The county magistrate's daughter only wants to farm

"Mr. Shi, why are you here?" Gu Yin asked in surprise.

Shi Yuheng turned around upon hearing this, and a gentle smile appeared on his handsome face.

Before he could answer, the boy standing next to him answered first, "Brother Shi comes here often!"

Shi Yuheng patted his head and told him to study on his own first, then he said, "I come to visit you occasionally, but how come Miss Gu has time to come today?"

This question made Gu Yin reflect on whether she came here too infrequently, making herself the 'guest'.

"I was passing by and thought of coming to take a look, but I didn't expect to see you here. Do you often come here to teach these children to read?"

Shi Yuheng nodded lightly.

"But aren't you always busy with school matters? How do you have time to..."

Shi Yuheng chuckled, "Come here and take a rest."

"I see……"

The two of them chatted about the children's learning situation. When talking about the children's learning efficiency, Shi Yuheng put away the smile on his face and said, "Their learning progress is too slow."

Gu Yin understood the reason. "The county government can only provide them with enlightenment books now. The number of pens, inkstones, and other supplies is limited. This must have affected them."

"They have a sandbox, so the impact is relatively small."

"Oh? What's the reason?"

"These children have no basic knowledge at all. When they encounter a word they don't understand, they can only ask the teachers, but there are only two teachers. Besides, they can't remember the same word after asking it once. If they ask it so many times, the two teachers can't keep up." Shi Yuheng explained lightly.

"Is there a dictionary for them to look up?" Gu Yin remembered that there were dictionaries in ancient times, but they were not sorted by pinyin and were very different from dictionaries in later generations.

Shi Yuheng looked at Gu Yin with some surprise and said, "Their knowledge reserves are not enough to support them to look up the dictionary."

"why?"

"They don't recognize many words to begin with, so how can we expect them to understand even if we look up the dictionary?" Shi Yuheng said with a smile.

Gu Yin suddenly realized, "So that's it! The meaning of the characters themselves does need to be taught by the teacher, but if they can find out how to read a certain character by looking it up in the dictionary, then they don't need to rely on the teacher so much, right?"

"You can find out how to pronounce a word by looking it up in the dictionary?" Shi Yuheng silently understood what Gu Yin meant. "How can this be achieved?"

"In this way, we can teach them pinyin while they are learning to read characters..."

"What is Pinyin?"

"Pinyin is a variety of symbols. We can agree on the sound of a certain symbol, and certain combinations of these symbols are the pronunciation of a certain word." Gu Yin explained seriously, "In this way, after learning Pinyin and its usage, according to the pronunciation of each word, even if you don't recognize the word in advance, you can know how to read it through Pinyin..."

The more Shi Yuheng listened, the more shocked he was by the pinyin uttered by Gu Yin, and his eyes were filled with deep inquiry as he looked at Gu Yin.

"Hi! Mr. Shi? What's wrong?" Gu Yin waved her hand in front of Shi Yuheng.

Shi Yuheng suddenly came back to his senses and said hurriedly, "Nothing, where were we talking about just now?"

"I want to compile a pinyin dictionary. I wonder if Mr. Shi would be willing to help?" Gu Yin said.

"It's my honor. But compiling a dictionary requires a lot of manpower and resources. Miss Gu plans to do it herself?"

Gu Yin thought for a moment and roughly estimated the workload. Although it was called compiling a dictionary, the difficulty actually lay in teaching them to use pinyin. The rest he just needed to do was to annotate the characters with pinyin.

This came naturally to her, so it wasn't too difficult.

However, to be on the safe side, Gu Yin still planned to teach a few more at once, so that they wouldn't have to come to him for everything in the future.

With a plan in mind, Gu Yin nodded firmly, "Let my father find me a few more scholars. This way, it should be completed in a month."

Shi Yuheng had some doubts in his heart, but seeing Gu Yin's confident look, he didn't say anything.

……

Gongsun Sheng's simple carriage stopped quietly outside the city gate. He lifted the curtain and looked around, then his eyes fixed on the special symbols on the city wall.

The well-informed Gongsun Sheng intuitively felt that these symbols must have some special meaning, so he stopped an old man passing by and pointed at the city wall and asked, "Brother, do you know what those symbols mean?"

The old man was carrying a basket of things on his back and was going to go to the city to sell them for money. Suddenly, he was stopped by someone. When he heard what he was asking, the honest old farmer suddenly smiled and said, "You are from another place, right?"

It is an affirmative sentence rather than a question.

Gongsun Sheng also heard it and asked in confusion, "Brother, how did you know?"

"Because the people of Ning County, from the elderly in their seventies and eighties to the three-year-old children, all know those numbers."

After learning the truth from the old man, Gongsun Sheng was shocked, "The cultural level of the people here is so high!"

However, when he saw the gentle and polite soldiers at the city gate who gave directions, the clean and tidy streets, and the relaxed and motivated people, he was numb with shock.

During his travels along the way, Gongsun Sheng frequently heard a title, "County Princess".

When Gongsun Sheng found out that the county lady was the county magistrate's daughter, he could no longer stop speculating in his mind.

In order to verify his guess, Gongsun Sheng went directly to Gu Huaiyi on the second day after arriving in Ning County.

When Gu Huaiyi heard his subordinates report that Gongsun Sheng had actually arrived at the county government office, he immediately went to the second hall happily. As soon as he stepped over the threshold, he respectfully saluted towards the old man sitting at the top.

"I have heard of Mr. Gongsun's great name for a long time. It is a great honor to meet him today."

"But why didn't you let me know in advance when Mr. Gongsun came, so that I could go out of the city to welcome him!"

Gongsun Sheng waved his hand and said straight to the point, "Let's forget about the formalities. I came here to see who wrote those four sentences."

Gu Huaiyi smiled and said, "Sir, you are open-minded, but I'm afraid your wish will not come true."

"Oh?" Gongsun Sheng asked in surprise, "Could it be that those words were not written by your daughter?"

Gu Huaiyi said frankly, "I dare not hide it from you, sir. The words on that piece of paper were indeed written by my daughter, but the content was not created by her."

"My daughter said it was written by a man called Zhang Zai."

"Who is Zhang Zai?"

Gu Huaiyi explained the information he got from his daughter one by one.

Gongsun Sheng finally said with regret, "It's a pity that I have no chance to meet such a person with such lofty ambitions."

"I wonder if your daughter has time to let me see her?"

Gu Huaiyi asked someone to call Gu Yin.

Gu Yin hurried over and shouted as soon as she entered the door, "Dad, what do you want to talk to me about? I'm busy now!"