woman, yet she's pretending to be so righteous, talking about the common people and all that."
She actually convinced that group of people who talk about classical Chinese all the time. The Master even said I'm ignorant and useless; I think all their reading has gone to waste…”
Jiang Huai listened to his incessant rants, his face darkening horribly.
"Shut up! I told you not to study properly, and you can't even understand what a woman is saying. You're the one who's wasted your education!"
If Song Anbang's elder sister is so highly educated, then Song Anbang... won't do!
He couldn't afford to lose to Song Anbang again. He asked his father to hire several more renowned tutors for him, and he was determined to be on the list of successful candidates next year, not to fall behind him again.
Zhang Ping wasn't annoyed by Jiang Huai's scolding, and muttered under his breath, "It's not that I don't want to study, it's just that my head hurts as soon as I open a book..."
Seeing Jiang Huai walk away quickly, he hurriedly said, "Hey, Jiang Huai, where are you going? Wait for me..."
Over here, Song Anxin quickly handed the cloth to her mother, afraid that Song Anbang would not be able to find the book and would grab her to ask questions again, so she hurriedly took the two children and ran away.
On the way back, only Song Anxin and her two children were on the cart. Song Anxin was bored and checked the two children's homework. She had already taught Lin Fengshou the multiplication table in advance. Lin Fengshou started to stumble when he got to multiplying by seven and needed Song Anxin to remind him, but he was still doing very well.
Song Anxin urged him to strengthen his memorization and apply the knowledge flexibly. Next was Lin Fengnian. Lin Fengnian learned a bit slowly, but he was still doing well. He could basically recite all the Three Character Classic texts that had been taught, but he still needed to improve his character recognition and writing skills.
Soon the mother and her two children arrived at Linjia Village, and Uncle Lin escorted them to the gate of the courtyard.
The family began to eat lunch. Zhang Mei talked about the morning's duck egg collection while eating, and the boys also chatted about their own things from time to time. The family was happy and harmonious.
After finishing their meal and taking a short rest, Song Anxin planned to work with the younger children to get the culture medium for growing mushrooms. The batch of mushroom spawn they had cultivated earlier had also been produced.
The strain cultivation was very successful, but the yield was lower than that of modern high-tech cultivation techniques. She needed to hurry up and cultivate more. She also instructed Brother Lin to continue preparing the pots.
The materials used to make the culture medium were also common in the village: a large amount of dry straw was soaked in water until it changed color and softened, then cut into five to six-inch long pieces with a hoe, and mixed evenly with cow dung powder, and piled into a three-foot-high straw pile.
These haystacks need to be exposed to the sun for three days, then turned over and watered, and left to stand for another four days. Then, fertile and loose soil is taken, broken up, sieved, and mixed with lime powder. It is then moistened with water, covered with straw, and fermented for three to five days to become bed soil.
It takes about ten days for the culture medium to be inoculated with bacteria.
Because the large quantity required a lot of effort to mix and stack, Brother Lin came over to help.
Three men were working together in the yard. It was a hot day, and large beads of sweat dripped from their foreheads and fell into the haystack.
Song Anxin and Sister-in-law Lin continued chopping the soaked straw, Zhang Mei was washing the duck eggs they had collected, and Lin Fenghe and Lin Erxi were preparing other ingredients with the two children.
The cow dung was bought for a few coins from a few farmers in the village who owned cows. They piled it up to use as fertilizer, and there was a lot of it.
Song Anxin told everyone to rest, then took out some boiled water from the well, added some sugar, and served a bowl to each person.
The water in the well was very cold; one sip and a chill ran from head to toe. Sugar was added to the water, making it sweet and refreshing.
Lin Fengyao and Lin Dongzi couldn't bear to finish it in one gulp; they licked it up like little dogs, one sip at a time.
The three men, including Brother Lin, who had been working hard, all let out a sigh of relief after taking a sip of the water. They were feeling hot and bothered from the work, and this sip of sweet, cool water was incredibly refreshing.
Sister-in-law Lin took a sip and squinted her eyes contentedly, saying, "Sister-in-law, why are you giving us such precious candy? We should save money where we can, there will be many more expenses in the future."
Everything about my sister-in-law has been good since she changed, except for her extravagant spending habit.
Song Anxin sipped the sweet, cool water, thinking that it would be even better with an iced watermelon. However, watermelons seemed to have not been introduced to the country in this era, and there were not many fruits available. Farmers could not afford to buy them and could only pick wild fruits from the mountains to eat.
She smiled and said, "A little sugar won't save much, and he needs sugar to replenish his energy while working, otherwise he won't have any strength."
The workers wholeheartedly agreed. After drinking the sweet soup, they felt as if all their strength had returned. They didn't linger, rested for a while, put down their bowls, and went back to work in the yard.
After Song Anxin and Sister-in-law Lin finished chopping the straw, they followed Zhang Mei to wash the duck eggs and put them in the backyard to dry.
After Lin Fengnian and the others finished stacking all the hay, they went to work in the fields before the sun got too strong, while Lin Fengshou went up the mountain to chop firewood.
Just as evening was approaching, Song Anxin's family received a big surprise.
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