"A-Yuan, I'm going to need to take this scroll with me for the night. I can return to you and your brother the first thing in the morning, after I've copied down the information that I need in my rooms. Is that alright?" Lan Chang asked Wang Yuan, all underneath Xiao Ying's view.
Ming Cheng sat a little bit off still pleased and riding his high at getting himself an education, something that Xiao Ying had expected, even if in the original work that he wrote, Ming Cheng was sent off to school anyway with about a week's notice, when Lan Chang became hit her distress limit with the bullying.
Ming Cheng had been a studious child and had damn near memorised each and every book in the Temple library by the end of the year, quickly moving onto consuming the knowledge of the Imperial Palace's libraries, department by department, beginning with things like agriculture, before moving onto the arts of war.
The initial love for learning was borne from his hard working ethos and the belief of not being good enough, forcing Ming Cheng to want to prove himself and improve himself, all paying off later in life.
It was truly an inspirational thing, and Xiao Ying was glad that his younger self had at least managed to screw this one plot up too badly, in between the inconsistencies of what the boy knew and didn't, the generic book titles, and the, , lazy attempt of world building by having the main protagonist just read a book, instead of going outside and doing the interesting thing of exploring and learning things for himself.
It was a pity that he sucked so badly at the golden rule of 'show don't tell'.
It was a pity that his writing sucked in general.
But, at the same time, it was for the best that Xiao Ying be sent to the school and give him some reprieve of this place.
A new environment would now be open to explore, and without the pressures of bullying pushing him to spend as much time as he possibly could at that place, maybe he would finally be allowed to gain a genuine love for learning and eliminate the need for him to struggle between his desire, and need to learn more, and the crushing fear that was looming above him, represented by all the children he was surrounded by.
Ming Cheng was truly a brave and wonderful boy that deserved the world, and Xiao Ying definitely wasn't saying that out of pride or guilt in this case.
He had no fucking clue on how he had written the kid at the height of his stupidity, and now, with the power of hindsight, he knew that he should have found literally anyone else on the site to pawn the character off to, just so that Ming Cheng could have a better life.
He did not deserve the life on the streets, and to watch the little boy start to grow up and mature was doing strange things to Xiao Ying's chest.