Hmm, actually, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the person across from me is freakishly strong. Although in this era, ancient people who had just come through the Ice Age were indeed more cold-resistant than modern people, the bigger reason was that the ancient climate was much warmer than today. It’s said that the earth’s climate began to cool starting from the Song Dynasty; after the Song, the four seasons became distinct, and plants like lotus roots, plum trees, and bamboo, which originally grew in the north, began to spread southward.

　　In this era, most Westerners actually dressed even more simply than the Chinese. For example, around the Mediterranean, many people just wrapped a piece of cloth around themselves, and the Spartans seemed not even to know the word “clothes”—they were just a bunch of men “wearing big shorts”...

　　The other person’s question still echoed in my ears. After a long while, I realized that this grave-mourning Ethan Brooks was still repeatedly asking me the same question: “You came from the mountains, just came out? Haven’t seen anyone else?”

　　I nodded, and subconsciously replied in modern language, “So it’s the Spring and Autumn period, some year after Duke Jing of Jin—what does that mean? People from the Spring and Autumn period aren’t easy to get along with, right... Oh my god, how am I going to survive?”

　　What kind of era is the Spring and Autumn period? In “On Passing Qin,” it’s said to be a time when “thirty-six rulers were assassinated, fifty-two states perished, and the number of feudal lords who fled and couldn’t protect their altars is countless.”

　　Some say it was also the most brilliant era, with more than half of all Chinese idioms originating from this period, and Chinese culture in the following millennia was just a repeated echo of the discourses of a few great thinkers from the Spring and Autumn period.

　　This was the era when Confucius, Laozi, Mozi, and Guan Zhong lived.

　　Hmm? Were Confucius, Mozi, and Laozi born yet? That’s a question.

　　I tried hard to recall some vague historical knowledge: Hmm, at this time, Archimedes should have already established the system of physics, maybe for hundreds of years by now. So, the mechanics, optics, and other content we learned in middle school physics should have been perfected.

　　Ah, Plato’s philosophical system should also be complete. And the economics established by Plato’s disciple Xenophon, as well as the logic he built on the foundation of Greek rhetoric, should also be finished... Also, trigonometric functions and the concept of calculus have been born. As for chemistry, its system had already appeared a thousand years ago, but the formal name would have to wait until Alexander the Great was born to be finalized...

　　I desperately tried to recall some memories about the Spring and Autumn period, but couldn’t remember the exact years of those major events. Maybe what I remembered just now wasn’t accurate... At the time, as William Carter, I didn’t realize how absurd my historical knowledge was—this era was far more primitive than I imagined. Those famous Greek historical figures I remembered—their great-grandfathers hadn’t even been born yet.

　　At this moment, I heard the other person ask again, “Young master, which country did you originally live in?”

　　Suddenly, it all made sense to me—this is the Spring and Autumn period, an era where communication basically relied on shouting and transportation on walking. In this era, information exchange was mostly by word of mouth. If you didn’t hear about something, you might never know it happened or ended in your whole life. The “thirty-six rulers assassinated, fifty-two states perished” mentioned in the history books means: this was an era of countless small states; it also means: the language and writing of the time were very chaotic.

　　Ah, in that case, this is the best era for time travelers to hide. Because information exchange was so poor, people living in this era had no way of knowing how people lived even five li away. So, even if someone’s attire was bizarre and their language strange, it wouldn’t arouse suspicion—because they had no idea what the outside world was like.

　　What is time travel, anyway? I remember there was a discussion about it on the forum, and one poster once mentioned the deeds of the “suspected time traveler” Brian Cooper—that Brian Cooper, also known as Lu Ban, was hailed as the “ancestor of carpenters.” In the Spring and Autumn period, he made a bird that could fly, and after his father rode this wooden bird, he flew from the State of Lu to the State of Wu.

　　If this account is true, then Brian Cooper had already built a human-powered, wooden glider capable of flying a thousand li in the Spring and Autumn period. He might have been a typical time traveler... What happened to his father next reflected the fate that most time travelers might face—after getting off the wooden bird, Brian Cooper’s father was burned alive by the local people as a “demon.”

　　Countless time travelers have thrown themselves into the past, but because they didn’t fit in, most were burned on the spot by the ancients as if they were firewood. Only those sly and cunning time travelers managed to survive—they slipped quietly into the crowd like invaders sneaking into a village, blending in with the masses and doing their best to merge with the era, barely surviving...

　　So, the first rule of time travel is: never let yourself look unlike an ancient person.

　　A time traveler who doesn’t look like an ancient person is just firewood for the ancients.

　　Thinking of this, I calmly cupped my hands, trying my best to imitate the posture of the ancients, and replied, “A pleasure to meet you, a pleasure. I traveled through the whole mountain, and I don’t know how long I stayed there. That’s why I wanted to ask you, but I didn’t expect that the years you mentioned aren’t the ones we use to record time, so I can’t figure out exactly how many years I spent in the mountains.”