Lin Wanwan stared at the “Composite Celestial Phenomena Transmigration Hypothesis” on her computer screen for a long time.
The blood moon.
A meteor shower.
Twin moons.
Year of birth.
She had organized every condition into a spreadsheet, even drawing all the arrows and flowcharts with painstaking clarity.
The theory was more or less complete for now.
But the real problem she needed to face had only just begun.
What if she really did transmigrate a month from now?
Lin Wanwan lowered her head and looked at the phone on her desk.
It contained the astronomical data she had researched, the statistical results from Novel Ninety-Nine, and all kinds of survival knowledge she had yet to organize.
There was even more data on her computer.
Excel spreadsheets.
Flowcharts.
Bookmarks.
Notes.
She had even just downloaded a guide to observing a total lunar eclipse.
But transmigrators in novels usually didn't bring their phones with them.
Even if she somehow did take it along, there might not be any signal.
No signal would at least leave her able to read offline data. The most serious problem was that there would be no power.
There were no outlets in ancient times.
No portable chargers, either.
And no convenience store where she could buy a charging cable in a pinch.
She couldn't exactly transmigrate and then wander around the Prince's residence holding a phone with only twelve percent battery left, asking which artisan knew how to repair a charger.
Besides, once an item that far surpassed its era was seen by others, it usually wouldn't receive a reasonable explanation.
If she was lucky, they might take it for some strange Western artifact.
If she was unlucky, they might take it for a demonic object.
If things went even worse, she and her phone might both end up tied to a pyre.
Looking at her phone, Lin Wanwan realized for the first time how unreliable modern technology was.
Not because it wasn't useful.
But because once it was separated from electricity, its lifespan was simply too short.
That meant all genuinely important information couldn't be stored only on electronic devices.
Lin Wanwan immediately stood up and walked to the bookcase in the corner of the room.
She remembered buying quite a few notebooks in the past.
Some because the covers looked nice.
Some because the paper felt wonderful to the touch.
And there were a few she had bought, solemnly written two pages in, and never opened again.
After searching for a while, she finally found a blank notebook as thick as a dictionary.
It had a dark brown hardcover.
The pages inside were slightly yellow.
It wasn't large, but it had a full four hundred pages.
It was heavy in her hand.
And it had substance.
Most importantly, it didn't need to be charged.
Lin Wanwan placed the notebook on the desk, then took a black marker from the drawer.
She had originally planned to start writing right away.
But when the tip nearly touched the cover, she stopped.
This wasn't an ordinary notebook.
It might be the only modern database she could take with her after transmigrating.
The name couldn't be too casual.
“Ancient Survival Guide” sounded like a camping manual.
“Everything a Transmigrated Female Lead Needs” sounded too much like an online article.
“Lin Wanwan's Otherworld Survival Plan” sounded like she was preparing to compete on some kind of survival reality show.
She thought for a long time. In the end, she wrote, one careful stroke at a time, in the center of the cover: Before Transmigration: A Preparation Manual.
After finishing, she held the notebook farther away to look at it.
The writing was neat.
The title was clear enough, too.
If she unfortunately lost her memory after transmigrating, she would at least know what she had been busy with before transmigration as soon as she saw the cover.
Lin Wanwan added her name in the lower-right corner.
Then, after thinking for a moment, she wrote “First Edition” beside it.
This theory might still be revised in the future.
The research materials would continue to increase as well.
Using “First Edition” was more in line with the publishing process.
Although at present, the author, editor, proofreader, reader, and sole beneficiary of the entire manual were all her.
Still, the proper formatting mattered.
Lin Wanwan opened to the first page.
A whole sheet of blank paper appeared before her.
She didn't put pen to paper immediately. Instead, she turned around and looked at the data table for Novel Ninety-Nine.
If she really was going to prepare for transmigration, there were far too many things she needed to learn.
She couldn't simply write down whatever came to mind.
She had to sort everything into categories first.
She opened a new worksheet and typed in the first row: “Categories of Essential Transmigration Abilities.”
First category: literature and the arts.
Second category: survival and food.
Third category: medicine and physical self-preservation.
Fourth category: agriculture and crafts.
Fifth category: commercial skills.
Sixth category: ancient etiquette and interpersonal relationships.
Seventh category: palace intrigue and political judgment.
When she finished entering the seventh category, Lin Wanwan stared at the spreadsheet and fell silent for a moment.
Before transmigrating, a normal person should probably worry about food and lodging first.
She had already included palace intrigue among the essential abilities.
But when she thought about it carefully, she couldn't really be blamed.
Among the ninety-nine novels, there weren't that many female leads who transmigrated into ordinary commoners.
More often, they opened their eyes either in a prince's residence or in the inner palace.
They were either daughters born to concubines or discarded consorts.
There was always someone preparing to poison them or frame them.
One female lead had even just woken up with a murder weapon in her hand and a corpse lying at her feet.
Compared with situations like those, learning palace intrigue first wasn't exactly borrowing trouble.
It was merely risk management.
Lin Wanwan began entering, one by one, the abilities the female leads had used in those ninety-nine novels into their respective categories.
Playing the qin.
Writing poetry.
Dancing.
Embroidery.
Cooking.
Brewing wine.
Making salt.
Making sugar.
Making soap.
Blowing glass.
Identifying medicinal herbs.
Treating wounds.
Preserving food.
Farming.
Raising chickens.
Opening a restaurant.
Doing arithmetic.
Keeping accounts.
Negotiating.
Reading people's expressions.
Identifying ranks in the inner palace.
Remembering the relationships among members of the imperial family.
Telling the difference between a smile hiding a knife and a genuine smile.
Lin Wanwan had added the last item herself.
Far too many people in novels smiled as they called the female lead “little sister,” then turned around and prepared to harm her.
That ability might be more important than making salt.
After all, salt couldn't actively kill anyone.
People could.
She had originally wanted to write down “midwifery” as well.
But before the pen touched the paper, she stopped again.
Why would she learn midwifery?
She was preparing to transmigrate, not preparing to become a midwife.
What she really needed to learn was how to avoid being killed during childbirth by the midwife delivering her.
In transmigration novels, once a female lead became a prince's consort, the Empress, or a concubine in the inner palace, pregnancy was usually more than just a joyous occasion.
Someone would tamper with her pregnancy-preserving medicine.
Someone would bribe the midwife.
Someone would deliberately delay the delivery.
And someone else might take advantage of the female lead's pain and confusion to tell everyone that they could save only either the mother or the child.
The problem was that at that point, the female lead usually didn't even know what was happening to her.
Lin Wanwan immediately deleted “midwifery” and replaced it with: pregnancy and childbirth self-preservation.
Then she added a note afterward: Identify difficult labor, postpartum hemorrhage, abnormal fetal position, and ways a midwife might tamper with the delivery.
After thinking about it, she added another sentence: Before having a baby, investigate the midwife's family for three generations.
She might not need this item for the time being.
But what if the original owner was already pregnant when she transmigrated?
There were even cases where a novel's female lead opened her eyes to find herself lying in a coffin.
Opening her eyes in a delivery room wasn't entirely impossible, either.
Lin Wanwan drew a star beside “pregnancy and childbirth self-preservation.”
Not because she especially wanted to have children.
But because if she really encountered such a situation, this knowledge might directly determine whether she lived long enough to see the next chapter.
The spreadsheet quickly expanded to more than forty rows.
Lin Wanwan scrolled down once, then again.
She still hadn't reached the bottom.
She had originally thought she only needed to prepare a few skills that could help her make money in ancient times.
Now it seemed that becoming a qualified transmigrator wasn't as simple as learning one or two recipes.
She needed to know how to write.
How to do arithmetic.
How to perform first aid.
How to farm.
How to cook.
Ideally, she should also know how to brew wine.
Because if she transmigrated as a peasant girl, cooking could keep her alive.
If she transmigrated as a maidservant, cooking might get her transferred to the small kitchen so she wouldn't have to spend all day being punished in the courtyard.
If she transmigrated as a young heiress, a table of never-before-seen dishes might make her whole family see her in a new light.
If she became a prince's consort or the Empress, occasionally making a dish with her own hands might even earn her a line like, “She truly treats me differently from everyone else.”
As for brewing wine, its uses were even broader.
She could sell it for money.
She could give it as a gift.
She could open a restaurant.
If the alcohol content was high enough, she might even be able to use it to clean wounds.
But she needed to research that last point carefully first.
She couldn't believe that all alcohol could disinfect just because a novel's female lead poured wine onto a wound and the injured person could wield a sword on the battlefield the next day.
She certainly couldn't pour sweet rice wine into a wound and then expect it to work a miracle.
Lin Wanwan marked “brewing wine” with: highly practical, but distinguish drinking alcohol from disinfectant alcohol.
Then she wrote after “cooking”:
Prioritize learning dishes that use simple ingredients, keep well, and don't depend on modern seasonings.
Cola chicken wings were out for now.
Tomato-and-egg stir-fry might not be reliable, either.
She had no idea what era she would transmigrate into, or whether tomatoes even existed there.
The truly dependable methods would be steaming, boiling, stewing, pickling, and the most basic kinds of noodles and other flour-based foods.
If necessary, she would also have to learn how to cook rice without a gas stove, rice cooker, or timer, rather than burning it into a pot of crust.
Looking at the ability chart, Lin Wanwan finally understood how difficult the “Renaissance Woman” in the title really was.
This wasn't preparing to transmigrate.
This was preparing to rebuild civilization single-handedly.
She leaned back in her chair and sat quietly for a few seconds.
Thirty days.
She had only thirty days left.
It was impossible to learn everything.
She had to set priorities.
Lin Wanwan reopened the novel statistics table and added a new column: “Abilities Most Frequently Used by Female Leads.”
She quickly skimmed through all ninety-nine novels again.
Whenever a female lead relied on modern knowledge to turn her fortunes around, she made a mark.
Making salt appeared eight times.
Medicine appeared eleven times.
Brewing wine appeared twelve times.
Commerce appeared fourteen times.
Cooking appeared sixteen times.
Writing poetry appeared twenty-seven times.
Lin Wanwan stared at the last number.
Twenty-seven times.
The top-ranked skill wasn't medicine.
It wasn't making salt.
And it wasn't cooking.
It was reciting poetry from memory.
The result wasn't actually surprising.
As long as a transmigrated female lead attended a banquet, poetry gathering, flower-viewing party, or palace banquet, someone would always suddenly suggest composing a poem.
Then the people who had looked down on her would deliberately call on her by name, trying to make her humiliate herself in front of everyone.
The female lead would first pretend to be troubled.
Then she would look up at the moon, peach blossoms, plum blossoms, a wine cup, or a waterfall.
Finally, she would recite a timeless masterpiece.
The entire banquet would be stunned.
The talented young men would be dazed.
The Prince would cast a sidelong glance.
The emperor would be delighted.
The people who had mocked her moments earlier would usually turn green, then pale.
There were practically no exceptions to the process.
Low cost.
Fast results.
No equipment required.
No raw materials, either.
As long as her memory was good enough, she could use it anytime, anywhere.
It was far more convenient than making salt.
Making salt required saltwater, a pot, fire, and a place to work.
Reciting poetry required only a mouth.
The risk of failure was relatively low, too.
If she made salt badly, people might call her a fraud.
If she prescribed the wrong medicine, she might kill someone outright.
If her wine went bad, an entire vat might be ruined.
If the proportions in gunpowder were wrong, she would be the first person blown up.
If she recited a poem with one or two wrong characters, at worst a genuine scholar would realize that her level of education was questionable.
As long as she didn't transmigrate into the Tang or Song dynasty, the original author herself usually wouldn't jump out and sue her for plagiarism.
Lin Wanwan immediately added three levels beside the ability chart.
Must learn.
Practical skills.
Dangerous skills.
Tang poetry, Song lyrics, basic arithmetic, cooking, basic medicine, and ancient etiquette went into Must Learn.
Making salt, brewing wine, soap, food preservation, farming, and keeping accounts went under Practical Skills.
She hesitated over glassmaking and temporarily moved it to the back.
She only knew that glass required high temperatures.
As for how high, what the proportions of the raw materials were, and what kind of furnace to use, she had no idea.
In novels, whenever a female lead said, “I can make glass,” the artisans automatically filled in every difficult step.
Reality probably wouldn't be so cooperative.
Last was gunpowder.
Lin Wanwan glanced at the basic principles, then immediately closed the page.
This skill was indeed incredibly powerful.
It could be used to open mines.
It could be used to manufacture weapons.
It might even change warfare.
It could just as easily get her locked up by the emperor for life because she possessed military secrets.
Or she could be captured by an enemy state.
Or she could blow up her own house before she even managed to make it successfully.
She marked gunpowder in red and dragged it into Dangerous Skills.
In the notes column, she wrote: Do not study for now.
After thinking about it, she added: Easy way to get beheaded.
Lin Wanwan copied the categories into her notebook.
At the very top of the first page, she wrote “Must Learn.”
Below it, in order, were Tang poetry, Song lyrics, arithmetic, cooking, basic medicine, and ancient etiquette.
The second section was “Practical Skills.”
Making salt, brewing wine, soap, food preservation, agriculture, and basic bookkeeping.
The third section was “Dangerous Skills.”
Gunpowder.
Weapons.
Poisons.
Taking part in a succession struggle.
When she reached the last item, the tip of her pen paused.
Taking part in a succession struggle didn't count as a skill.
But it was dangerous enough to deserve a separate warning.
Novel heroines always thought they merely wanted to live a peaceful life, only to inexplicably fall in love with a prince and get dragged into the struggle for the throne.
Lin Wanwan decided to write a warning for her future self first: Stay away from princes.
After writing it, she felt that this might not necessarily be achievable.
What if her identity after transmigration was a prince's consort?
She had no choice but to add: Unless already married.
That was more realistic.
Once the categories were complete, the direction of the entire Before Transmigration: A Preparation Manual gradually became clear.
It wasn't only meant to record knowledge.
It also needed to record ways to respond to different identities.
What to do if she became a peasant girl.
What to do if she became a young heiress.
What to do if she became a maidservant.
And what to do if she became a consort.
Ideally, she should also prepare a checklist for after waking up.
First, confirm that she was still alive.
Second, confirm that her body wasn't injured.
Third, don't shout out random names the moment she opened her eyes.
Fourth, listen to how the people around her addressed her.
Fifth, say as little as possible until she understood her identity.
All of these were important.
But they weren't the first item.
The first item in the manual had to be the most basic, most frequently used, and easiest thing to start carrying out among all her preparations.
Lin Wanwan looked over the novel statistics again.
Twenty-seven female leads had changed their circumstances by writing poetry.
Some had earned the emperor's favor because of it.
Some had cleared their names as useless fools.
Some had even made a fiancé who was originally planning to break off their engagement regret it after reciting a single poem.
Knowledge was power.
In ancient times, someone else's knowledge could directly become her own power.
She didn't need to invent anything.
She didn't need to experiment.
She only needed to memorize it.
And since she had decided to memorize poetry, she couldn't learn only the most common few.
Memorizing only “Thoughts on a Silent Night” was too dangerous.
What if the topic at the banquet wasn't the moon?
“Spring Dawn” wouldn't be enough, either.
What if she happened to transmigrate in winter? She couldn't stare at the snow covering the courtyard, stand up, and recite “In spring sleep, unaware of dawn.”
A truly professional transmigrator had to prepare different verses for different situations.
Spring, summer, autumn, and winter.
Mountains, rivers, wind, and moonlight.
Parting.
Homesickness.
Drinking.
War.
Love.
Disappointment.
Ideally, she would even have a poem that perfectly matched her mood if she were banished to the Cold Palace.
Lin Wanwan turned to the first page of the notebook.
She picked up her pen, her expression solemn enough to suggest she was signing a contract that would change her life.
Then, as the first item in Before Transmigration: A Preparation Manual, she wrote: Memorize the Three Hundred Tang Poems.
Part Five | The End