It is a pleasure to receive an invitation from the Military Science and Technology Press to make some revisions to my memoirs.

In fact, I was surprised that my first two editions of the book would have been so well received. According to the statistics of the "Reader's Daily", there are countless memoirs on the market today, but most of them are published by the author at his own expense and then treasured by himself. Of course, I don't mean to look down on the author of the dead book, but I want to say that I feel very honored to have my memoirs published for the third time in a row.

The first edition of this book was written by me from my own memories and from my diary from the past few decades. However, I wasn't ready to be a best-selling author in the beginning, so it was inevitable that my writing would be a bit haphazard, vague in some details that needed to be considered, and even missing. On the other hand, I was on the ship returning from Europe at the time, and the only I could find was a few diaries I had written during my years in Europe, and the only information I could find was the magazines on the ship with a considerable interval of time. Under the influence of various factors, the first edition of "Li Ruchu's Memoirs" is indeed not a qualified autobiography.

The second edition of the memoir was written two years after the first edition. Here I would like to thank editor Qiao Mu, who gave me many suggestions, including but not limited to how to accurately describe some things without excessive pen and ink consumption. In fact, I still have the correspondence we exchanged at that time.

The second edition was completed in the autumn of 1663, when I was working in Chang'an and had already sent my diary back from Qingsong Manor. Coupled with the fact that I was able to easily find materials in the National Library, the second edition of the memoir can be said to have made great progress, adding and correcting many details that had not been accurately described before. I would also like to thank the friends who wrote to me during the writing of the second edition of my memoirs to point out my shortcomings, and I hope that you will continue to point out my mistakes and spur me forward.

In the winter of 1665, editor Qiao Mu wrote to me that the publishing house was about to publish my memoirs for the third time, and hoped that I would find time to revise them.

I agreed.

After the Spring Festival of 1666, I officially retired from the Ministry of Defense and became a consultant with a very free time. I was finally able to concentrate on perfecting my memoir.

Dear readers, the third edition of my memoirs should be my last edition, at least the last edition I personally authored, after all, I am already an old man in my early 60s, and my physical condition does not allow me to spend more than ten hours a day on my desk as I did ten years ago.

Therefore, in this edition I have tried my best to strive for perfection and reduce the number of mistakes to a minimum. At the same time, according to the "Regulations on Information Declassification of the Republic of Australia and the Song Dynasty" implemented last year, I changed some of the characters whose names were hidden or used pseudonyms in the previous two editions to their original names.

At the same time, I added some events that were not allowed to be made public before, recorded in chronological order in the memoirs, so the plot of the book is quite different from the old version.

According to the "Regulations", the characters who are still under secrecy or others, I still use pseudonyms, and these pseudonyms are the same as the old version, and readers and friends need not worry.

Addendum: The manuscript of this book has been verified by the relevant departments of the Republican Intelligence Service and confirmed that it is ready for public publication, and the relevant receipts are inserted on the back page in the form of an appendix.

In addition, in order to provide readers with a better reading experience, this book only contains the story of my visit to the Ministry of Defense in 1629 and beyond. My experience before 1630 can be read in the old edition, and I will not repeat it in this book.

On the other hand, the so-called "time-traveling" or "rebirth" novels, which have become more popular among young people this year, I personally like them, and I also think that they are theoretically possible. However, I have heard some rumors to the effect that the princes of the Senate are all time-travelers or reborn, because only in this way can we explain why we have been able to invent so many objects that are ahead of our time, put forward so many ideas, and have a very precise judgment of the general trend of history. Even this fallacy extended to me.

Here, I would like to make it clear and responsible that these assertions are utter nonsense, utterly absurd and implausible. First of all, what virtue do I have to compare with the princes of the Senate? This is first and foremost an affront to the elders who have made a tremendous and indelible contribution to the development of the Republic.

Secondly, although the patriarchs' backgrounds are secret, is my identity also secret? Am I not a baby born on a manor in Thanh Song Town, Dongning City, Eastern Province? If I had been the unlucky person who had been robbed of my body by a soul from the future or from another world, wouldn't my parents and classmates be able to discover my anomaly? This is undoubtedly impossible.

Thirdly, the senators of the Senate were all strategists, inventors, politicians, and thinkers with a vision beyond ordinary people. We know that "the sages of the ancients must have teachers", but the Chinese Confucius also said, "Those who are born to know are also superior". This shows that in the distant Spring and Autumn Period, Confucius had met or heard of people who were born to know. Now, thousands of years later, is it theoretically impossible to have hundreds of born knowers in our great republic?

Naturally, the appearance of five hundred born knowers at a time is indeed very small in terms of probability. However, we must respect the laws of this world. So far, our human cognition of the world still has very big limitations, and we think that the probability of this is very small, so small that it is unscientific, but that is only what we think. What about in the vast universe? Maybe it's bigger, but it just didn't happen in our previous history. After all, the history of mankind is too insignificant for the history of the universe as we know it.

For those who still think this is impossible, I hope that everyone will put aside their arguments and wait for the answers of people in the future. A lot of things, which we currently think are impossible, are precisely true. For example, the theory of evolution, which is about to be included in middle school biology textbooks, was first proposed, and it was believed that humans were related to monkeys, or even that people evolved from monkeys would be ridiculed by the public as the descendants of Monkey King. But now, as more and more fossils are found in Africa, aren't there more and more people supporting the theory of evolution? For example, isn't the so-called "maximum principle of the speed of light" published by the patriarchs in the journal Science now confirmed by increasingly accurate measurements of the speed of light?

So, young people, you are too young, too naïve, and you need to think more and learn more. I would also like to advise some media not to always want to make a big news, isn't it good for everyone to honestly do some objective and fair news? Why do you have to engage in all those bells and whistles gimmicks to deceive the reader's energy?

Ahem, there are too many words for a while, and people are like this when they are old, and they are easy to lose concentration.

All in all, this book will be published in mid-1666 and everyone is welcome to read it.

Li Ruchu

May 26, 1666

At home in the Green Pine Manor