Transmigrated into a female county magistrate during a famine, leading her country to prosperity

Chapter 1231 Yin Wencai's Treasure Box

Yin Wencai sat upright below Shen Zheng.

Shen Zheng touched the peeling paint on the chair back and said helplessly, "I heard from Xu Yunyan that the county is preparing to establish a county school?"

"Yes, yes!" Upon hearing "county school," Yin Wencai's eyes lit up instantly: "I had this idea back in the spring..."

As he spoke, Yin Wencai suddenly stood up: "Lord Shen, I'm going to the study to fetch something. Could you please wait for me for a moment?"

Shen Zheng looked wary: "Storehouse key?"

Yin Wencai was taken aback: "No, no, it's really not a warehouse key, just some small items..."

"Really?" Shen Zheng asked, still somewhat skeptical.

"I swear!" Yin Wencai raised his finger.

“Okay, go ahead.” Shen Zheng waved her hand.

Yin Wencai rushed off, and as soon as his figure disappeared into the corridor, Cui Jinyin couldn't help but ask, "Teacher, why are you so kind to this Lord Yin?"

"Good?" Shen Zheng picked up her teacup, blew on it lightly, and asked, "What's good about it?"

Cui Jinyin rested her chin on her hands and thought for a while: "It's just that... it seems you don't treat him as a subordinate, but as a friend. Your speech, tone, and actions are all very relaxed, completely different from when you're facing the officials in the government office."

"You noticed that?" Shen Zheng took a sip of tea and smiled, "Our Jinyin is quite observant."

Cui Jinyin's face flushed bright red instantly, and she immediately became shy, saying, "Teacher..."

“Because this Lord Yin is a very good official.” Shen Zheng put down her teacup, stopped teasing Cui Jinyin, and said seriously, “Don’t be fooled by his shrewd appearance; in reality, his heart is kinder than anyone else’s.”

Even now, when Shen Zheng recalls the scene last year where Yin Wencai searched for rice seeds late at night and knelt down without hesitation, she still feels heartbroken.

Honestly, she probably couldn't do that.

Over the past year, she has often thought of Yin Wencai and occasionally compared herself to him.

If Yin Wencai is a whetstone repeatedly worn down by the officialdom and worldly affairs, then she herself is a raw stone that fell from the mountaintop.

Yin Wencai's sharp edges have long been smoothed out by the years. Now he speaks with leeway and acts with tact, no longer like he did in his youth, when he would confront things head-on with impulsiveness.

Few people know that within that seemingly smooth shell, his sharp core still exists.

He always kept in mind the bottom line of being an official and never forgot his promise to the people. No matter how the world changed, his backbone never bent.

As for Shen Zheng herself, she is more like Yin Wencai, who has never experienced the "brutal blows of society," simply displaying her sharpness and toughness openly.

They may seem like two completely different types of people, but in reality... they are the same kind of people.

Seeing the unreserved admiration in Shen Zheng's eyes, Cui Jinyin couldn't help but become curious about Yin Wencai: "Teacher... could you tell us about this Lord Yin? What exactly did he do?"

Yu Nanshu also looked curious, and even Hua Duo secretly glanced at Shen Zheng.

Shen Zheng hesitated for a moment, then shook her head with a smile: "If you observe more, you will understand."

"Ah..." Yu Nanshu and Cui Jinyin were disappointed. Just as they were about to whine, footsteps came from the end of the corridor.

Yin Wencai appeared at the hall entrance carrying a worn-out wooden box: "Your humble servant has arrived. Lord Shen, you have been waiting for a long time!"

Seeing this, Shen Zheng stood up and looked at the wooden box curiously, asking, "What is this...?"

"Please wait a moment, I will open it for you to see!"

With a clatter, Yin Wencai placed the wooden box on the table, and Yu Nanshu and Cui Jinyin both leaned over and tilted their heads to examine it.

Yin Wencai carefully lifted the lid of the box, his movements as gentle as if he were protecting a fragile treasure.

And what's inside the box?

There is no key.

There is no gold or silver.

There are no jade artifacts.

Even in Cui Jinyin's eyes, none of those things were of any value—a stack of yellow hemp paper stained black with ink, and a dozen or so earthenware bowls and cups of varying sizes.

“This is…” Shen Zheng’s gaze fell on the yellow hemp paper at the bottom.

"These are all characters written by children in the county."

Yin Wencai moved gently and carefully, picking up one ceramic bowl after another and placing them lightly on the table. Then he picked up the paper at the bottom, his tone filled with undisguised pride: "Lord Shen, here you go."

A piece of yellow hemp paper with frayed edges was handed to Shen Zheng.

The handwriting on the paper was crooked and clumsy, with some characters even stuck together and difficult to decipher.

But Shen Zheng still recognized the three largest characters on the paper—"Lord Shen".

“These are the first three characters that the children in the county learned.” Yin Wencai spoke gently and moved very lightly as he flipped open the next few sheets of yellow hemp paper one by one: “You see, the children can all write these three characters.”

Looking at the three characters "Lord Shen" written on the paper in different sizes and with different strokes, Shen Zheng felt as if something soft had gently bumped into her heart, a feeling that was both bittersweet and warm.

He had thought that Yin Wencai would produce the mine's account books or the county school's regulations, but he never expected that it would be a stack of papers full of childish yet sincere writing.

Shen Zheng's gaze swept across one sheet of paper after another. On them, besides the children's repeated practice of "Master Shen," there were also some crooked and scraggly short sentences.

"I can write my name now."

—"Greetings, Lord Shen."

"Lord Yin taught me to write."

"I'm happy."

"I like writing."

"Read books, you must read books."

——“…”

The words are full of childlike innocence, and even the dark correction marks seem particularly earnest.

A slight sob, which she herself hadn't noticed, crept into Shen Zheng's voice: "These... you taught the children to write them?"

Yin Wencai ran his fingertips across the paper, shaking his head with a smile: "Not entirely. Most of the time, I'm busy with county affairs, so I don't have time to teach them. Most of them... are taught by the old scholars in the county."

As he spoke, Yin Wencai looked out of the hall, his expression filled with reminiscence: "At this time last year, very few children in the county could even recognize their own names. It was you who opened the bookstore in the county, making it affordable for the people to buy primers, and that's how the children slowly learned to write... Oh, right, and to draw too."

Yin Wencai flipped through the papers twice and then took one out of the stack.

"These are the drawings the children made last month, look..."

Vast stretches of rice paddies appeared crookedly on the paper.

Yu Nanshu and Cui Jinyin came closer, struggling to decipher the words next to the rice paddy painting: "Given by Lord Shen... what did he give? Is this a painting of a rice plant?"

“Yes, it’s rice.” Yin Wencai murmured, “The rice given by Lord Shen will yield a good harvest this year.”