Graduate student Li Yi has revised eight drafts of his thesis and has yet to pass it.
The instructor said: "What you write is like looking at a fish in the water through a glass. You can see everything, but you can't touch it."
One day, he died and traveled through time.
When he opened his eyes again, he turned into a fourteen-year-old boy from the Western Zhou Dynasty, squatting on a piece of grass, holding a sharp stone in his hand.
The system said: "Collect 305 folk songs, regardless of dynasty, time and space. Points can be exchanged for spicy strips."
Li Yi was silent for three seconds and asked, "What about my thesis?"
The system said: "After writing the ballad, you can naturally finish writing the paper."
So he started...
Squatting on the edge of the hunting ground and engraving "Playing Song", lying behind the field ridge to write "Song of Attacking the Soil", listening to the blind old man singing until he shed tears, and watching the girl picking mulberry singing to the boy "My heart is so happy for you, but you don't know it".
He has been caught, beaten, and imprisoned in a cell. He has also been kneeled down, worshiped, and regarded as a savior.
He thought he could go back after collecting 305 poems, but the system said again: "Next stop, Spring and Autumn."
Then came the Warring States, Qin and Han, Wei, Jin, Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties...
He walked from the wilderness of the Western Zhou Dynasty to the mulberry forests of the Spring and Autumn Period, from the marketplace of the Han Dynasty to Chang'an of the Tang Dynasty. Every generation has songs waiting for him, and every generation has voices that need to be left behind.
He lived a long time.
It took so long that the carving knife in his hand changed from a sharpening stone to a stylus, from a stylus to a writing brush, from a writing brush to a fountain pen, and finally to a voice-to-text APP.
It took so long that he changed from a mud-legged boy who no one knew, to a shadow that lives forever in those songs.
Then one day, he stood on the podium of a modern university, opened a book of The Book of Songs, and said to the students in the audience:
"I have listened to the original version of these poems for you."
The whole classroom was quiet for three seconds.
A girl raised her hand: "Teacher, are you telling a joke?"
Li Yi smiled and didn't answer.
He looked down at his hands - the calluses he had developed when he was fourteen had long since disappeared, but he knew they were still there, hidden in invisible places, like the songs carved into his bones.
"Listen carefully to the lecture," he said, "Today we will talk about "National Style"."
Purpose: Practice brings true knowledge