Unsheathed

Chen Ping'an held Pei Qian's hand and returned to his room on the immortal ship.

In an extremely rare display, Pei Qian surprisingly said that she was going to transcribe an extra five hundred characters today.

Chen Ping'an didn't stop her, and he simply reminded her that the extra characters she transcribed today wouldn't count towards the quota for tomorrow.

Pei Qian stood straight and puffed her chest out, replying that she naturally understood this.

She placed the miniature yellow gourd beside her hand as she transcribed the characters.

Chen Ping'an sat opposite her and continued to read a Legalist book that he had purchased following Cui Dongshan's suggestions. This wasn't a rare or valuable book, but could be regarded as a so-called proper scripture that acted as a foundation for the three teachings and the hundred schools of thought.

Lu Tai had given Chen Ping'an some suggestions regarding the act of reading, and Chen Ping'an had committed all of these suggestions to memory. For example, one needed to read and understand a broad range of books before summarizing everything into a few common principles. One also needed to follow the clues to uncover the truth.

In terms of choosing the correct books to read, one shouldn't have the biased view that the hundred schools of thought were a hodgepodge of theories and principles with an endless sea of scriptures. In reality, even the three teachings in Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism—the most widespread teachings in the world—weren't exempt from this problem. Only fewer than fifty books in total could be regarded as genuinely beneficial to the reader. In other words, even the elderly mortals in the world could read these books in great detail and re-read them again and again.

Because of these considerations, Chen Ping'an had only chosen three Legalist books and made sure that there were no print issues that affected their contents.

Regarding the incident just then, there was one aspect of Pei Qian's reaction that pleased Chen Ping'an the most. This pertained to the notion of sincerity that Chen Ping'an had mentioned to Pei Qian after her close call with Liu Qingfeng's ox-drawn carriage.

After making a mistake, her first reaction was to sincerely apologize to the burly man.