I am not Yuan Shu

Chapter 2: Reading sentences at the age of two and reading classics at the age of three

The reason why Ma Rong had such feelings was that the story behind this record was too tortuous and bizarre, and the historical materials were scarce and rare.

If he had not offended Empress Dowager Deng and had to sit on the bench for more than ten years in the Dongguan, the royal library of the Eastern Han Dynasty, he would not have had so much time and such good conditions to read widely, thus laying the foundation for his comprehensive understanding of the real stories behind the records.

But as far as he could remember, there was no member of the Yuan family working in Dongguan.

So, was it the Yuan family’s private collection of books that revealed this truth?
You know, these four simple words "Yiwu is rude" are really complicated and cannot be explained in just a few words.

In a sense, Ma Rong's guess was not wrong, but this matter was not taught to Yuan Shu by some mysterious scholar within Yuan Shu's family. It was purely the result of Yuan Shu's own extensive reading.

In fact, reading widely was not Yuan Shu's original intention. The reason he chose to read widely was purely because he was bored.

Yuan Shu was an unfortunate player whose soul traveled across time and space to the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty when "Yuan Shu" was still a baby.

At the beginning, Yuan Shu didn't know that he was occupying the body of "Yuan Shu".

Confined in the baby's body, he could only be forced to eat and sleep like a baby. Apart from that, the most common things he did were peeing and defecating. Occasionally when he was awake, he was forced to drink milk and eat porridge, living the life that a human cub should live.

After finally getting through the infancy of falling asleep as soon as he lay down and having trouble seeing or hearing clearly, he was astonished to hear words like "General Liang Ji", "Five Marquises" and "Li Ying" from the conversation between his cheap parents, which made him realize that the era he was living in might be the Eastern Han Dynasty.

Later, he heard words such as "Emperor Guangwu", "Emperor Xiaoming" and "Emperor Xiaozhang", and he was sure that he was indeed in the Eastern Han Dynasty, but he was not sure when it was.

Then one day he heard that his family was "Yuan", that he was from "Ru'nan County", that his father's name was "Feng", and that his brother's name was "Kuai", he immediately felt that something was wrong.

Can't go wrong.

Yuan Feng, and brother Yuan Wei, this is definitely correct!
Yuan family of Runan!

The most awesome family that failed in the late Han Dynasty!

But who exactly is he?

Is it Yuan Feng’s eldest son Yuan Ji?
Or the second son Yuan Shu?
Or is it the bastard Yuan Shao?
But no matter who they were, the ending of these three was not good.

Yuan Ji was killed together with Yuan Wei by Dong Zhuo. He didn't even have the power to resist. He just had the status of the eldest son of the Yuan family, who had been three officials for four generations. He died the cheapest death and could be described as a mediocre person.

Yuan Shao was the powerful ruler of Hebei, but he had the characteristic of being easily defeated when the wind was favorable. He was unexpectedly counterattacked by his younger brother Cao Cao, and finally died of anger, and was laughed at by later generations.

Yuan Shu, the most interesting man in the late Han Dynasty, was full of interesting things. He fought ghosts on the road, wanted to drink honey water, and was a dry bone in the tomb. Liu Bei was a kind man. His life experiences were enough to write an encyclopedia of interesting things in the late Han Dynasty.

In the end, when he was at his wit's end, he died of anger because he couldn't even drink a sip of honey water. It was such a dramatic death.

The three brothers are more amazing than the other, more funny than the other, and more capable of flipping over than the other. Even a sunfish can't flip over as often as they do.

Yuan Shu felt that no matter who he became, it would be a tragedy.

Perhaps because he was too young and had not yet been officially named, Yuan Shu did not know which talent he was at first. Until one day when he woke up, he heard the names of the two talents, Ji and Shao, from his father and mother.

This means that Yuan Ji and Yuan Shao already existed.

So……

My name is Yuan Shu?

This is really an old woman changing her posture - I can’t do it to you.

Yuan Shu was stunned on the spot.

It’s bad, I’ve become a pile of dry bones in a grave!

How does this work?!
It took Yuan Shu a long time to accept the fact that he would become a pile of dry bones in a grave, and that he would die of anger in the future because he could not even have a sip of honey water. He felt so depressed and painful.

But not long after, one day when he was drinking milk vigorously, he suddenly figured it out.

Even if he would die as a dry bone in a grave and a man who could not drink honey in the future, before that, "Yuan Shu"'s life was still quite exciting.

He experienced everything he should and shouldn't have experienced. He committed evil and abused his power, lived in high and mighty positions all his life, and even became a "Zhong Emperor". He almost became an emperor.

And he was not young when he died.

In this era when the average life expectancy is only in the twenties and one can call oneself an old man at the age of thirty-six, isn’t it a blessing to be able to live to forty or fifty, to experience so many interesting things in the world, to enjoy so many blessings, and to possess so much power?

As an important descendant of the Yuan family, which has been three officials for four generations, even if he lies down and plays dirty, his abundant family fortune is enough for him to live a life of idleness and waiting for death for most of his life. It's just that he is unlucky to be reborn at this time. If it was earlier, it would not be difficult for him to live a life of idleness and waiting for death.

How many predecessors who have traveled through time have traveled through time and space and ended up as ordinary people, suffering all kinds of hardships, while they themselves did nothing. They closed their eyes and opened them again - hey, I have become a superior person!
Should I be in pain?

No.

I should be cheering!
Thinking of this, Yuan Shu instantly completed his enlightenment, reversed his thoughts, and decided to grow up healthily, and then live a dirty and corrupt life, so as to experience all the top enjoyments of this era before he died!
Although there are no mobile phones and short videos, but...

I am the protagonist!
In this way, I can die without regrets!
What is a successful life?
It's not about being king, it's not about being wealthy, it's not about having many wives and concubines and children and grandchildren, but about living your life the way you like best.

With such awareness, Yuan Shu was so excited that he didn't care about the possibility of becoming "a pile of dead bones" in the future, and immediately wanted to do something that was in line with his identity.

For example, he bullied men and women and committed evil deeds, striving to win the title of "Little Overlord of Runan with the Golden Spear" before he became a "dry bone in the tomb".

Unfortunately, the baby's pure body cannot bear such a dirty soul, and he has the will but not the power.

At the same time, he had no mobile phone or short videos to pass the time. His soul was trapped in his small body and he couldn't move. He was bored to death except for eating, drinking, defecating and urinating every day.

He had no choice but to find a book to read to relieve his boredom when he was finally able to get out of his swaddling clothes, put on his clothes and walk around on the ground.

A large family like the Yuan family naturally has no shortage of books.

Thus, the Yuan family had a child prodigy who could read sentences at the age of two and read classics at the age of three.

Yuan Shu himself just wanted to kill time and not be so bored, but the fact that he started clamoring to read and learn to write at the age of two still surprised the Yuan family.

Yuan Shu obviously underestimated how meaningful his actions to relieve boredom were to the Yuan family.

From ancient times to the present, no matter what class you are from, as long as you are "studious", you can always win unexpected favor from others.

Therefore, the Yuan family paid considerable attention and care to this child prodigy.

The family's collection of books was open to him, and he could read whatever he wanted. If he didn't understand something, there were clan scholars who would explain it to him.

Whenever his father Yuan Feng was free, he would teach him to read the scriptures personally. When his father was not free, his third uncle Yuan Wei would also teach him to read the scriptures personally.

Yuan Shu just wanted to read quietly by himself. When he saw some ancient characters he didn't understand, he would ask someone to help interpret them and tell him what they meant. He didn't want many people to chatter at him.

He just needs a living dictionary - to give quick answers when he has questions, and to ignore them when he doesn't.

In the eyes of his family elders, his behavior completely solidified his title of "child prodigy".

Yuan Shu mastered punctuation in less than half a month.

In less than three months, there was no word that Yuan Shu didn't recognize.

Then he began to read widely. He didn't even like being disturbed by others. He read quietly and asked questions when he didn't understand something. He especially didn't like anyone interrupting him while he was reading, including his father and third uncle.

Yuan Feng looked at Yuan Shu, who was holding the bamboo slips and reading every word, with great satisfaction, and sighed that he had given birth to a good son.

Yuan Wei looked at Yuan Shu with envy as he held the bamboo slips and read every word, and lamented that he did not have such a good son.

As long as his body could no longer support his dirty thoughts, Yuan Shu could only live like this.

He read one book after another and explored one bamboo slip after another from the age of three to six, for more than three years, except for eating, drinking, defecating and urinating, he just read. Finally, before he was seven years old, he had basically read all the books in the Yuan family's collection.

At that time, his body had initially acquired the ability to do evil, and if he wanted to do something, he could already start to act.

But apart from occasionally taking Xu Chong to pin Yuan Shao to the ground and beat him up when he looked at him with envy and jealousy, he suddenly felt that he was not very interested in bullying men and women and doing evil.

The more he read, the more he understood, the broader his knowledge became, and the more truths he unravelled, he suddenly felt that doing this kind of thing was really low and totally unworthy of his status.

Those great figures of the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period have been immersed in the conspiracy jar since childhood. They are fighting for life and death with their eyes open or closed. They will die if they are not careful. Even if they are kings, they are just mortals. It is just like playing a battle royale. It is so thrilling!

In many interesting stories, all the people involved are not human, all are evil spirits, and there are very few anthropomorphic people.

Some of the people he originally thought to be very decent, he found out after reading the collection of books, were actually deep-minded conspirators, plotting against others from thousands of miles away without them being seen, and then being plotted against and killed by the people closest to them.

For example, Duke Wen of Jin, Chong'er.

It was really wonderful and exciting.

Therefore, childish fighting and bullying became a particularly tasteless and life-wasting thing in his eyes. He didn't want to waste his life on such things anymore. Now, he had higher aspirations.

With Yuan Shu's style of doing things and his cognition that he is the third in command and second in command, he even dares to dream of becoming an emperor and even puts on a show of preparing to become emperor. So I am much better than him, and my pursuit should be higher than his!
Yuan Shu played a good hand of cards badly, so I, Yuan Shu, must play this good hand of cards into a miraculous game that will shock the world and make the ghosts cry!

Emperor Zhong?

snort!
Only a coward would be the Emperor of the Zhong family!

Yuan Shu secretly set his own goal and then began to seriously explore a way to achieve it.

How do I get to this road?
I'm afraid I'll have to get it from a book.

Yuan Shu's gaze returned to the book again, to the scriptures that were filled with glory and correctness, but full of conspiracies and intrigues.

Of course, whenever Yuan Shao was looking for trouble and acting weird, he would order Xu Chong, the meat bomb, to rush forward and take the beating without hesitation, while he would attack Yuan Shao from behind and beat him until his face was covered with bruises.

Later, Yuan Shao felt that he was older but always got beaten, which was very embarrassing, so he asked Xu You from his side to help.

It turned out that Xu You was a weakling in combat, and the situation later evolved into a situation where Yuan Shao and Xu You were pinned to the ground by Xu Chong, and Yuan Shu waved his fist to greet them, making them both blush and feel the warmth of spring.

Apart from not hesitating to launch a severe attack on Yuan Shao, Yuan Shu was simply an excellent student.

Yuan Shu was a rare "child prodigy" in the family, and his family was afraid that he would read too much and get confused, and end up going down the wrong path of being a good student.

So when he was studying, Yuan Feng and Yuan Wei would spare no effort to impart to him more knowledge about social reality, let him know the gap between what was written in books and social reality, and cultivate his wolf nature.

What's more, Yuan Feng and Yuan Wei also encouraged him to do something extraordinary to build up his courage.

For example, bullying men and women and doing evil things, and even killing someone if that doesn't work. For this purpose, he also pulled Yuan Shu to teach him the techniques of fencing, sword swinging, archery, and horse riding.

Yuan Feng almost told Yuan Shu directly and clearly - my good son, stop reading and go out and bully boys and girls and do some evil things, okay?

But how could Yuan Shu, a good boy who was born in the spring breeze and grew up under the red flag, do such a thing?

If Yuan Feng wasn't his cheap father, he would have pointed at Yuan Feng and cursed, "Wu Dalang is doing business—do you want to eat oil cakes?"
What is my identity?
Bullying men and dominating women?

Low or not?

However, as the saying goes, the arm cannot twist the thigh. At that time, Yuan Shu's two arms were not as strong as Yuan Feng's calf. In order to get peace when reading, he would beat Yuan Shao from time to time to get by. After beating Yuan Shao down, he continued reading.

When the elders in the family found out that Yuan Shu preferred reading to doing evil, they were very worried. But when they saw that Yuan Shu beat Yuan Shao and Xu You without holding back and with fierce moves, they felt relatively relieved.

Just don't read too much and become stupid.

As long as Yuan Shu was still willing to beat Yuan Shao, the family would not interfere with Yuan Shu's freedom of reading, so Yuan Shu was able to read more books, including Zuo Zhuan.

After reading Zuo Zhuan, Yuan Shu seriously realized that from an academic point of view, Zuo Zhuan is the only textbook that is truly suitable for interpreting the Spring and Autumn Annals.

Whether it is Guliang Zhuan or Gongyang Zhuan, both of these two schools within the Modern Text Classics system regard the Spring and Autumn Annals as a political program, while only Zuo Zhuan regards the Spring and Autumn Annals as a historical and political textbook.

Fundamentally speaking, Yuan Shu himself also agrees more with the historical and political textbook attributes of the Spring and Autumn Annals.

Scholars of Gongyang Zhuan generally believe that the Spring and Autumn Annals is a work in his later years in which Confucius expressed his own aspirations and integrated all his political ideas throughout his life. It is the essence of Confucius' life-long thoughts, but they do not pay much attention to its historical attributes.

Yuan Shu read it over and over, but only saw the four big words "Spring and Autumn style" in the Spring and Autumn Annals, and could not really see much of the political program in it.

Even the Gongyang Commentary itself did not elevate the meaning of the political program to the national level, but rather expressed the image of Confucius in Gongyang Gao's own mind.

It was not until the super boss Dong Zhongshu came out with his magnum opus "Chun Qiu Fan Lu" and made an alternative interpretation of Gongyang Zhuan that the Confucian school's formal program for governing the country gradually took shape.

Dong Zhongshu's interpretation of Gongyang Zhuan can be described as Kennedy riding in a convertible - his imagination is limitless.

Regardless of whether it was Confucius's intention or not, as long as it was in line with the interests of the Confucian school at the time, Dong Zhongshu could always find a weird angle to connect it with Confucius, and forcibly turned Gongyang Zhuan into a super patchwork monster.

In this regard, Confucius could only spread his hands to express helplessness - I am dead, so isn't it you who have the final say on what I say?
I am restricted by various limitations of the times and cannot express my meaning clearly. I can only make implicit hints and secretly curse people who I cannot curse openly.

As a result, you actually understood it as a political system for governing the country and maintaining peace...

I really have to admire the political wisdom of future generations.

But from this perspective, Yuan Shu does not think that Gongyang Zhuan has really no value.

Although the interpretation of the Spring and Autumn Annals by the Gongyang School Confucian scholars after Dong Zhongshu was outrageous, it really transcended the limitations of Confucian classics and came up with a set of serious political programs that could be implemented by rulers, injecting fresh blood into the antique Confucian school.

Before Dong Zhongshu promoted Gongyang Zhuan, the Confucian school had never really put its political ideals into practice.

Confucius was known as a scholar with three thousand disciples who traveled around the states. However, he only served as the prime minister of Lu for three months. His disciples touted his governance during these three months as "the great prosperity of Lu."

But if you think about it carefully, in three months, the crops can't grow a single crop. Can a country really be completely changed?

Generally speaking, among the various schools of thought, the Legalists had practiced politics, the Taoists had also practiced politics, and even the Mohists had been deeply involved in politics. These schools were more convincing than the Confucians.

However, the Confucian school was fortunate to have Dong Zhongshu, who found the key breakthrough point - Gongyang Zhuan, and thus led Confucianism to complete its self-revolution.

In the academic circles of the early Western Han Dynasty, other schools of thought were just living off their old achievements and waiting for death, without reforming the academic system that had problems after being put into practice.

Only the Confucian school has made such profound self-transformation and kept pace with the progress of the times in great strides.

Therefore, Dong Zhongshu and Gongyang Zhuan can be said to be the key factors that enabled the Confucian school to defeat all other schools of thought at that historical juncture and become the final winner.

In fact, before Gong Yang Zhuan castrated himself, he had a theory called "Tian Qiu" which was like a cow taking a plane.

In other words, it is believed that the emperor is a prisoner of heaven, and a shocking conclusion is made about the status of the emperor and heaven. It is like hanging a sword over the emperor's head, which will hit him directly if he is not careful. It is very shocking.

If this theory had been solidified, history would absolutely have gone in a different direction.

Unfortunately, scholars could not withstand the sharpness of the steel knife after all. They castrated themselves under the tyranny and embarked on the path of prophecies and divinations. The New Text Confucianism flourished due to the Gongyang School, and was destined to decline from it.

However, in Yuan Shu's opinion, the ancient text Confucian classics system, which was closer to and more flattering than the rulers in order to gain the status of official schools, was no better than the modern text Confucian classics.

If the current Modern Confucianism is a bully, then the Ancient Confucianism is a gangster.

The struggle between the two did not bring about academic progress and glory, but instead further gave rise to such absurd things as Wei and Jin metaphysics.

Therefore, in Yuan Shu's view, both prophecy and cumbersomeness have no future.

This is the insight Yuan Shu came to after reading a wide range of books.

And from this, he further came up with the initial idea of "correcting thoughts and integrating wills".

It is not difficult to overthrow this cannibalistic world and overthrow the old order. There is a direct method that can be used - strong soldiers and horses.

But after overthrowing the old world, we always have to come up with a new order to reshape society. Otherwise, if we overthrow the old world just for the sake of overthrowing the old world, what is the difference between us and bandits?
A new order requires a new system of thought to shape it, and the new system of thought needs to be created, proposed, recognized, and then put into practice by the leaders themselves.

As far as Yuan Shu at that time was concerned, neither the New Text Confucianism system nor the Old Text Confucianism system was sufficient to create a new ideological system.

The new ideological system must transcend it, but not be completely separated from it. It cannot be separated from the "spirit" of this land and must be down-to-earth.

Yuan Shu took the initiative to ask Ma Rong to learn ancient Chinese classics, which was itself a preparation for this action.

Yuan Shu has some vague ideas of his own about the new ideas and new order of the future.

However, these ideas still need the recognition and endorsement of great scholars and great men of virtue. It would be impossible for a child like him to accomplish anything on his own.

Therefore, he had to become a disciple of Ma Rong, the most powerful scholar of the time, and gain a fame and status close to or even surpassing Zheng Xuan, thereby gaining a position in the academic world and becoming a big shot.

After becoming a big shot in the academic and ideological circles, coupled with the social energy accumulated by the Yuan family itself, he had enough spare time to put his new ideas and new order into practice.

Then, get the results.

Then, further improve the theory and publicize it widely.

And then……

hum...

Yuan Shu just needs to be at ease and become a dry bone in the tomb.

Yuan Shu has a lot to consider.

So in order not to become that "dry bone in the tomb" who can't even have a glass of honey water before dying, Yuan Shu decided to work hard, be positive, and do things ruthlessly to turn this era upside down!
(End of this chapter)