After choosing a name he was satisfied with, Xi Ming Dong returned to his dwelling.
The allocation of housing here was quite simple: the more animals someone hunted, the more work they did, or the more rice they cultivated, the bigger their place.
Conversely, those who contributed less had smaller accommodations. For someone like Xi Ming Dong, his place could be considered just enough for his needs.
He was still young, lacking strength and experience. While he could manage to feed himself, he still needed help during the harsh winters.
Both of his parents had passed away, but that was nothing unusual. There were countless reasons for death here, and people had grown accustomed to seeing it.
Even though he was an orphan, his life wasn't overly difficult because the community here had a strong sense of solidarity.
It wasn't that they were particularly kind-hearted, saintly, or exceptionally altruistic. They simply understood that one day they, too, would grow old and weak, and survival would depend on the younger generation.
When they were young, they helped children and the elderly. When they grew old, they could then rely on the support of the youth. Of course, the premise was surviving to old age—a rarity here.
Although the people didn't have a clear concept of age and only counted days, they often lost track over time, relying instead on observation to estimate someone's age.
By this measure, Xi Ming Dong was about ten years old, but he had no idea how many days he lived. All he knew was that he wasn't yet considered an adult.
Sitting quietly in a corner, he mumbled:
"How should I figure this out? What should the connection be between written characters and the spoken language we use every day?"
When he couldn't think of an answer, he lay down. When lying down didn't help, he rolled around restlessly.
After rolling back and forth for a long while, he sat up again—not because he had found an answer but because he heard whispers:
"Poor thing, so young and already crazy."
"He seemed normal just yesterday."
"I don't know, hopefully it's a mild illness. Otherwise, it'd be such a pity."
"Let's hope so. If not, he won't survive for long."
.....
The murmurs around him made it impossible for him to concentrate. He thought:
"Damn it, you're the crazy ones. How could you possibly understand the importance of what I'm trying to do? Whatever, I'll just go sit by the river and think. At least no one will bother me there."
With that, he stood up and left. The people around assumed he'd been acting foolish out of boredom and lost interest in him.
Here, there was no such thing as a proper house, so of course, there was no concept of private rooms.
Housing arrangements were determined mostly by verbal agreements, with no complex rules.
Ideas like personal freedom were considered nonsense to them. The more people living together, the more help they could give one another. Living alone only hastened death and offered no benefits.
Sitting by the river, Xi Ming Dong stared at the water, though it seemed as if he wasn't really looking at it.
His gaze was vacant, as if he were staring into nothingness. Suddenly, his expression changed, and he burst out laughing:
"Ha ha ha, I've figured it out! The connection between the written word and our spoken language is sound. All I need to do is find a way to represent sound systematically through written symbols. Luckily, our spoken language is rich, with many words. Otherwise, this would have been far too difficult. First, I need to analyze sound. I must uncover some kind of rule."
With that, he continued pondering. He randomly picked a word:
"Let's start with the word river. To say river, I need to speak it in two parts. Thinking further, I realize that each part has a structure consisting of two components. I'll call them vowels and consonants. But not every vowel is preceded by a consonant. This might be due to imperfections in our language. Changing the way we speak would be too troublesome and time-consuming. It's better to simply establish rules for writing."
Having found a more specific direction, he decided to start with vowels first.
This was because, from his memory, there were far fewer vowels than consonants.
He wanted to tackle the easier part first before moving on to find all the consonants.
.....
He sat there thinking until the sun began to sink behind the mountains. The task was proving to be even harder than he had imagined.
It was true that there were fewer vowels than consonants, but Xi Ming Dong was perplexed about their pronunciation.
Some words had vowels that sounded similar yet were pronounced differently.
This made it difficult for him to determine exactly which letters were vowels.
Fortunately, Xi Ming Dong was not only intelligent but also remarkably lucky.
His intelligence didn't need further emphasis, but his luck had saved him more than once.
By pure chance, he selected a vowel, and for reasons unknown, his experiments turned out to be reasonable. Thanks to this, he saved himself a considerable amount of time.
As the sky darkened, Xi Ming Dong hurried to finish his work and head back.
Being alone at night was dangerous due to limited visibility and the presence of nocturnal predators.
"Now I've identified five vowels: 'a', 'e', 'i', 'o', and 'u.' Their standalone pronunciations differ slightly when combined with other letters. Now, I need to think about how to write them."
With that, he picked up a small twig and considered what to write on the ground. After a brief pause, he inscribed a single letter - a.
Examining the letter, he evaluated it:
"Not bad. It looks fine, and it's much faster than drawing pictures. Even without practice, anyone who sees this could easily replicate it. Let's move on to the second vowel."
Picking up the twig again, Xi Ming Dong drew a few lines on the ground.
He shook his head, erased them, and started over because they didn't look quite right.
After several attempts, a new letter appeared on the ground - e. This was the second vowel he had identified.
"Next, the third one. Let's hurry so I can get back to the cave."
He fiddled around for a while, trying various shapes, but ended up crossing them all out because they didn't feel suitable.
Then, his eyes widened, and he realized what he had forgotten.
"Ah, how could I forget? The simplest shape is just a straight line! But... a plain line might be too ambiguous. Maybe I should add a little detail?"
With that thought, he poked the twig into the ground, creating a small dot above the line. The resulting shape was 'i'.