"Sensei, these are the two books I finished during my travels. Please correct them where I'm wrong."
Ethan placed two neatly bound manuscripts in front of Koushirou.
One was titled "A Detailed Guide to Swordsmanship: From Beginner to Swordmaster".
The other was "Changing the Four Seas, Starting from Small Things".
After leaving the books, Ethan excused himself. There was still training waiting for him today.
Koushirou first picked up "A Detailed Guide to Swordsmanship: From Beginner to Swordmaster" and opened it to read carefully.
The book started from the most basic details, like how to grip a sword, then step by step explained how to train at the beginner stage, what to focus on at the proficient stage, and how to find the path that led to the realm of swordmaster.
Everything was written clearly, in plain language.
This level of clarity was already unbelievable.
Sword training in Wano had long since formed a complete system, but the way things were described there was still vague and misty.
If you understood, you understood. If you didn't, you just didn't. Everything depended on "enlightenment".
Across the entire sea, there was not a single swordmaster who dared to claim they could "teach" someone to become a swordmaster.
If you asked Mihawk how he had reached that realm, he would probably say something like, "Train seriously, then seriously cut people down."
And what exactly are you supposed to learn from that?
But Ethan's book spelled everything out.
At what level you should shift your focus to the next stage.
At what level you should start changing your training methods.
It even broke down concepts like "making the heavy feel light" and "making the light feel heavy", concepts that even Koushirou had only vaguely grasped in his own sword intent, into something structured and understandable.
Someone with decent talent could, in theory, slowly train themselves into a swordmaster using this book alone.
Talent like this was downright terrifying.
Of course, the reason the book could be written like this was very simple.
Ethan's self-made "golden finger" could show him his training progress and efficiency in real time.
Comparing those numbers to his own training history made it easy to record each step.
To Ethan's mind, this book was basically just a "training log" written in a readable style.
By the time Koushirou finished the book, he felt a strange sense of clarity.
It was like suddenly realizing, "So this is how a swordmaster is made."
Letting a swordmaster see exactly how he had climbed up his own path was an incredible achievement in itself.
This book, he decided, would definitely be passed on to Kuina in the future.
Maybe it would be the key to breaking the shackles that had always weighed down women who pursued the sword.
Koushirou carefully put the manuscript away, then took up the second book.
Before opening it, he remembered how he had lost control when he'd read Ethan's earlier "action program", and how the scrolls and vases in the meditation room had suffered.
So this time, he quietly removed every hanging scroll and fragile ornament and set them aside.
Only then did he sit down, calm his breathing, and open "Changing the Four Seas, Starting from Small Things".
Most ordinary people in the Four Seas still lived in a world starved of knowledge, their thinking confined by local kingdoms and fiefdoms.
Those local powers, of course, were tightly intertwined with the World Government, forming a twisted web of shared interests.
Knowledge, meanwhile, was being quietly controlled.
It was not that the spread of knowledge was openly banned. Rather, the threshold for accessing it was raised again and again.
To break this world, one first had to break primitive, rigid thinking.
Shackles on the body were easier to smash. Shackles on the mind were much harder to remove.
So the first task was to liberate people's thinking.
To make people lift their heads, see a world they'd never seen before, and crash their old ideas against new ones.
The entry point, Ethan argued, was to break superstition. Superstitious thought was extremely popular in villages and small islands.
To uproot it, the only real solution was to vigorously develop the economy and the productivity of the villages, to genuinely help ordinary people solve practical problems in their lives, to raise their ability to deal with nature.
Only then could you erase the soil in which superstition grew.
The text was a bit dense in places, and sometimes needed the footnotes at the bottom of the page to fully understand, but it was coherent.
By the time Koushirou finished reading, his palms were damp with sweat and his spirit felt exhausted.
The book started with the mindset of common villagers, then laid out concrete ideas on how to improve village productivity and help islanders live better lives.
It even suggested practical methods to slowly cut off the way the Four Seas had become breeding grounds for pirates.
It was, quite simply, a miraculous book.
But Koushirou also knew it touched the very reverse scale of the World Government.
Following this book's guidance, the people of the Four Seas really would grow richer and more capable.
But in the process, they would also strike at the very heart of the old vested interests.
Conflict was inevitable.
Once a new class rose up on the corpse of the old world, the World Government would definitely do everything in its power to crush it.
Ever since he'd read Ethan's earlier "program of action" back in 1504, Koushirou had known that Ethan would have follow-up plans.
He just hadn't expected the "Four Seas section" to be completed so quickly.
The main reason was that the Four Seas, with their relatively stable climate and low average combat power, were very similar to Ethan's previous world.
That meant his "original blueprint" needed only small adjustments.
After personally traveling the Four Seas and constantly gathering and correcting information, Ethan had refined it further.
Once Koushirou finished the book, he hid both manuscripts away.
It was not yet time for them to appear in the world.
He glanced at Wado Ichimonji hanging on the rack and made a quiet decision.
In the days that followed, Ethan stayed in Shimotsuki Village, quietly training and sorting through his next steps.
His manuscripts needed organizing too: records of what he had seen in the Four Seas, their customs and habits, their political layouts, their power structures.
And he had to prepare a new serialized story.
After finishing "JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond Is Unbreakable", Ethan no longer wanted to keep writing this particular series.
The core ideas he wanted to spread had already spread.
He didn't feel like continuing the rest of the plot.
He planned to take a different angle and write a sea-going version of "Water Margin".
Shi Nai'an had hidden a lot of ideas inside that novel, and Ethan felt they fit this oceanic world very well.
First, "Water Margin" used a peasant uprising as its main line.
Among the 108 heroes who gathered on Liangshan, many had been forced "up the mountain" by the oppression of the feudal order.
The story also reflected the darkness of the Northern Song era, and the way the lower classes were crushed, driven to rebellion by official pressure.
Second, at the end of "Water Margin", Song Jiang accepted amnesty, but his fate showed exactly what happens to those whose stance is not firm.
He was driven to attack Fang La's landlord army in the south, losing countless comrades, and once he had served his purpose, he was rewarded with a cup of poisoned wine.
His wretched end was the fate of anyone whose faith wavered.
Third, Ethan was certain that such a book would explode in popularity.
Common people at sea, reading about heroes who were "forced onto Liangshan" by desperate circumstances, would naturally empathize.
Among pirates, the loyalty and brotherhood on Liangshan's surface would be even more appealing. At least they would learn to put on the act of being "good brothers".
As for the World Government, they were more likely to focus on the ending, where the uprising is crushed and its leader dies under imperial control.
To get such a work "past inspection", he would have to localize and transform it heavily.
Most of the 108 heroes' names would be changed into sea-themed names.
Liangshan Marsh would become "Liangshan Base".
Those heroes would be famous figures from islands all across the Four Seas.
And the power suppressing Liangshan would become a local regime in the Four Seas, rather than a direct analog for any current world power.
In that form, the story could be serialized in the papers without immediately triggering the censors.
He would adjust the language to be more universal, but keep the traditional chapter structure.
For a group ensemble novel, that format made it easier to split the story.
One hundred and eight heroes. Surely every reader would find at least one they liked.
After finishing the first few chapters and the overarching outline, Ethan mailed them to the World Economic News.
The very next day, a reply came back.
The chief editor wanted to personally meet "Mr. Adam" to discuss the contract for "Water Margin".
This manuscript had stunned the editorial team.
With a single glance, they could tell how wildly popular this story would be across the seas.
All they could see in it was money.
With Ethan's new novel, their newspaper's circulation might very well double again.
(End of Chapter)
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