Huayu 05, our science fiction movie universe

Chapter 705 Rural Teacher
In the remote mountainous northwest of China, in the 80s, the spring breeze had just swept across the land, and everything seemed to be getting better. The villagers were finally able to go out to work, and the money they brought back made their lives seem a little better.

However, Li Baoku knew that this final lesson would have to be taught ahead of schedule.

He lay on the bed, weakly leaning against the wall, turning his head to look out the window. Waves of excruciating pain surged from his liver, almost causing him to faint.

Looking out the window through a small hole in the paper window, one could see the village where Li Baoku had spent his entire life.

The village lay quietly under the moonlight, filled with flat-roofed houses typical of the Loess Plateau, gray and indistinguishable from the surrounding loess mounds. Quiet, lifeless, and indifferent, it seemed as if no one had lived there a hundred years ago.

Actually, this village also has its beautiful and heartwarming moments, such as the autumn harvest, and the Lunar New Year...

But this liveliness was only temporary. After a while, the young and middle-aged people in the village went out to work, and the village suddenly lost its vitality.

Also drained of their vitality were the village's wrinkled old men, who looked like hickory nuts, and the children who stared longingly at the path leading out of the mountains.

Speaking of dolls, just then, several small, dark figures walked past Li Baoku's window.

These small, dark figures crouched down in a circle on a nearby ridge, their purpose unknown.

Li Baoku knew they were all his students; this intuition was something he had accumulated throughout his life—the keen intuition of a teacher.

Even though he couldn't see clearly, he could still recognize the children in the moonlight.

Shi Dazhu and Guo Cuihua, these two children are definitely there. They are both from the village and don't need to live at school, but he still took them in.

Alas, everyone has their own difficulties. Shi Dazhu's father and Guo Cuihua's mother are both gamblers and madmen. Fate always seems to make things difficult for the unfortunate.

And what about the remaining children from other villages? Their villages are at least ten miles away by mountain road. How can they not live at school?

In this simple rural primary school, they lived there for a whole semester. Apart from their own bedding, each of them carried a bag of rice or a bag of flour, and the dozen or so children cooked their meals in the school's large kitchen.

Well, ever since he's been spending more and more time in bed, the children have been eating at the village primary school.

However, it was still dark outside, and the children weren't cooking. On the ridge outside the window, among the group of children, a few small red sparks stood out.

He knew the children were burning incense and praying for themselves; they had done this many times before, perhaps learning it from their parents.

This time, however, he no longer had the strength to rebuke them for their superstition as he had before.

He devoted his entire life to igniting the flame of science and civilization in the hearts of the children, but he understood that compared to the ignorance and superstition that shrouded this remote mountain village, the flame of science was so weak, as weak as a candle in a classroom on a winter night in the deep mountains.

Looking at the red dots that appeared and disappeared in the darkness, Li Baoku's vision blurred, and in the blur, he vaguely saw his own short life.

Alas, everyone has their own destiny. As a junior high school student in the 70s, he could have had a better future. He had already been assigned to a factory in the town.

But he made his own choice to return to the village because a large part of his life was given to him by another village teacher, who also spent his childhood in the village primary school where he now teaches.

Li Baoku's parents died early, and this simple rural primary school was his home. His primary school teacher treated him like his own son. Although life was poor, his childhood was not lacking in love.

Unfortunately, during that winter vacation, they encountered two wolves on their way home. In order to protect him, the teacher eventually died on the way to the town hospital.

He still remembers the anxious concern in his teacher's eyes in the torchlight. Li Baoku understood that concern, remembered it, and inherited it.

So after graduating from junior high school, he gave up the opportunity to work in the town and returned to the rural primary school that his teachers cared about.

At this time, due to the land redistribution, the village school had no teachers and had been abandoned for several years.

However, he rebuilt the school and carried batches of children on his shoulders.

His idea was simple: whether the children left the mountains or stayed in them, their lives would always be different from those of children who had never attended school.

It's important to know that the mountainous region where he lives is one of the poorest areas in the country. However, poverty is not the most terrible thing; what is most terrible is the numbness of the people here to their current situation due to ignorance and lack of knowledge.

The ignorant things were so numerous that they could be talked about for days and nights without end. Thinking of this, he let out a long breath, feeling suffocated by the ignorance and despair that enveloped his hometown.

Fortunately, the children are still young, so there is still hope for them.

Li Baoku recalled the children's eyes staring at the blackboard in the cold classroom on a winter night. Although the candlelight was dim and yellow, the children's eyes were always bright, filled with a thirst for knowledge.

So he made candles, no matter how long they burned or how bright the light they emitted, he could at least teach the children some knowledge, and he finally fulfilled his promise to the teacher, burning them from beginning to end.

Outside the window, at the edge of the distant mountains, the sky was beginning to lighten. Li Baoku finally got through the night in unbearable pain.

All the children were gathered around him at the bedside. One child held a chipped porcelain bowl filled with a yellow and green paste, and the air smelled of grain.

"Teacher, take a break. You can teach it tomorrow," said Shi Dazhu, who was tall and strong.

Li Baoku gave a wry smile, "I have class tomorrow."

That's what he said, but his intuition told him that he probably couldn't do it.

Li Baoku made a gesture, and a child placed a small blackboard on the sheet in front of his chest. This is how he taught for the last month.

But when he took the half-chopped piece of chalk with his weak hand and laboriously placed the chalk tip on the blackboard, another sharp pain struck, causing his hand to tremble a few times. The chalk tapped a few white dots on the blackboard, and he couldn't write a single word.

He was too weak. A few months ago, he went to the provincial capital, and his health deteriorated after he returned. The doctor told him that he had a tumor, which could be benign or malignant, but in any case, the treatment would require a lot of money.

Li Baoku had no money. The school's maintenance, daily supplies, and the children's occasional extra meals...

As for tuition fees, Li Baoku can't even remember how many kids he's paid for their tuition.

So after returning from the provincial capital, he never went to the hospital again, nor did he think about it, until his liver started to hurt, followed by his stomach, and the pain became more and more severe.

Li Baoku reached under his pillow and pulled out a packet of painkillers. He put the pills in his mouth, which seemed to make him feel a little better, but his weakness made him give up trying to write on the blackboard.

At that moment, low sobs could be heard from among the children around them.

Li Baoku waved his hand weakly, a painful smile tugging at his face. He began to speak, his voice very soft.

"Today's class is the same as the previous two days, it's a junior high school class."

This isn't part of the curriculum, but I thought that most of you probably won't hear a junior high school lesson in your lifetime, so I'll talk about it one last time to let you know what a slightly deeper level of learning is like. Yesterday we talked about Lu Xun's "Diary of a Madman." Whether you understand it or not, you should read it often; you'll understand it when you grow up..."

He paused to catch his breath, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw the sky outside the window had brightened a bit, turning from pitch black to deep blue. With his last bit of strength, Li Baoku continued speaking.

"Today we're going to talk about junior high school physics. Physics is very profound; it explains the principles of the material world."

In physics, there are Newton's three laws of motion, and Newton is...

"Now let's talk about the first law: When an object is not acted upon by an external force, it will remain at rest or in uniform motion in a straight line."

The children watched him silently in the candlelight, without reacting, but Li Baoku's voice didn't stop, even though his breathing was already like a bellows, he still repeated it over and over again:
"Action and reaction forces are equal in magnitude and opposite in direction."

"An object will remain in uniform linear motion or at rest when it is not subjected to any force."

Li Baoku's speech became faster and faster, but his voice became softer and softer. He was extremely anxious and tried his best to tell the children as much as possible in the limited time.

"The acceleration of an object is directly proportional to the force acting on it and inversely proportional to its mass..."

He was amazed at how clear his mind was and how quick his thinking was; he knew this was what was known as a final burst of energy before death.

The excruciating pain subsided, and his body no longer felt heavy, but now all he wanted was to transfer as much knowledge as possible from his mind to the children around him as quickly as possible, but he knew it was too late.

Did you understand?

Li Baoku asked anxiously. He could no longer see the children around him, but he could still hear their voices.

"We understand! Teacher, you should rest now!"

He felt like a candle that was about to burn out, the last flame fading away.

"I know you don't understand, but if you memorize it, you'll gradually understand it later."

The acceleration of an object is directly proportional to the force acting on it and inversely proportional to its mass.

"Teacher, we really understand now, please, you can rest now!"

With his last breath, he shouted, "Carry me!"

The children gathered around Li Baoku's bed, sobbing as they recited the text:

"The acceleration of an object is directly proportional to the force acting on it and inversely proportional to its mass."

The acceleration of an object is directly proportional to the force acting on it and inversely proportional to its mass…

The thoughts that originated from the brilliant minds that turned to dust in Europe hundreds of years ago echoed in the most remote mountain villages of 20th-century China in the thick Northwestern accent of a child's voice. It was in this voice that the candle went out.

"So, did those memorized Newton's three laws of motion ultimately come into play?"

"Who knows? It probably does have some effect, though."

The specially designed commercial vehicle travels on the asphalt road in the northwestern mountainous area. Although it is a mountainous area, China's rural road construction project has already covered this area.

"Anyway, I later successfully went to junior high school, then high school, but I didn't go to university. I went straight into the army, stayed there for a few years, and then transferred to civilian life and became a criminal police officer."

Shi Qiang snapped out of his reverie and looked at the scenery outside the car window, which seemed quite novel to him.

"I haven't been back for a long time either."

Ye Wenjie sat opposite him, her expression indifferent, seemingly unmoved by Shi Qiang's story.

Shi Qiang didn't care about this and drove the car into the mountains. Soon, at the end of the road, a village located in the mountains appeared in front of everyone.

The village is not backward. The houses in the village seem to have been renovated, and there is a large playground in the center of the village. The only problem is that the village is not very lively. You can rarely see villagers, and even if you do, most of them are elderly.

Shi Qiang didn't take Ye Wenjie into the village. Instead, he went around the edge of the village to a hillside behind it. There was a platform there, and on the platform was a locked primary school. On the open ground next to the school, there was a person and a small grave.

"Dr. Ding!"

For the first time, Ye Wenjie's face showed surprise. Standing in front of the grave was Dr. Ding Yi, the most sought-after and well-known scientist in China today.

The macro fusion engine he developed has become the key to humanity's entry into the interstellar space age.

The ETO organization had planned several attacks against him, but he was lucky enough to evade them all. This became one of the things the ETO organization regretted the most, second only to failing to completely win over or control Chen Ang.

"I didn't expect you to arrive before me."

Shi Qiang walked up to Ding Yi very naturally, his tone conveying an indescribable familiarity, clearly indicating that they had known each other for many years.

Through the gap between them, Ye Wenjie saw the inscription on the tombstone.

The Tomb of My Respected Teacher, Li Baoku

After offering incense and burning paper money for the teacher, Shi Qiang led Ding Yi to Ye Wenjie and said with a smile:
"Newton's three laws of motion are of little use to me, but among our group, there was one person who was able to put the knowledge taught by the teacher into practice."

He pointed at Ding Yi, then sighed and looked at the rural primary school next to him, whose gate was already locked.

"Before the teacher passed away, what he was always worried about was the school and us. He was always worried that after he was gone, the two remaining teachers would also leave, and the small school that he had worked so hard to build throughout his life would stop like the stone mill in the threshing ground."

Fortunately, those two teachers held on until we were admitted to middle school.

Of course, he probably never imagined, and no one will ever know, that this nameless rural teacher, and many more equally unsung rural teachers, used their lives to build a bridge called "knowledge" between the universe and the dust of the world.

This bridge not only allowed the village children to see the world beyond the mountains, but also gave the entire Earth's civilization the possibility of continuing to exist when a crisis comes.

Of course, you might think I'm trying to move you with the story of the teacher, but unfortunately, selfish as you are, you're not worthy of being compared to Teacher Li.

(End of this chapter)