Chapter 351 Phonics

In a resting room in the mining area, Mo Tianheng and Zhou Tieyi sat opposite each other. Zhou Tieyi did not rush to treat Mo Tianheng, but smiled casually and said, "You have accepted a good disciple."

Hearing Zhou Tieyi praising Li Jianhu, Mo Tianheng couldn't help but smile, but he still said modestly, "He still has a lot to learn."

Zhou Tieyi nodded slightly and didn't say anything more. The bright five qi surged out from his body, illuminating the dark room around him. The five qi gathered together to form an ancient large cauldron.

The next moment, the big cauldron covered Mo Tianheng. Mo Tianheng knew that this was a part of the treatment, so he completely relaxed his mind and waited for Zhou Tieyi to take action.

In Mo Tianheng's last sight, he only saw the entire cauldron enveloping him, and he immediately fell into silent darkness.

Outside the cauldron, Zhou Tieyi looked at Mo Tianheng who was trapped inside the cauldron. He had deduced Mo Tianheng's injuries several times.

The most difficult part of Mo Tianheng's injury was that his lower dantian was like broken porcelain, with air leaking out piece by piece. However, he forced himself to practice the three swords of essence, energy and spirit, and blocked the three largest leaks.

The lower Dantian is the storage of essence, a secret storage of the human body between reality and illusion, a sea of ​​blood and qi, so it is difficult for other people to treat it.

Zhou Tieyi took out a red peach and plum fruit, and the Red Emperor Flame in his hand ignited, restoring the peach and plum fruit into pure blood. The blood poured into the cauldron and turned into material for repairing the dantian. Then, under the control of Zhou Tieyi's flesh and blood authority, it accurately entered the position of Mo Tianheng's lower dantian.

These blood and energy were like mud at first. Even with Zhou Tieyi's control, they could not blend with Mo Tianheng's dantian, which was originally broken like porcelain.

Zhou Tieyi's mind moved, and a small sword with flowing light flew out of the dream. The small sword danced like fluorescent light, circled in front of Zhou Tieyi for a while, and then hovered in the air.

The hovering sword was like a folded book, on which one could vaguely see the words "Sword Opens a New World".

The Red Emperor's flame embraced the small sword and the Five Qi Furnace Cauldron, and Zhou Tieyi's talent 'Ding Gu' was activated.

The interweaving of legal principles allowed the sword arts comprehended by Zhou Tieyi, the sword arts comprehended by Li Jianhu, and the sword arts comprehended by Mo Tianheng to collide and merge with each other. The three came from the same source, yet were different. They were also combined with the three swords of essence, energy, and spirit. Three threes equal nine, which is the ultimate number.

During this process, Zhou Tieyi was very patient. With the repeated smelting of the Red Emperor Flame, the support of the Blood Fruit and the guidance of the Taoist tradition, two days later, when the morning light shone, Mo Tianheng in the cauldron finally grasped the change that best suited him among the countless changes.

His own blood, energy, and spirit merged with the originally molten energy.

The three elements of essence, energy and spirit are melted into one again and no longer exist in the shape of a sword, but in the shape of 'water'. This water can be transformed into gas in the spirit, into liquid in the essence and blood, and into solid in the qi. Each of these existences is a manifestation of the 'sword', and at the same time can be transformed into three.

Inside the Wuqi furnace, Mo Tianheng suddenly opened his eyes and saw a scarlet color. He stretched out his hand to touch the scarlet color and at the same time, he pierced the placenta that was like a film. When the placenta was broken, he felt a new force from the inside out.

His lower dantian, which was originally broken like porcelain, was now filled with new power. This new power contained essence, energy and spirit, and manifested itself in gaseous, liquid and solid forms. It was not like the blood and energy before, which floated without roots and easily filled every gap. Although the injury to his lower dantian had not yet healed completely, his essence, energy and spirit would not continue to leak out.

Mo Tianheng came back to his senses, looked at Zhou Tieyi who was sitting opposite him, clasped his fists and said, "Thank you, Lord Zhou, for your kindness in saving me."

Zhou Tieyi did not answer Mo Tianheng immediately. He looked at his palm. After helping Mo Tianheng to smelt the sword for the past two days, he had mastered the sword tradition. Now, his grasp of the entire tradition has not only reached a higher level, but he has also deduced new changes.

On Zhou Tieyi's open palm, illusory dragon seals gathered one after another, and finally condensed into a small sword in Zhou Tieyi's hand that kept changing between gas, liquid and solid. He then looked at Mo Tianheng and smiled, "We each take what we need."

Seventy-two changes of swordsmanship.

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After Zhou Tieyi came out of seclusion, the first person to report was He Qigong. Four days was enough time for a smart man who read various newspapers in Tianjing every day to come up with a first draft.

In the living room, Zhou Tieyi unfolded the first draft of He Qigong's newspaper.

This newspaper looks 90% like the Tianjing News, and is printed almost exactly like the other newspapers, except that the content has been slightly changed.

Zhou Tieyi read the entire newspaper carefully, then put it aside, picked up the tea and took a sip with an expressionless face.

He Qigong's heart suddenly skipped a beat, he knew that his newspaper did not satisfy Zhou Tieyi.

However, Zhou Tieyi was not too angry. After all, when he was guiding Wu Qian, Hu Wenlang, and Mei Juncang to run the newspaper, he also made revisions again and again.

Therefore, when facing He Qigong, he naturally could not favor one over the other.

Moreover, Tianjing and Shantongfu have different local characteristics, so the newspapers cannot be generalized. It is normal that He Qigong cannot understand many things instantly, after all, he has a lot of weird ideas.

Zhou Tieyi said, "Tianjin and Shantongfu are different, and the people pay attention to different things. Tianjing is a place of great virtue, and even a coachman can talk about government affairs. But Shantongfu is different. Many people here don't pay as much attention to government changes as you do."

Zhou Tieyi clicked on the pages of "Imperial Edict" and "Memorials".

He was running his first newspaper, the Tianjing News, in Tianjing at the time, and needed to use the title "Imperial Edict" to start the article.

But now hundreds of newspapers have begun to be published in Tianjing, and not every newspaper can invite the Queen Mother to write the "Imperial Edict" on behalf of the Emperor, so this is no longer a necessary page.

Moreover, Zhou Tieyi also had a little idea in mind, that is, the emperor is far away and the influence can be weakened as much as possible.

He Qigong immediately understood and nodded to indicate that he understood.

Zhou Tieyi continued, "The people of Shantong Prefecture have lower incomes and lower literacy rates, so they are less willing to buy. That's why we need to make the newspaper more 'storytelling' and 'interesting'."

He Qigong looked at the two deleted pages and said thoughtfully, "Add more pages for novels."

Zhou Tieyi smiled and said, "In addition to the storytelling and fun, we also need to start with the text itself to improve the literacy rate."

After saying that, he took out a booklet from the white jade chessboard.

The core of the vernacular movement was to lower the threshold for reading and writing. The emergence of spelling rules helped improve the efficiency of children learning to read, and reading newspapers should be started from childhood. "Expand the novels by two pages, and sell them to the public for two cents per copy, but private schools can subsidize one cent for purchase."

With the advent of the steam printing press and the improvement of newspaper paper during this period, the price of newspapers has been reduced to two cents per copy, so now only an additional subsidy of one cent is needed to produce a newspaper for one cent.

As for where he got the money, Zhou Tieyi did not say. This was the test left for He Qigong.

He Qigong picked up Zhou Tieyi's booklet and opened it. Twenty-six peculiar symbols were selected in it, and these twenty-six symbols were used to mark the pronunciation, forming a complete set of phonetic rules.

During this time, He Qigong asked questions in a low voice and Zhou Tieyi explained quickly. He Qigong was literate and had a strong memory, so it only took him half a day to understand the rules clearly.

He Qigong compared the new pronunciation rules with the "Fanqie method" he had learned before. Although the new pronunciation rules require learning 26 more symbols, the pronunciation changes of these 26 symbols are fixed, unlike the previous "Fanqie method" where the two Chinese characters themselves were not fixed, and the pronunciation would even change due to the teacher's different accents.

There is no doubt that this method is more friendly for children to read.

The dispute between Zhou Tieyi and Confucianism over vernacular Chinese has not yet come to an end. Although Zhou Tieyi temporarily won with vernacular Chinese in the Tianjing Daily, a large number of classics are still mainly written in classical Chinese. In this process, the "ancient Chinese" school of Wang Mingyi and Zhang San evolved. Now Zhou Tieyi will continue to expand the advantages of vernacular Chinese through new spelling methods and truly lay a solid foundation for vernacular Chinese.

"Using this new pronunciation rule, we marked the original Daxia characters and formed a simple manual, and began to try to spread it."

He Qigong nodded to indicate that he understood, then hesitated for a moment and said, "I'm afraid that many Confucian private schools are unwilling to promote your method of marking reading."

Zhou Tieyi chuckled and said, "I am willing to wait on this matter. It takes more than one or two days to teach children to read. Confucianists are unwilling to teach, but the private schools of Legalists, Mohists, Gongshuists, Agriculturalists, and Yin-Yangists are not so stubborn. The speed of promotion reflects your ability."

Zhou Tieyi hadn't said anything else. Even if He Qigong was not capable of this matter, he could start promoting it through new-style schools established in new factories.

He Qigong quickly clasped his fists and said, "I won't let you down."

Zhou Tieyi nodded slightly. After He Qigong left, he glanced at the newspaper on the table. In fact, there is another simplest and most brutal way to expand newspaper sales, which is to let the "Spring Palace School" of novelists publish their novels in it.

Although this method is stupid and a bit vulgar, it has always been effective from ancient times to the present.

The father of penguins was still chatting in the early days.

Newspapers experienced a period of rapid development in the 20th century because they published a large number of serialized pornographic novels to attract attention.

Of course, this all became black history in the end.

Zhou Tieyi's business is now taking shape, so after thinking it over, he did not take the quick and easy 'evil way' as before, but used a more honest and even more laborious method to start with children, which made it even more difficult for him to use this 'evil way'.

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The airship was flying at an altitude of three thousand feet. The controller of the airship, Sun Shiheng, was enthusiastically explaining to Zhou Tieyi the various advantages of Mo City. In his words, Mo City was simply a unique place in heaven and on earth, even far better than Tianjing. However, when the airship was about to reach the sky above Mo City, suddenly several huge mechanical birds flew over.

Sun Shiheng's face showed obvious shock and anger, but he did not speak immediately.

Zhou Tieyi immediately understood that this should be Gong Shujia's mechanism. These mechanical birds were similar in structure to fighter jets. The wood and steel with a metallic sheen appeared cyan and gold in color. They were extremely conspicuous under the sunlight. After approaching the airship from all directions, they restricted the movement of the airship in mid-air.

An old and domineering voice easily passed through the airship and reached Zhou Tieyi, "Zhou family boy, when you come to Taihang Mountain, it's unreasonable for you to go to someone else's house without going back to your own house first!"

Zhou Tieyi smiled silently, cupped his hands and asked, "May I ask which senior of the Gongshu family you are from?"

The old and domineering voice continued, "Gongshu Sheng should call me great uncle."

Sun Shiheng snorted coldly, "Your Excellency Gongshu Ting is too overbearing!"

Gongshu Ting smiled and said, "I have always been overbearing, and this time I am justified in being overbearing. Zhou family boy, please judge for yourself whether what I just said makes sense or not?"

Although Gongshu Ting was speaking with a smile, Zhou Tieyi could clearly sense the urgency in his tone.

This is indeed very important to Gongshujia. He is not just trying to save face. Moreover, Gongshujia has been fighting with Mohism for so long. He just saw from Zhou Tieyi the hope that Gongshujia will defeat Mohism. Of course, he cannot let Zhou Tieyi go to Mohism. At least he needs to pretend and force Zhou Tieyi to pretend. Even if he will offend Zhou Tieyi in the process, he will not hesitate. At worst, he will just take advantage of his seniority.

That's why he kept calling Zhou Tieyi "the boy of the Zhou family" from the beginning. He knew how important and noble Zhou Tieyi was, but the only thing he could do now was to use his seniority advantage to suppress Zhou Tieyi.

As for asking Gongshu Jia to be conciliatory... I'm sorry, even if Gongshu Jia had been conciliatory over the years, the relationship between him and the Mohist school wouldn't have become so strained.

Just as the stalemate was about to begin, another gentle voice came, "Since the elders have invited you, it's okay for you, Mr. Zhou, to go to the Mechanical City first."

Sun Shiheng said in surprise, "Master!"

Gongshu Ting snorted coldly, but since the other party had given him a chance, he couldn't continue to be sarcastic.

Zhou Tieyi bowed in the direction of the voice and said, "I am inconsiderate."

He kept a very humble attitude. On the one hand, it was because of Gongshu Sheng. Emotionally, he was indeed more inclined towards Gongshu's school. On the other hand, this time he came to ask for help from Mohism and Gongshu, not to provoke a dispute between the two schools.

The master laughed and said, "It's okay. There is a saying that goes, "You can't eat hot tofu in a hurry, and first come first served." Isn't this true, Brother Gongshu?"

The corner of Zhou Tieyi's mouth twitched slightly. He didn't know if it was a matter of habit between the two families. Even though the Mohist School gave in to the Gongshu School in many things, they still would not indulge the Gongshu School in words.

Gongshu Ting said anxiously, "I want to eat hot tofu today!"

After a cup of tea, the airship landed in the six-ring mechanical city under the protection of the mechanical bird.

(End of this chapter)