This boat has no mast, because Henry Clark doesn't know how to make one...

Fortunately, the current of the Xishui River is not swift, so sails are optional, and handling a sail is a technical skill—without several years of learning, it can't be mastered. So Henry Clark gave up on the effort to make a sail.

The boat's three trial runs all involved crossing the Xishui to the opposite bank. On the calm, rippleless Xishui, near-shore navigation wasn't difficult, but its cargo capacity far exceeded expectations.

Henry Clark roughly estimated that it could carry nearly five tons of stone. Thinking of modern flat-bottomed sand boats, which are even made of cement and can pile cargo high, transporting fifty or sixty tons at a time, Henry Clark believed that even such a simple wooden box could carry off a month's worth of the village's output in one trip.

That was enough.

By mid-morning, Henry Clark pushed the boat down the riverbank. At this time, the spring snow had melted, and the Xishui was at its highest water level. A dozen or so students cheered as they jumped onto the boat...

This was actually an extremely risky voyage: a teacher who didn't know how to handle a boat, a group of naive children, venturing into the spring stream in a lone boat, with no knowledge of the river's conditions.

The scenery was beautiful, but Henry Clark had no time to enjoy it.

Near-shore navigation is nothing like long-distance travel. The wooden boat drifted along the river, the rushing water roaring, and the boat bobbed up and down with the current. The previously calm children immediately panicked, unable to even stand steadily.

After several of them fell into the river, they realized the water wasn't deep, and the teacher was fully capable of rescuing them, which finally calmed them down... but as for handling the boat, there was no hope.

After much commotion, the boat finally hugged the shore again, drifting with the current. Only then did the children have the mood to appreciate the scenery along the bank. But by this time, Henry Clark was on the verge of tears.

Henry Clark had planned this maiden voyage as an effort to integrate with the outside world. Chengjia'ao is a village suitable for seclusion, but not for development. Coming from modern society, he knew the importance of information exchange; only by constantly communicating with the outside could Chengjia'ao truly become part of this era.

He had been in this world for three years now. For three years, he had hidden in Chengjia'ao, cautiously probing the outside world. Now, his wounds had healed, and he was eager to see the world beyond.

Though mountain life is idyllic, as revealed in "The Dream Factory," the wealthy man who missed his days as an educated youth in the countryside, after actually arriving in the village and stealing all the chickens, missed most the return to his original life.

That's exactly how Henry Clark felt now.

To this era, Henry Clark was an outsider; yet to the people of the Song Dynasty, Chengjia'ao was also an outsider to this era. So Henry Clark had to leave Chengjia'ao.

He seemed to have been a bit too hasty, hoping these mountain children would quickly become familiar with boating. Now, that seemed laughable.

The little boat struggled around one mountain bend after another. By evening, Xishui County could already be seen ahead.

Xishui was originally called Xishui, renamed "Xishui" during the Southern Liang, called Lanxi in the Tang Dynasty, and Qishui in the Song Dynasty. Henry Clark preferred to keep calling it "Xishui" because his "Hubei Map" still marked it as Xishui.

Qishui was a county-level unit under the jurisdiction of Huangzhou. Following the Xishui downstream, the river ended right at Huangzhou Prefecture. By the late Southern Song, Huai West was on the front line, so the Southern Song established the Huai West Pacification Office and built Qizhou City in Qichun, thus "Qizhou" appeared...

It was said that a famous doctor named Pang Anshi lived in Qishui County. Although Henry Clark was gradually shedding his "famous doctor" identity and often appeared as a "teacher," as the former "miracle doctor of the mountain valley," he had a natural sense of dread toward the "county doctor," afraid of being questioned about medical theory and having his true identity exposed. Therefore, he had never entered Qishui (Xishui) County before.

But now he had no choice but to enter the county, as the Xishui dock was right by the city. The children's poor boating skills had disrupted his plans, so he had to direct them to steer the boat into the dock.

As the boat approached the shore, the boatmen were all watching this strange vessel. It was long and oddly shaped, its appearance overturning the boatmen's established ideas. They couldn't imagine how such a pointed-bottomed wooden box could even float, let alone that it was being steered by a few children who clearly knew nothing about boating. Seeing the kids flustered, they couldn't help but jump into the water, wading over to help the children dock the boat.

"Hey, a bunch of kids, not even grown yet, trying to steal our jobs?" a young boatman joked. He was about to say more when he saw Henry Clark at the stern and immediately fell silent.

This man had an extraordinary bearing—clearly a scholar, not someone to be mocked lightly. After a moment, seeing that Henry Clark showed no displeasure, they fixed the boat in place while quietly asking the children, "What kind of boat is this, so strange? Who built it?"

The children's answer was full of pride: "We built it! The teacher drew the plans, and we built it ourselves!"

"Look at these kids, impressive!" the boatmen exclaimed in unison.

Henry Clark was puzzled—was this boat really that strange?