The Tamed

Getting closer

Righteousness. The thick collection of long lists of Lan sect's rules revised by Lan Qiren. The sections Virtue and Conduct were four fifth of the whole book. Conduct was the most complicated of the twelve sections of the rules. It consisted of long ass classics and had a lot of rarely used characters. Xiao Zhan totaled; five copies of Virtue and additional ten copies of Conduct.

Geez, that Old Man Lan. I am going to paste a copy of each page in his office up to the ceiling! Maybe in his bedroom too! Maybe he would wake up from his hypocrisy.

He was not required to attend the boring Lan Qiren's classes for now but those unjust reprimand of copying rule book still would take a lot of his free time. Xiao Zhan's plans for the day were simple. He would spend half day in the library, made some copies and read some books in between break. In the afternoon, he would drag Lan Wangji to the back hill for their first training session. Practices make perfect! Or somewhere near that level.

"Over 3000 rules now. In 13 years, there'll be precisely 4019 of contradicting instructions. No wonder everyone here looked depressed." He complained to Lan Wangji who was seated at his usual table across the library. "Lan Zhan."

"What?" Lan Wangji was initially focused in duplicating ancient books. Hearing his name out of that person's mouth just squashed his concentration.

"Can you help me?" Skipping the ink and brush, he asked while writing down the characters swiftly with his recently upgraded charcoal pencil. Technically, he simply made the end pointier and made a holder to reduce the staining on his palm.

"What do you need?"

"I am having a huge problem right now." Xiao Zhan pointed at the thick book of Righteousness and puffed his cheeks, making himself look pitiful. He was a little ashamed to pull on this aegyo-kind of stuffs, but he was a little tired with the repetition of words that were currently swimming in his vision. He was so sick of it that he was willing to act the part.

An actor will never stop acting.

"...."

Somehow he managed to persuade Lan Wangji with his shameless puss-in-a-boot face to help him with his punishment. Guess Lan Wangji was weak to his face after all.

While both of them are busy replicating the horrendously tedious rules after rules like a copy machine, Xiao Zhan told the story of the modern world without being asked. "You know, from where I came from, we have a machine to do the copying."

"Machine?"

"A mechanical device to help with physical tasks. That said, there is some machines even replaced human entirely. It makes life easier so people can focus more on their other jobs." Xiao Zhan explained excitedly, "As for copying, you can get thousands of copies with few pushes of buttons. An almost perfect imitation of it. Although most people would just use their phones to scan and prefer paperless version of books."

"A book without paper?" Lan Wangji knitted his brows. It sounded so absurd in his mind that he couldn't imagine that idea in reality.

"Yes."

"How?"

"With a smartphone."

"What's that?"

Xiao Zhan happily told him everything about it, his hand moving animatedly as he talked like he was doing advertisement for a phone.

"Well, this is the power of technology." Xiao Zhan said, smiling at the confused Second Jade. "You can get everything in the palm of your hands thanks to the internet. It is a globally connected network system facilitating worldwide communication and access to data resources through a vast collection of private, public, business, academic and government networks. Hence, when you need an answer to a question, you can search for it without having to go to a library.