Chapter One Hundred and One: The Dream of the Flower-Growing Nation

Why, then, was the writing on the bronze tablets in the language of the Goblin Kingdom?

At first, Sun Licheng had planned to use the script of the Goblin Empire, but after discussing it with Mister Handyman, the latter suggested calling over Little Cabbage to ask her opinion.

Unluckily, Little Cabbage did not know the script of the Goblin Empire.

Though she never admitted it outright, Sun Licheng understood that she was a royal member of the Goblin Kingdom and had received an excellent education. Fortunately, the oath she had taken did not include matters of culture such as writing, so she quietly explained to him the origins of the Goblin Kingdom’s script.

“So you’re saying the Goblin Kingdom’s writing is really just human writing?”

Sun Licheng was somewhat puzzled, so he asked Little Cabbage.

“Yes. The human powers in this world are extremely strong, and their language has become the common tongue of the plane. For communication and trade with the outside world, the Goblin Kingdom uses human script. The kingdom has no writing system of its own.”

Little Cabbage answered.

Although Sun Licheng felt it was a pity that the Goblin Kingdom did not use the ancient goblin script, he quickly accepted her explanation.

The foremost purpose of writing was communication. Sun Licheng needed to search the entire world for the fragments of the Earth God’s divinity, and letting his subordinates learn this script directly was the cheapest option. As for the script of the Goblin Empire, it would be enough for him and his puppets to master it.

With that settled, Sun Licheng decided to use the Goblin Kingdom’s script, that is, human writing, for instruction.

And so Little Cabbage was transformed into the night-school teacher of the Flower Tribe, responsible for teaching all the goblins to read human script.

Since there was no paper for the time being, and hides were not suited to writing, Sun Licheng produced a batch of bronze tablets and engraved them with human characters, then distributed them as textbooks to the tribe’s warriors.

If the warriors wanted to copy the characters, they could simply go and find some sand.

By then, Sun Licheng had already put papermaking on the agenda. Once paper and oil pens for writing were ready, he would replace the tablets.

The goblins sent to garrison the northern frontier were all illiterates, and the one exception, Goblin Stone, was an uncivilized primitive who had no habit of studying at all. As soon as night school began, they started grumbling nonstop. Luckily, Sun Licheng had long prepared for this. Under Mister Handyman’s whip and the persuasive education of the little medusa Vena’s great tail, these fellows were thoroughly cowed, obediently sitting on their stools, scratching their heads and ears as they listened to the lesson.

Sun Licheng enforced a strict policy of both reward and punishment. Anyone who refused to study was whipped and deprived of food; anyone who studied well would receive a treasured blade as a reward. Under these measures, he finally managed to rouse everyone’s enthusiasm. As for the little medusa Vena, she turned out to be literate, which made Sun Licheng look at her with renewed respect.

Beyond teaching everyone to read and write, Sun Licheng also began thinking about worldview education.

Although the warriors had all sworn loyalty to the Flower Tribe, their initiative was not very high. After careful thought, Sun Licheng concluded that this was because his subordinates had no worldview of their own, and therefore felt no real attachment to the tribe.

He had originally intended to use the Goblin Empire’s educational model directly, but later discovered that the empire’s education was entirely militaristic, saturated with theories of bloodline, racial oppression, and bushido spirit, preaching nothing but the law of the jungle.

During the Second World War, the Axis powers had used this kind of education, and it had not brought their nations strength and prosperity, but rather profound disaster. Bloody lessons proved that a band of war-crazed lunatics could never build a flourishing state.

Since the Goblin Empire’s methods could not be used, Sun Licheng considered material incentives, but when he thought of the old Qing dynasty, he hesitated again.

A nation’s wealth was not merely material wealth; spiritual strength was sometimes even more important. In those days, the Great Qing possessed the largest population and the greatest stores of wealth and grain, and its weapons and equipment were not actually poor. So why did it suffer defeat after defeat and sign so many unequal treaties?

The key was that the nation’s culture and spirit had rotted from top to bottom. Ignorance, extreme indulgence, and decadence had utterly broken the spine of the people, until vast China finally became a hunting ground for imperialists. Even if some later-day armchair experts tried to whitewash that era, claiming that backwardness meant being beaten, they never dared to say that many small and backward countries in the world had still, through unity of purpose, shattered imperialist ambitions. Before the Second World War, the small country of Finland, armed with backward weapons and an unyielding will, had beaten the Soviet giant so badly that its head was left covered in bumps, fully demonstrating the importance of national spirit and unity.

Therefore, if he kept relying on rewards alone to boost the army’s morale, he would only end up training a force with the nature of mercenaries.

Under the Ming and Qing dynasties, the imperial troops would not march unless paid, and would not fight unless given their wages. In the end, they turned into a bunch of trash who never won any battle and fled at the sight of the enemy.

Later, Sun Licheng also considered the old formula of blade in one hand and doctrine in the other, but thinking of his two divine majesties, who still had no idea where they were hiding, he could only give up with a wry smile.

As he pondered, Sun Licheng suddenly realized he had a more important problem to solve.

Sun Licheng’s goal was to return to his home on Earth, but that had absolutely nothing to do with the other people of the Flower Tribe. The reason he had founded the tribe in the first place was simply to strengthen his own power and make it easier to search for the fragments of the Earth God’s divinity.

But he could not say that now. If he told everyone, “Once you’ve sent me off, do whatever you like,” then this bunch of cannon fodder would probably run away from the Flower Tribe at once. After all, no one was stupid enough to waste precious time and life on something that held no interest for them at all.

Thus, Sun Licheng’s educational plan had to strike a balance between his own grand objective and the tribe’s development.

Mencius said that those without stable property have no stable mind. When Sun Licheng set out to define the tribe’s future, he could only unite everyone by taking into account the development of all its members, and only then could he ultimately achieve his goal of going home.

Once his thinking was clear, he finally decided to recreate the dream of the Flower Tribe’s renaissance and put forward the slogan of reviving goblin commercial civilization.

In his lectures, Sun Licheng declared that the Goblin Empire had once possessed a glorious commercial civilization. Its products were sold across the world, and all goblins enjoyed an unprecedented level of respect. The goblin army, meanwhile, was the armed guarantee that protected their wealth.

What the Flower Tribe needed to do was strive to restore that glorious civilization.

Sun Licheng promised everyone that the Flower Tribe would produce better goods, exchange them for greater wealth, and let them all live truly good lives.

Through Sun Licheng’s efforts, especially after he promised to allocate houses to everyone, all of them, including Little Cabbage, accepted his propaganda. They began to look forward to their future happy lives, and their enthusiasm for work and study increased greatly; even their spirits took on a completely new face.

Watching the tribe gradually become orderly, Sun Licheng wiped the sweat from his brow and muttered to himself, “At last I’ve talked them into being obedient. That was damned hard.”

And Grant and the others were thinking, “A glorious commercial civilization is bullshit, but getting a house is still better than nothing. As long as the boss is happy and stops tormenting us all the time, we should be thanking heaven.”