Hearing Chu Wuyuan’s challenge, Yun Che quickly asked in his mind, “Sister Zijun, how should we respond?”
“Accept it.”
Li Zijun’s consciousness remained calm, but a sly ripple stirred in her heart:
“Although I am not skilled in poetry and lyrics, I have read widely.
Besides… don’t I still have you?”
“Me?” Yun Che froze in his mind. “Sister Zijun, you really want me to do it?
But I can’t write poetry…”
“I don’t believe you.” Li Zijun’s voice carried a rare teasing edge. “I just want to test you.
Besides your deep attainments in calligraphy, you always humble yourself and say your knowledge is shallow, but…”
She paused, then grew serious. “I have always felt that you hide far more than that.
How could someone who could write such spirit-script have no depth in his heart?
Today, I want to see your true ability.”
Yun Che smiled wryly in his mind. Li Zijun was determined to probe him to the bottom.
So be it.
“All right…” he finally replied helplessly, and then his thoughts shifted, turning that helplessness into a bit of youthful pride. “I was planning to keep a low profile, but my strength just wouldn’t allow it.”
The Three Hundred Tang Poems… if you can’t compose poetry, you can still recite poetry. The treasures engraved into his blood from his past life were finally going to bloom in this other world.
Wasn’t the theme “Life Choices”?
Yun Che’s thoughts raced. After a brief silence, he had it… a poem by Li Bai, the Poet Immortal.
He walked back to the writing desk and picked up the purple-bamboo wolf-hair brush.
This time, he did not write immediately, but instead closed his eyes.
Inside and outside Mingde Hall, hundreds of pairs of eyes focused on him. The incense stick burned quietly as time ticked by second by second.
A trace of satisfaction flashed through Chu Wuyuan’s eyes… so this woman surnamed Li had been stumped and needed time to think hard.
However, the next moment…
Yun Che suddenly opened his eyes!
In those clear eyes, it seemed as if rivers of stars had reversed and the seas were surging forward!
An indescribably bold and heroic air burst forth from around him!
It was not the gentle refinement of a Confucian scholar, but rather…
“Do you not see…”
The moment he chanted the first line, his voice rang like a great bell and bronze drum, shaking loose the dust on the rafters!
At the same time, the brush tip fell, and the ink traces moved like dragons and serpents across the xuan paper, bursting open in a spray!
“The waters of the Yellow River come from heaven, racing to the sea and never returning!”
As soon as the words “Yellow River” appeared… boom!
From the distant horizon, the true sound of surging waves seemed to faintly ring out!
It was not an illusion; everyone present heard it!
It was the mighty sound of rivers roaring and ten thousand streams flowing home to the sea!
Chu Wuyuan’s expression changed dramatically.
Yun Che’s brush tip did not stop, and his voice grew even more impassioned:
“Do you not see… before the mirror in the grand hall, one grieves over white hair; in the morning black silk, by evening it turns to snow!”
The moment the words “white hair” were completed, the light around the podium suddenly dimmed and brightened, as if time itself were flashing and turning over in an instant!
Several older elders even unconsciously touched their temples, a sense of desolation rising in their hearts.
But that desolation lasted only an instant before being shattered by an even more vast presence…
“When life brings success, one must enjoy it to the fullest, and never let a golden cup stand empty before the moon!”
The brush tip danced wildly, and the ink dripped richly! Each character seemed ready to break through the paper and fly out!
“Heaven gave me talent for a purpose; though a thousand pieces of gold are spent, they will come back again!”
The instant the four words “Heaven gave me talent” were finished…
Buzz… !
The entire Mingde Hall shook violently! It was not an earthquake, but a resonance born from the Dao itself!
The roof tiles rattled, and the beams groaned under the strain!
Outside the door, the magnolia tree suddenly moved on its own without any wind, and its petals scattered like snow!
By this point in the poem, strange phenomena from heaven and earth had already appeared!
Outside the hall, the clouds churned like the sea, and sunlight pierced through the gaps, casting beams of golden radiance that bathed Mingde Hall in a sacred glow!
Birds flew in from all directions, circling above the roof as their cries merged into a strange rhythm!
Yun Che’s brush tip turned, and the poem shifted from wild abandon into profound philosophical reflection:
…
“Since ancient times, the sages and worthies have all been lonely, and only drinkers have left their names behind!”
…
Loneliness belonged to the sages, while drinkers left their names… what kind of reversal, what kind of arrogance, and yet what kind of line that struck straight at the heart in this “Life Choices”!
Then came the most shocking final line of the entire poem:
“I will share this eternal sorrow with you!!!”
The final stroke of the character “sorrow” stretched out like a sword cutting through the long sky!
Boom… !!!
Boom… !!!
That was not thunder, but a far greater and more ancient “Dao sound” that exploded from the Nine Heavens above!
At that moment, every cultivator in Cloud Deer Academy felt something in their hearts and, almost at the same time, looked toward Mingde Hall!
Inside Mingde Hall, the strange phenomena erupted one after another…
First came the light.
Outside the window, the originally clear sky had its clouds stirred madly by an invisible hand, whirling and gathering in a frenzy.
Then golden radiance poured down like a waterfall and rain from the Nine Heavens, streaming through Mingde Hall’s lattices and roof gaps and painting the entire hall, inside and out, in brilliant splendor!
The students were enveloped by the golden light and felt warm all over, while the spiritual power within them actually began to circulate faster on its own; some disciples who had been stuck at bottlenecks even felt the barriers in their cultivation level loosen faintly!
“This, this is… scholarly qi infusion?!” a white-haired elder cried out in a trembling voice, his old eyes widening, “A heavenly blessing said to appear only when sages write scriptures or when a poem is completed and subdues the world?!”
Before the words had even faded, a second phenomenon followed immediately…
Sound.
The world rang with the resonance of myriad sounds!
From far away, faint praises rose from the heroic spirits of the forefathers of the Confucian school through the ages!
Those were the lingering remnants of forefathers long dead, awakened into resonance by this poem!
The third phenomenon: golden lotuses gushed forth from the earth!
On the bluestone floor of Mingde Hall Square, without warning, lotuses formed from golden scholarly qi burst up from the stone and bloomed upright and beautiful!
As the lotuses swayed, they released a refreshing fragrance that cleared the mind and purified the spirit, leaving anyone who smelled it feeling mentally refreshed and their spiritual platform bright and clear!
“Golden lotuses gushing from the earth… this is a Great Dao manifestation!” the dean said excitedly, his beard trembling wildly as he fell to his knees with a thud and kowtowed toward the podium.
“How could these disciples… how could they be worthy to witness ‘a poem completed and a sage manifested’ with their own eyes!”
The fourth phenomenon: the characters turned into spirit-script!
On the writing desk, the poem manuscript that was still wet with ink now had every character bursting with dazzling radiance!
The ink seemed to come alive, flowing and rising on the paper, and each character actually broke free from the page and floated in the air!
The entire poem had become spiritually animated, forming a breathtaking scroll in the air!
The reaction inside and outside the hall had already become almost frenzied…
“I… my bottleneck broke through!
I’d been stuck at the ninth level of Qi Refining for three years, and after the golden light just now, I actually broke through to Foundation Establishment!” A young student slumped to the ground, laughing and crying at once.
“I’ve understood! I’ve understood! ‘When life brings success, one must enjoy it’… I’d been cultivating too rigidly before and lost my original heart!
Only now do I understand that the Dao follows nature, and it should have this kind of heroic spirit!” An elder looked almost deranged, waving his arms and legs.
Beside the podium, the round-faced female disciple Lin Wan’er was already in tears, clutching her senior sister’s hand tightly as she babbled incoherently, “Senior sister…”
“Senior sister, did you see that… so amazing… Miss Li is so amazing…”
Her senior sister’s eyes were also red, and she nodded hard, unable to say a single word.
At the entrance of the hall, Chu Wuyuan’s reaction was the most miserable…
When the first wave of golden light descended, she could still barely stand.
When the second resonance of myriad sounds rang out, her face had already gone as white as paper.
When the characters on earth turned into spirit-script, her whole body began to tremble uncontrollably.
When she heard the dean shout “a poem completed and a sage manifested” and saw the students all frozen dumbstruck, she finally could not hold on any longer and staggered backward, her back crashing hard against the door frame.
“Impossible… impossible…” Her lips trembled, and her eyes were full of despair. “A single poem… how could it… how could it provoke such…”
She suddenly looked at the spirit-script poem floating in the air, then at the moon-white figure on the podium, bathed in golden light and as divine as a god-sage.
The gap.
A gap as vast as the heavens.
She had spent thirty years studying poetry and lyrics, and she prided herself on having peerless talent, yet at this moment, all her pride, in the face of this poem, was as tiny as dust!
No, it was not even as good as dust!
This was a timeless sacred poem that could found a sect of his own and guard the literary fortune!
It was a pinnacle work worthy of being written into the history of the Confucian school and admired by countless generations to come!
And she, Chu Wuyuan, had actually foolishly challenged the author of this poem and questioned whether he understood the Great Dao of poetry and lyrics?
Ridiculous.
Utterly ridiculous!
“Pfft… !”
Her emotions surged violently and her qi ran chaotically; she could no longer suppress it and spat out a mouthful of fresh blood!
She did not dare remain any longer, nor did she dare look at anyone else again. With her last bit of strength, she turned and stumbled out of Mingde Hall, disappearing into the depths of the courtyard bathed in golden light.
Her back looked as pitiful as a stray dog.