Chapter 423: Return Of The Arts

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio  Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

Although it was very embarrassing, this code name, “Goddess’ Honor”…was approved, and it became the rank designation of their interstellar warships.

For this reason, that abominable alien ridiculed Mu Yunhua, and she felt really depressed.

She found that, ever since the alien appeared in her life, it really did provide her with a great deal of assistance, and, as a result, her mind became more at ease and she could feel happy.

But the side effects of its appearance were also very obvious.

She found it increasingly difficult to control her emotions, often revealing sides of herself that she had never seen before.

Embarrassment, helplessness, depression, resentment born from humiliation, and so on.

As an “elderly” person in her hundreds, with an extremely mature personality and mental state, Mu Yunhua also found her own behavior to be unbelievable sometimes. How did she become like this?

How could her face display those expressions, when she had kept up such a cold appearance on for decades? Her face had been so cold that it had seemed as if she was suffering from partial facial nerve paralysis.

In the end, all the irregularities could only be blamed on the alien.

She secretly vowed in her heart, “One day, I will teach you a harsh lesson.”

…

Another ten days passed.

Mu Yunhua continued to be busy with all kinds of things, all the time, and she never gave herself a day off.

But… she felt like the burden on her shoulders had gradually lightened as compared to before.

Her rest time in the evening increased from eight hours up to ten.

Moreover, she had a fixed resting period on every Saturday afternoon, when she was definitely not to be disturbed unless there was something so insanely important that it had to be reported to her… Hence, she had her own personal “vacation” every Saturday.

In truth, she did not want to rest at all; moreover, she did not dare to rest. It was only because the alien forced her to rest.

“You can get one point if you ‘chat’ with me for two hours every night, and you can use the points to redeem some physical formulas, mathematical theorems, and things like that from me. I have advanced scientific and technical materials that you can get too.

“If you can take half a day off during the weekend to chat with me or entertain me, you will get 10 points at once. How about it? Are you willing to earn points from me?”

The voice of the alien coming from the headset had a rather smug tone, as if this was a fun game for the alien.

Mu Yunhua was silent for a long while. Finally, she said: “This is probably not an equal exchange.” This complaint seemed to be born from some sort of concern or care for the alien.

“I don’t think it’s a loss for me. I can take up the time of a busy person like you. Out of millions to hundreds of millions of people, I alone am able to ‘buy’ time with you. It’s cool just thinking about it,” she said in a candid and open voice.

“Say…”

Mu Yunhua couldn’t help but ask, “Why are you sticking so closely to me? Is it because you lack maternal love?” The alien monopolized her for two hours a day. What exactly did it hope to achieve with this?

“No. But since I am your guardian, we should stick together for some time every day. What about it? You don’t want to? You don’t want the points as well? If so, then forget about it.”

“Yes, I want it!”

She blurted out those terrible words, and her cheeks flushed red, which quickly turned into an awkward and bitter smile, “Are you guarding me, or do you need me to accompany you?” Are you a really lonely alien?

“Your answer is right. One point from me is at least equal to one year of hard work. Thank me, for you will never again find such a good opportunity.”

“Hmm. Thank you.”

Mu Yunhua’s attitude was sincere, and she expressed her thanks with a serious demeanor.

On the other hand, this was somewhat of a surprise to Chen Jin. Thank you. This was the first time that he had heard this. This woman had a bit of a conscience.

“By the way, can you tell me your name? A simple codename is OK, too. I can’t keep calling you ‘alien,’ right?” Mu Yunhua said again, as she tried to sound out his name. After all, they could already be considered old acquaintances.

Chen Jin thought for a while and said, “Gold. you can call me ‘Gold,’ like the metal. This is my name.”

“Okay, Gold.”

When she said to the word “Gold,” Mu Yunhua’s voice became slightly smaller and a little gentle.

…

From that point forward, the exchanges between the two parties increased quite a lot.

Of course, any pair, no matter if they’re men or women, needs to find some conversation subjects during the course of communication. If there were no topic, it would be easy to fall into a situation where there was nothing to talk about.

With Mu Yunhua’s substantial history and heavy experiences, it was impossible to talk about past events. It would be too easy to touch upon some sad incidents.

They could chat about current events right then, but, at the moment, they were not optimistic. Her people were still in a huge crisis.

On the other hand, the future was vague and full of uncertainty.

Her only choice was to escape from reality and talk about things that were not relevant to reality.

“Hua, have you ever read a novel?” Chen Jin asked.

“A novel? I might have read one when I was very young. I don’t have any impression of it now.”

“Then I can recommend a few novels for you to read. After you read them, we can discuss the characters and plots of the novels.”

Chen Jin had quite a lot of hobbies and interests. Novels, games, anime, and action figurines—these countless “spiritual foods” allowed him to live through the endless years without feeling too bored. Without those “spiritual foods,” he surely would have died of boredom.

On the contrary, Mu Yunhua’s brain was only filled with various sorts of work matters and scientific knowledge. They could not find any shared topics.

Chen Jin could only recommend the electronic versions of his favorite novels to her in order to create a subject held in common.

However, after a few days, Mu Yunhua had finished reading those novels. In her discussions with Chen Jin, she actually called attention to the large number of illogical points that she had found, based on her brain’s inherently scientific way of thinking. She said apologetically, “There are too many areas of bad logic. It makes me feel like I have a fishbone stuck in my throat; I really can’t continue reading it.”

“This…”

Chen Jin’s mouth twitched. He did not even know how to start his rant.

“Since the novels are no good, I will show you a few animations.”

Not long afterward.

Chen Jin got Nuwa to send over a few highly-acclaimed classic animes for Mu Yunhua to take a look at.

This finally produced a good result.

She ultimately got engrossed with the animes, and not only watched with relish, but even shouted from time to time.

“Gold, are the people depicted here your clansmen? Their eyes are so big and their heads are generally too big as well. But most of them are very pretty and very cute. They are very funny.”

Are my clansmen anime characters?

Chen Jin really did not know how to explain things. He could only stay silent in tacit agreement.

Of course, the main issue was that the subculture of comics and anime had never risen in the history Haierfa—or perhaps they had been too much of a minority there and not very interesting, and were therefore far from their more developed counterparts on Earth.

After watching a few excellent animated works, not only was Mu Yunhua full of admiration, but she also said that they were “the most outstanding cultural art in the universe”. In addition, she was deeply moved by the elements of moe, humor, and the subjective point of view and issues surrounding anime characters who could not fit into society. She gradually got caught up in these shows and talked about them with Chen Jin every day.

It seemed as if her grooming to become an interstellar homebody was about to be completed.

…

However, on one day.

Mu Yunhua returned to her bedroom very late. She looked very worried and seemed to be at her wits’ end.

“What’s wrong? What kind of problems are you facing?” Chen Jin asked with concern.

“Nothing, it’s just a little problem.”

“You wouldn’t be so worried if it were a small problem. It’s better if you talk about it. I can give you some ideas, too.”

“Today, 13 children escaped from the Fourth Talent Academy. They were running away from foundational knowledge lessons, and had gone out of the school. Then education robots were dispatched to arrest those children who disliked learning. During the arrest—nobody expected that three of those children would rather commit suicide than return to school.”

Mu Yunhua was very distressed. “Is studying more painful than death? Don’t the children know that if they don’t study hard and accumulate enough knowledge, they will not even have the chance to resist if they meet with the enemy in the future?

“They study now so that they can be in the position to save themselves in the time to come.” She earnestly explained the good intentions behind her stance.

“I want to ask a few questions,” Chen Jin suddenly said.

“Go ahead.”

“Generally speaking, how old are those children?”

“About ten years old.”

“What are the main things they learn about in school?”

“Language, mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology…a total of five subjects.”

“What about history, geography, painting, music, sports, and other subjects?”

“History and geography are extracurricular readings. What are paintings, music, and sports? How could they waste time learning these useless things?”

“You mean that all the students in school only learn boring sciences that drain their mental energy for over 10 hours a day? All of them are training their scientific thought processes, all the time?”

“Yes, what’s the problem with that? We need countless engineers, scientists and elite warriors. These talented people must have sufficient scientific literacy and the most ideal way of thinking. Only then can they survive in this world, and only then can our civilization survive in this universe. So, they have to learn a lot of knowledge at a very young age and start to struggle with the truth.”

“A force-feeding style of teaching and learning, training by robots, and… a pure form of ideal thinking?” Chen Jin said.

“Yes, it can be explained like this.”

“Do you think that this is normal education?” Chen Jin asked.

“Of course, this is…. not very normal. What has been typical for us for the past 20 years is that, out of every 100 students, only 13 are outstanding, 25 qualified, and most of the remaining students can only vanish into the ranks of the average public. Moreover, more than five percent of the students commit suicide or suffer from a mental disorder… This is a test, a trial, and only the strong survive until the end and become a pillar of this civilization.”

“But you have thought about this? This model may be suitable when the population is small. But if the number of students that needs to be trained each year goes up to 50 million, don’t you think you will have some problems if you continue using this method of education and training?”

Currently, the population on Walf planet had exploded. The tens of millions of biological breeding cabins were producing 50 million people every year.

This population then needed to be nurtured, educated, and…managed.

The innate desires and instincts of the teenage heart could not be suppressed if the content of their studies was too boring or the management too strict. Turmoil and upheaval would easily ensue.

In short, mechanical force-feeding and pure science training was definitely not the right course.

“Then… what should I do?”

Mu Yunhua realized this problem at once.

“I do have an idea.”

“What idea?”

“Let art and its sensitivities return.”

Chen Jin continued, “If everything were rational and scientific, then the whole of society would not be too different from a robot society. Beyond basic survival, everyone would sink into a state with no desire and no ambitions. This is unhealthy for them and detrimental for the future.

“Only by adding a certain amount of art and emotional sensitivity into the mix can humans really become human.

“For example: paintings, music, novels, games, television. On the surface, these different forms of art can’t provide anything to anyone. But on a spiritual level, they can bring encouragement, sorrow, happiness, love, hate, and the other emotions that touche the heart.”

“Hence, people will be able to recognize what is beautiful and what is ugly, what is justice and what is evil… They will have the ability to distinguish between right and wrong.

“In addition, when people feel negative and depressed, pessimistic and desperate—when reason is about to be defeated by reality—sometimes, emotional sensibility can stimulate a new fighting spirit and strength, and can bring about new solutions, and even defeat despair.

“Of course, most of the time, reason is still correct. But at some point, emotional sensibility creates miracles…

“In short, you have only one form of meaning. All this can be compared to the yin and yang of the world, or the gender of men and women. Sense and sensibility are complementary and indispensable. If there is only one of them, it will cause huge problems.”

Mu Yunhua felt very confused as she listened. She thought that it sounded somewhat reasonable, but she could not tell where the reason lay. It had no sense of realness… She had been rational for decades and did not really know what emotional sensibility was.

“Why don’t you talk about a specific method or solution? This is too broad. I can’t understand.”

“How about this!”

Chen Jin thought, and then said, “Use that Fourth Talent Academy to conduct an experiment. Install a smart TV in each student dorm, and then upload an anime series called Magic Girl Philipa to these TVs. Stipulate that the students in the dorm can watch one episode of the anime if they have completed and submitted all their homework. They can’t watch it if even a single one of them doesn’t submit their homework.

“In addition, students in the dorms with outstanding academic performance on average—for example, a mean score of more than 80 points—can watch more episodes of the anime every day. After they have finished watching the entire anime, they can choose from a whole lot of other wonderful shows.

“Continue with the experiment for a month or two, and then take another look at the average scores of the students across the entire school. In the end, you can easily observe whether scores have improved or not by comparing the ‘before’ and ‘after.’ ”

“Ok, I will arrange this experiment right away.”

…

Soon.

A month later.

The average score of students in the Fourth Talent Academy increased by 3.3 points.

Moreover, there were no incidents of students escaping that month. The campus was filled with lots of laughter and joyful talk. Whenever one was walking along the streets, one could often hear the students privately discussing the anime Magic Girl Philipa.

The anime had become a phenomenon, a topic that everyone was discussing.

There were even some students who actively imitated the dialogue and the dress of the characters in the anime. One could clearly see how popular the series was.

Mu Yunhua shook her head and humbly conceded her error. She quickly lifted a series of bans and published the large amount of information on literary and artistic works that was stored in the Pangu database.

In order to cultivate the students’ courage, unity, and fraternal love, a large number of schools set up music classes, painting classes, and physical education classes, one after another. They allowed students to found associations and to hold a cultural festival every semester… A variety of enriching and interesting activities gave color to the students’ youth.

In the grown-ups’ world, all kinds of festivals and art were returning constantly.

The human settlements of the planet Walf were gradually approaching the semblance of a truly civilized society.

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