Top Scholar

Chapter 145 I want to fight ten

As soon as Su Lu stepped onto the podium, a commotion indeed broke out in Minglun Hall.

The old gentlemen felt deeply humiliated when they realized that the person giving them a lesson was a mere fourteen or fifteen-year-old boy…

"The county magistrate is indeed making fun of us!"

"We've put aside the New Year celebrations and traveled a hundred or two miles through the mountains just to listen to a child give a lesson!"

"This is intolerable! A scholar can be killed but not humiliated!" At first, it was just a low-pitched complaint, but gradually it was about to explode.

"Quiet!" Fortunately, Instructor Hai also had the temperament of a fierce dog; with a stern face, he shouted, immediately silencing the arrogance of the teachers. He said in a deep voice:
Confucius said, "Among three people walking together, there must be one who can teach me." Han Yu said, "I learn from the Way. Why should I care whether he was born before or after me? You people judge others by their appearance. Don't you find that ridiculous?"

“Fine, then let’s hear what a child like him can teach us,” one of the men said with a sneer.

Seeing this, Su Lu stopped wasting words with them, unfurled the 'Fifty Phonetic Symbols' he had brought, and began by stating:

"What I'm going to teach you today is a completely new set of phonetic symbols for the Hongwu Zhengyun. With these fifty phonetic symbols, you can completely replace the 866 fanqie characters and perfectly mark the 76 rhyme groups, 31 initial consonants, and 2,821 fanqie sounds in the Hongwu Zhengyun!"

With a buzz, the elderly gentlemen in the audience erupted in uproar.

"You brat, how dare you speak so arrogantly! Have you even learned the fanqie phonetic method? How dare you claim to replace it?"

"Have you even read a rhyme book? You're just spouting nonsense here!"

"How arrogant! How laughable!" The teachers launched into a tirade against the stage. Most of them were frustrated old scholars who had been crushed by others' academic achievements and dared not utter a sound. Now that they had finally caught a young scholar, they naturally wanted to unleash their true nature.

"Quiet down, quiet down..." This time, even the naval instructor couldn't keep quiet!

Su Lu remained unmoved, seemingly unfazed by the insult, and continued to smile at the audience, saying, "Words are no proof, seeing is believing. Since you gentlemen don't believe me, how about we have a contest?"

"How do we compete?" The old gentlemen weren't professional critics after all; they didn't know how to play the "you say your piece, I'll just say mine" game.

“It’s very simple. Here is a book called ‘Hongwu Zhengyun’.” Su Lu picked up the rhyme book from the podium and said loudly, “Choose a teacher you trust and have him copy one hundred characters from it at random. I will use phonetic symbols, and you will use the fanqie phonetic method. We will annotate the characters at the same time and see who finishes faster.”

"Let's compare then." The gentlemen naturally didn't believe that this kid's method was superior to the fanqie method.

Following Su Lu's advice, they first selected a highly respected old scholar to choose words from the rhyme book.

"Choose a hundred obscure characters!" someone suggested. "Let's see how that kid can't even recognize them all, and then we'll see how he pronounces them."

"Hahaha, that makes sense!" The gentlemen burst into laughter.

But while many of the elderly gentlemen laughed it off, when it came time to nominate their opponents, they all backed down because they didn't recognize many of the unfamiliar characters...

Just as they were politely deferring to each other, the young man on the stage suddenly uttered another arrogant remark: "Fine, beating one of you isn't a skill. Let's choose ten gentlemen to come up together!"

"What did you say?!" The gentlemen roared in anger. "This brat is incredibly arrogant!"

"There's a limit to bragging! You can't even beat one of them, let alone ten!"

“That’s right, we’re going to lose anyway, so losing to ten is more interesting than losing to one.” The gentlemen thought they had seen through his little scheme.

"So you guys don't dare to compete?" Su Lu smiled faintly, his tone dripping with sarcasm.

"We're not going to play along with your monkey act!" one of the men said in a muffled voice.

“That’s right, what’s the point of competing if there’s no prize?” Su Lu laughed. “How about this: if I win, you’ll all listen to my lecture for a whole day.”

"And what if you lose?" the gentlemen asked, as expected.

"If I lose to ten of you, I'll decide not to continue this lesson and let everyone go home for the New Year!" Su Lu announced loudly. "I will apologize to the county magistrate myself, so you don't need to worry!"

"Oh? Is that really true?" The gentlemen were now intrigued. At this moment, nothing was more appealing than letting them go home for the New Year.

Anyway, the responsibility will fall on that kid. Since the magistrate hasn't returned yet, the best thing to do is run away. Surely the magistrate can't possibly bring them back?

Besides, surely ten teachers wouldn't be unable to recognize all one hundred characters...

"Alright, we'll compete with you!" They couldn't nominate a single gentleman for a long time before, but this time they nominated ten in no time.

They've all been teaching for over ten or twenty years, and they feel they're extremely familiar with the fanqie method.

On the other side, the old scholar had also copied a hundred characters, all of which were rare characters selected from the "Hongwu Zhengyun" without any pattern!
Once both teams were ready, Hai Xun, who was acting as the referee, hung the hundred words on the wall!

The ten gentlemen had already agreed to take turns writing ten characters each, from one to ten, from eleven to twenty, and so on. This way, each person only needed to write ten characters in reverse order, reducing the number of characters to only one-tenth of that kid's. How could Flying Dragon possibly lose when he was riding on the front lines?
The others gathered around them as spectators. Su Lu had the most onlookers, partly because they wanted to see how he lost, and partly because they wanted to see something new and see what these phonetic symbols were all about.

Su Lu remained completely undisturbed, glancing up at the characters on the wall: '觳觫鼙鼗谳、黻瘛奡暾鼐'... He had to thank the old scholar for his kindness; there were at least two characters that weren't too obscure, preventing anyone from noticing the uncanny valley effect.

However, for someone like him who had already memorized all 12,246 characters of the "Hongwu Zhengyun" dictionary, these characters were no different from "Hu Su Pi Tao Yan, Fu Chi Ao Tun Nai"—they were all pronounced the same.

So he wrote with lightning speed, quickly producing ten sets of phonetic symbols:
'ㄏ'、'ㄙ'、'ㄧ'、'ㄉㄠ'、'ㄧ'、'ㄈㄨ'、'ㄑㄧ'、'ㄠ'、'ㄊㄨ'、'ㄋㄧ丶'.

Then, he looked up and wrote down ten more, continuing to rapidly add phonetic symbols!
The speed was so fast that the onlookers were dumbfounded. Looking at the ten competitors beside him, the fastest one had only just written the first character in the fanqie (a traditional Chinese method of indicating the upper part of a character); the lower character hadn't even been written yet…

This isn't due to their lack of skill; it's simply because the fanqie method of phonetic notation is too cumbersome. For example, when using the fanqie method to pronounce '谳', the first step is to extract the initial consonant from the character's pronunciation, and then find the appropriate character '鱼' from the vast number of fanqie characters.

The second step is to extract the vowels and tones, and then find the appropriate character '变' from the even larger number of characters in the fanqie (a method of indicating pronunciation in traditional Chinese characters).

Finally, check whether the initial consonant of the first character and the final vowel tone of the second character can accurately combine to form the pronunciation of the character '谳'. This step is also essential because there are too many fanqie characters, and many of them have similar pronunciations, so it is easy to make a mistake if you are not careful.

In contrast, with Zhuyin Fuhao (a phonetic symbol), you already know how to spell it when you pronounce it...

As a result, by the time Su Lu finished annotating all one hundred rare characters, none of the ten teachers had finished. The most they had annotated was only seven characters... and the few hadn't even finished half.

"What kind of scribbling is this?!" This greatly alarmed the gentlemen, and one of them retorted, "Who knows if you're just making things up?"

Su Lu had anticipated their reaction and smiled, saying, "No rush, let's finish annotating the rest of the phonetic symbols first."

After he finished speaking, he sat there with his eyes closed, neither speaking nor opening his eyes, yet his aura overwhelmed everyone.

The competition was not over yet, and although the ten gentlemen were reluctant, they had no choice but to finish annotating the remaining characters.

Hai Xun observed with a detached eye and realized that Mr. Su had already taken control of the entire situation. Those older teachers who had been teaching for longer than him were unknowingly being led by the nose by him.

~~
After the ten scholars finished annotating the characters, Su Lu asked Hai Han to peel down the paper on the wall and return it to the old scholar.

Then he said to everyone, "The purpose of phonetic notation is to mark the pronunciation. Let's use our previous annotations to pronounce these words and see who can pronounce them the fastest and most accurately."

As he spoke, Su Lu smiled at the gentleman who had just questioned him and said, "As long as I can accurately read these one hundred characters, this gentleman shouldn't doubt that I'm making things up, right?"

“Of course.” The man nodded.

"Alright." Su Lu glanced at the old scholar holding the hundred characters and said, "Old sir, watch carefully, I'm about to begin..."

After saying that, he picked up the phonetic symbols he had written down and read out all one hundred characters in one breath: "觳觫鼙鼗谳……鼛醭艧觱蠲!"

The speed was so fast that it was almost as fast as reading a normal book.

The scholars were stunned. After Su Lu finished reading, they all asked the old scholar in unison, "Is that right?"

“Not a single one…that’s right!” The old scholar was also stunned. “How could it be so fast? Ten times faster than a reverse-cutting motion!”

Everyone knows there's no need to compare. Using the fanqie method, you first need to cut out the initial consonant of the first character, then the final consonant and tone of the second character, and then spell it out. It's definitely more than ten times slower...

Most of the gentlemen were now convinced, shaking their heads and sighing, "This method is indeed brilliant..."

However, there were also stubborn people who were unwilling to see the Fanqie method eliminated, who argued unreasonably, saying, "Maybe you have a photographic memory and have memorized all one hundred characters!"

“That’s easy. I’ll find someone who has never seen these characters before and have them try to spell them out.” Su Lu was a very meticulous person. He had already anticipated that they would say this, so he called out to the door, “Zihe, come in.”

Zhu Zihe, who had been waiting outside, finally pushed open the tightly closed door and walked in.

“My classmate has never seen those one hundred characters before, has he?” Su Lu asked the teachers.

"That's definitely not the case." The teachers shook their heads. In the dead of winter, the doors and windows were tightly closed during class, and this handsome young man had never come in. There was no way he could have seen those one hundred words.

Moreover, those one hundred characters were written by the old scholar on a normal sheet of paper, and each character was of normal size. Even if he peeked through a crack in the door, he wouldn't be able to see them clearly.

Zhu Zihe had long since mastered the phonetic symbols. He picked up the paper written by Su Lu and immediately read out the hundred characters clearly and accurately, with the pronunciation and tones being completely correct!

Now the gentlemen were completely convinced, even the most argumentative nitpicker could only shake their heads and say, "How is that possible? It can't be!"

"This doesn't even demonstrate the greatest advantage of the phonetic symbols—they're easy to remember and learn!" Su Lu then declared loudly:

"I can teach you how to use it in just one day. After today's lesson, you'll understand what makes this phonetic symbol so magical."

As he spoke, he glanced around at everyone and asked in a deep voice, "Will you learn or not?"

"Let's learn!" all the teachers exclaimed in unison. "Please, young teacher, enlighten us!"

They are now eager to know how this phonetic symbol is so much better than the fanqie method.
(End of this chapter)