The literary giants of the late Ming Dynasty began by copying books

Chapter 150 Xu Zhonglin reads the novel
Zhangzhou, Haicheng County.

In a private school, Xu Zhonglin was leaning on the desk and reading a student's article.

He stuck a folding fan behind his neck, and while reading, he shook his head and chanted in a weird voice. The students in the hall were noisy, but he didn't care at all.

With the opening of Yuegang for trade, the economy here prospered rapidly, and many businessmen suddenly became rich. After reading about food, clothing, and articles, the businessmen also wanted their children to read more books, so many private schools were opened here for a while. Many scholars have found the opportunity to sit in Yuegang.

Reading the students' articles, Xu Zhonglin looked contemptuous.

He murmured in his mouth: "What kind of bullshit is written in this? There is no literary style at all."

Xu Zhonglin is in her 40s this year. She was originally from Suzhou. Although she is just a poor scholar, Xu Zhonglin is quite proud of her talents.

He had no children and only had two daughters. Xu Zhonglin loved both of them very much and found powerful wealthy families for both of them.

Xu Zhonglin herself was just a poor scholar. In order to prevent her two daughters from being looked down upon when they came to her husband's family, Xu Zhonglin gave her two daughters generous dowries when they got married.

When his eldest daughter got married more than ten years ago, Xu Zhonglin spent all the family's wealth. By the time his second daughter got married, the family had little money left.

The second daughter cried secretly over this, for fear that she would be looked down upon by others when she married into her husband's family.

Xu Zhonglin boasted that everything would be taken care of by him.

For the next two years, he stayed at home and concentrated on writing, and then he came up with a novel called "The Romance of the Gods".

"The Romance of the Gods" shocked the whole world when it came out. Xu Zhonglin earned more than 500 taels of silver in one fell swoop, and married off her youngest daughter gracefully.

Although Xu Zhonglin could write novels, his thinking was not the material for eight-legged essays. His literary fame was famous in Suzhou, but he had no achievements in the imperial examination.

Now that his two daughters have become mothers, Xu Zhonglin has no pressure in life, and staying in Suzhou is boring, so she simply goes south to Yingguan.

This guy doesn't teach well, he just fools around with things all day long. Fortunately, his students are just a group of idle businessmen, and they can live a decent life as long as they don't ruin their reputation.

Xu Zhonglin shook his head after reading the essays written by the students. He felt that his writing of eight-legged essays was perfunctory enough, but he did not expect that his students were less enlightened than him and could not even write a pair.

Xu Zhonglin was about to punish these students to copy and recite the "Rhythm Enlightenment" that was recently published in Fujian. When she looked up, she saw that the school was already in a state of chaos.

"Look at my City-linking Sword Technique!"

"This is your fake Liancheng swordsmanship, look at my corpse-laying swordsmanship!"

Several students rolled up their books to look like sword hilts, imitating the martial arts masters selling swords on the street, and demonstrated various imaginary sword moves, making sword-fighting sounds with their mouths.

Although he was just dealing with work, it was too undisciplined in the classroom to this extent. Xu Zhonglin was furious, picked up the ruler and slapped the desk twice.

"You two, get down here quickly!"

The students who jumped on the desk were startled and quickly climbed down from the desk.

Xu Zhonglin walked forward with her hands behind her back. First, she asked the naughty students to stretch out their hands and give a few rulers to each of them, then he looked at the large roll of writing paper in the student's hand. "What is this? Show it to me!"

The student was a shameless person, and he didn't feel ashamed after being beaten. He said with a playful smile: "Sir, this is the Di newspaper from Fuzhou. There is a good-looking "Liancheng Jue" in it."

Xu Zhonglin took the big newspaper and took a look. She scanned the text and found that this was some kind of bottom newspaper. The contents of the big page were all current affairs news, and there were actually serialized novels at the back.

If other teachers were of the temperament of other teachers and found students reading this kind of thing in class, they would definitely be very angry. They would even scold "Xun Bao" for not speaking serious truths and focusing on using these interesting contents to seduce the minds of readers.

However, Xu Zhonglin's character was different from others. He felt there was nothing wrong with reading novels, but he was quite curious about this newspaper called "Xun Bao".

Xu Zhonglin was disdainful because her students praised other people's novels and said arrogantly: "It's good? What novels have you read?"

Those students knew that Mr. Xu had an eccentric temperament, so they boldly said with a smile: "I brought these newspapers from home. If you like, sir, you can read them first."

"Noisy! Come over to the podium one by one, and I will talk about the article with you."

A few naughty students stuck out their tongues and sat down.

Xu Zhonglin called all the students to the podium one by one to point out the problems with their articles, and then assigned them homework to do individually.

After finishing her perfunctory work, Xu Zhonglin crossed her legs and leaned on the back of the chair to flip through the confiscated "Xun Bao".

Xu Zhonglin's character is extremely proud. When he wrote "The Romance of the Gods", he was determined to make this book the fourth most famous book on par with "Three Kingdoms" and "Water Margin", and he also used this title when selling manuscripts.

At this time, there were four scholar's books, six scholar's books, and even the top ten scholar's books on the market. They were all titles created by booksellers who compiled the works into complete collections for easy sale.

Xu Zhonglin looked down upon many of these books, and only admitted that "Three Kingdoms", "Water Margin" and "Journey to the West" were above hers. As for "Zhong Kui's Ghost Hunt", Xu Zhonglin directly regarded it as a work of nonsense.

However, although his "Feng Shen Yan Yi" sold well on the market, it did not get the reputation he thought it deserved. Xu Zhonglin always thought that this was because the world was ignorant.

In recent years, Xu Zhonglin has also been planning his second work, but he has very high requirements for himself. He wants to write a truly shocking work, one that can keep pace with "Three Kingdoms" and "Water Margin". But Li's goal was too high, and it was extremely difficult to start writing, so Xu Zhonglin was still thinking about his outline until now.

Hearing students say that "Liancheng Jue" was very well written, Xu Zhonglin felt dissatisfied, so she directly turned to the page of "Liancheng Jue" and read it carefully.

"Liancheng Jue" has a total of 18 words, and the number of words published in each issue of "Xun Bao" is only about [-] words. It would take nearly a year to publish the entire book.

Xu Zhonglin fell into the story of "Liancheng Jue" not long after reading. She read more than 1 words of several "Xunbao" in one breath, and there was still an aftertaste in her mouth.

Xu Zhonglin was quite surprised. She got up and went to find the student and asked, "Where is the follow-up to this newspaper?"

The student said with a smile: "Sir, don't you read the date on that newspaper? This newspaper is called "Xunbao", and only one is published every ten days. Now it is just about January, and all three newspapers are here."

Xu Zhonglin was itching and yelled anxiously: "What kind of trend is this? Even if you delay writing a novel once, it won't be enough for people to read it. Since he is the author, why doesn't he write more and release it? He is very unscrupulous!"

(End of this chapter)