Thin smoke wafted upwards, ash fell continuously in the dark and cramped cell, outside the golden grapevine window, a hand opened the cover of the incense burner. It removed the burnt-out incense and replaced it with freshly crushed incense powder, the room's heavy sandalwood scent was replaced with a light salty aroma.
The heavy curtain fell, behind it was a layer of gauze curtains. The high-altitude sunlight broke through the obstructions, falling on the black-haired man who was burning incense.
He was wearing the soft undergarment inside his dark blue armor, a shiny golden helmet was placed beside him, a magic wand was propped up next to the door, which almost knocked him when the door was pushed open.
Walking in was Strange, wearing a white silk high-collared shirt and a deep teal-colored 'Chuba'. The hem and cuffs were embroidered with clusters of Marigold and a belt inlaid with Ba beads was also tied around his waist.
"Are you taking a break, Loki?" Strange took a step back and leaned half his body in to ask.
"I just came back from Asgard and am preparing my lesson. Whatever it is, come in and talk."
Strange walked in, still holding a large stack of papers. He sat across Loki, who remarked upon seeing his attire, "Has the village's traditional festival come again?"
"Yes, today is the New Year's Eve of the Tibetan calendar, the Supreme Magician needs to hold the cham dance for four villages." Strange picked up the teapot from the table, poured hot tea, took a generous gulp and exhaled heavily.
"This outfit suits you." Loki spoke sincerely, "Blue suits you better."
"It's good I didn't bring my cloak, it wouldn't appreciate hearing that." Strange said with a smile.
"You seem to be in a good mood." Loki also turned his tea bowl over and poured himself half a bowl of tea.
"Because the village had a good harvest this year, there are 32 newborns, which breaks the record of the past decade. Also, two college students returned."
"Before coming here, I imagined Kamar-Taj barely interacts with ordinary people." Loki recalled, "I thought you were a transcendent organization."
"A very realistic point is, what do we eat." Strange tapped the table, looking at Loki, "We need time to study and practice magic. The mages can farm when they have time, but it's impossible to spend all our time farming. Plus, if we are to train, we need to consume a lot of protein from meat, and grazing cannot be done on the mountain."
"The village supports you, and you help the villagers." Loki leaned slightly, elbow propped up on the knee, "It reminds me of the very, very early history of Asgard when we celebrated traditional festivals with the villagers along the coast each time we landed."
"As a matter of fact, we are the villagers. You can consider the surrounding villages as a tribe, and we're the tribal leaders and shamans who help them maintain unity and adapt to the climate. The Tibetan translation of Supreme Magician is 'Great Shaman'."
Strange took out an oil-paper bag from his waist and handed it to Loki, saying, "These are buttered pastries, a kind of snack to go with the tea, made by the village elders, there are also barley cakes and barley wine. But to prevent the children from stealing it, I left them downstairs."
Loki opened the oil-paper bag, to reveal indeed, one pastry after another. Most of them weren't beautifully made, the edges were a bit rough, crumbs were falling all over, but as soon as he opened it, a sweet smell of butter pastry filled the air.
"How did you manage to get past those starving wolves in the dormitory with these?" Loki took one and put it in his mouth, "Last time I brought two cinnamon rolls from home, when I took them out, they were in their stomachs within two seconds."
"Their hunger is always intense when they are growing." Strange began to rummage in the bag again, "The bounty of the harvest this year was more than enough to feed the villagers, and they have decided to hold a feast. I thought of taking the children, but they can't just get all this without putting in some work."
Loki laughed, "I imagine you still remember their thesis clearly; I told you not to read it."
Strange rubbed his forehead, recalling a disaster day when he decided to check the Little Wizards' homework, particularly those aged 12 to 16. Children younger or older don't need to write papers.
As expected, Strange received many modernly written, lively and varied essays.
Although Strange can't be considered a master theorist and hasn't been studying magic for long, his expertise in surgical medicine is highly accomplished. Before becoming a surgeon, he was also a highly distinguished student in medical school; if not for his extraordinary talent in surgery, he could become an excellent physician. Writing papers would naturally be easy for him.
However, the previous Supreme Magicians, particularly the Ancient One, and her generation of Grand Mages, mostly first discovered the path to success through practice before teaching their students through words and actions. There was a lack of systematic teaching basis, leading to older children who had studied with them for several years to not even know what written homework was.
After Strange took over, he required them to combine theory and practice like most ordinary school students, at least spend half a day studying magical theoretical knowledge. Older children also need to study economics, sociology, and finance, and have daily essay homework.
Although Strange made such arrangements, he didn't have much time to check, and most middle level educators were pureblood mages who came to the mountains when they were young, most of whom hadn't experienced this kind of teaching, so after collecting the homework, they would glance at it and, as long as it made sense, let it pass hastily.
So when Strange checked, they had already accumulated a pile of odd-shaped papers full of writing. When Strange read them, he used more archaeology skills than magic knowledge.
This brings us to the biggest problem in Kamar-Taj education - they do not use a unified language and writing system.
Since Kamar-Taj is established on the Himalayan Mountains, the students are mostly from three countries: China, India, and Nepal.
Chinese students use Mandarin and Tibetan, Indian students use Hindi and English, Nepalese students use Nepali and Newari dialect.
Most of the magic theory at Kamar-Taj requires students to master Classical Chinese, Sanskrit, and Persian.
The kids who go to the mountains aren't very old. They learn many languages and remember a lot of specialist terms that can't be accurately described in their language system by chatting with their fellow students and teachers. They creatively use them in their writing.
Strange saw most of the papers mixed with traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese, Devanagari, and Tibetan.
Strange is a quintessential American who only knew 26 English letters in the first half of his life. Any of these scripts seemed like hieroglyphs to him. When they were mixed together, coupled with the children's wild style, made Strange consider hiring a code-breaking expert multiple times.
"That's indeed a big problem." Loki said, "As far as I know, most of the teachers here are much more knowledgeable than us, they master at least five languages and scripts, and can answer all the children's questions."
"But they also mix complicated languages at will." Strange took another sip of tea and said, "We must establish a sufficiently standard educational system, which generally can only be based on 1~2 languages."
"So what do you think they should be?"
"The Ancient One thinks it should be Chinese, because most of the magic theory knowledge she understood was written in this language. Magic history composed of ancient scripts like Jinwen, Clerical Script, and Small Seal Script, is recorded on some ancient cliffs and stone tablets."
"But we cannot give up on English." Loki spread his hands and said, "There are many students from other countries. As far as I know, English is the easiest language to learn."
Strange waved his hand and said, "This has nothing to do with what language we want."
Then he finally pulled out a stack of papers from the bag and said, "The most important thing is actually the teacher, and the thing that makes me happy is that I just found out that some teachers will come from the big cities in China in a few days."
"What are they coming here for?" Loki asked with some doubts.
"To help the village make money." Strange flipped through the papers in his hand and said, "At least that's what I read from these things. They think the village here is a bit poor. They hope the villagers can make more money, so they come here to help them."
Loki took the stuff from Strange's hand. In fact, he also had a vague understanding of Chinese, struggling to recall the almost-forgotten knowledge in his mind, barely understanding some of the meanings.
"Are they going to build a school here?"
"I heard they've built a lot, but none of them were this remote. This time they seem to be planning a big event, and there are traffic designers, railway workers, satellite base station staff, teachers, and officials coming."
Loki frowned and thought for a while, then said, "Are they planning to actually control this place? Do you think this is a good thing?"
Strange looked at Loki slightly contemptuously and said, "Don't tell me, you sit quietly here and meditate because you like it. Do you know how fast the internet is in the nearest city to here?"
"Are they going to connect this place to the internet?!" Loki exclaimed in surprise, "Good Lord! Here is halfway up the Himalayan Mountains! Where on earth do they want to get the internet to? Asgard?"
Strange adjusted his position excitingly, beating his somewhat numb legs and said, "I asked the Grand Mage from the Hong Kong Temple, yes, they are planning to introduce satellite signals here all the way to the other side of the mountain."
"But that's not the best news, the good news is that they seem to be discontent with railways and plan to establish a high-speed air transportation system across the entire Himalayas, completely eliminating airplanes and ships."
"Ahem, ahem, ahem....."
Loki coughed for a while and said, "Are they planning to build a high-speed train that crosses the entire Himalayan Mountains? Over our heads?!!"
"Correct." Strange rubbed his hands and said, "I've discussed with the village head, if we propose together, maybe we can get a station on the mountain next to us, just for mages and villagers' transportation. It would take about ten minutes to get to the nearest town, and only three hours to get to Chengdu."
"So what's the condition?"
"We teach in Chinese and help the four villages nearby to earn a lot of money."
Strange stared at Loki and said, "This is why I came to find you, help me think of a way."
"You've found the wrong person." Loki took a sip of tea and said, "This issue should be handled by Shiller, shouldn't it?"
"He's busy with a banquet, did you get an invitation?"