NOVEL NEXT
Chapter 181
It turns out that Lady Qian was a technician from the future year 2155.
At that time, she and her colleagues at the research base jointly developed the world's first time-travel machine.
As its creator, she was also the first human test subject for this time machine.
The experiment proved successful, as she indeed traveled through time to the parallel universe where she now resides.
However, due to the machine being a prototype and not fully mature, a malfunction occurred, causing her to be stranded in this parallel timeline.
They had miscalculated, failing to anticipate that an ordinary human body could not withstand the compression generated during time travel.
(I don't understand the technical aspects, so I'm making this part up. Just take it with a grain of salt.)
After discovering she was stranded and unable to return, Lady Qian quickly noticed unusual reactions in her body.
Even using all the special medications she had brought with her proved ineffective. In just a few days, her life force had reached its limit.
She thought she would die in this foreign land, but to her surprise, when she opened her eyes again, she had become a wailing newborn baby in this world.
Specifically, she was reborn as the sister of the mother of the Princess Consort of Nanyang.
Moreover, she retained all the memories of her previous life.
And so she grew up in this world until she came of age, witnessing our dynasty's decline and near defeat by enemy countries.
In her previous life, she had been a dedicated scientific researcher serving her country.
Her lifelong belief was to do her utmost to serve the nation. Seeing this situation, she naturally couldn't stand idly by, which is why she helped improve and advance weapons for the court, manufacturing artillery and firearms.
As for the writing system, it was an unintentional act on her part.
As is well known, the family she was born into was a centuries-old scholarly household.
As a child of such a lineage, she naturally had to be well-versed in all the refined arts from a young age.
It was during her childhood that she carelessly used the modern script she knew from her previous life to write a poem and left it in her room.
Due to an accident, this poem was seen by her grandfather, who was none other than the Imperial Teacher of the previous dynasty, and thus it was revealed.
At that time, with the evidence right there, she couldn't hide it.
She could only say that she had seen this script in ancient texts, thought it looked beautiful, and so had written a copy to admire in her room.
Unexpectedly, her grandfather became quite interested and said he wanted to see the ancient texts, which of course she couldn't produce.
So she could only make up a story, saying she had seen it somewhere by chance and now couldn't find it again.
She thought her grandfather would let it go, but to her surprise, he remained fascinated and asked her how much she remembered and if she could teach him.
She said she only remembered one or two hundred characters, not many.
After all, he was her elder, and one who had always been very kind to her.
And since he repeatedly asked her to teach him, she had no choice but to teach him all the one or two hundred characters she claimed to remember.
But unexpectedly, her grandfather was also an extraordinary person. Based on what she taught him, he actually created many other characters similar to modern simplified Chinese on his own.
He even directly changed his own writing to this style.
It was because of this that the simplified characters were spread and became commonly used throughout the court as they are now.
If she had known at the time that all this would have such serious consequences, she would certainly not have made such a big mistake.
"When I first started making weapons and such, everything was normal, but when I began researching gunpowder, the memories that were once deeply etched in my mind suddenly disappeared."
"Even though all the materials were prepared, I had no idea how to proceed."
"Later I realized that I had committed a grave error by creating things that shouldn't have appeared for several more years, disrupting the original trajectory of this world."
"And your departure was my punishment."
Even now, she vividly remembers the voice that appeared in her mind when Luo Ge disappeared before her eyes, and what it said:
[Body from another world, I spare your life in this world and grant you an opportunity out of consideration for your deep merits and good deeds in your previous life.
But you should never have tried to alter the world's trajectory.
If you had succeeded, do you know how significant the impact would have been?]
[If things that should have come later appeared early, do you know what would become of the lives that were supposed to appear in those intervening years?]
[Everything in the world has its predestined order.]
Although it was discovered and stopped in time, preventing a major error, the improved weapons alone had caused no small impact. A dynasty that should have disappeared in ten years had its fate extended by a hundred years.
Conversely, the opposing dynasty had its lifespan shortened by several decades.
[Although it was done with good intentions, a mistake is still a mistake.]
Being separated from her flesh and blood across two worlds for over twenty years was her punishment.