The ink spread.
Ten characters leaped onto the paper.
The handwriting was plain and neat, even carrying a hint of unfamiliarity.
This was the result of Xu Qinghuan spending every day practicing calligraphy in the study of the Marquis of Changping's estate since arriving in the capital.
However, since she had only been practicing for a short time, she naturally could not produce the masterful strokes of renowned calligraphers.
It was worth it.
Xu Zijin stood half a step beside Xu Qinghuan. Looking at those ten neat characters, he actually read a profound weight that made his soul tremble.
Zhao Xuan craned his neck, looking at those ten characters.
His heart, which had been hanging in his throat, suddenly fell back into his stomach after seeing clearly the unremarkable handwriting and the sentences of uneven length.
What followed was a burst of wild ecstasy.
"Absurd!" Zhao Xuan pointed at the red sandalwood desk, his voice so sharp it cracked slightly, sounding exceptionally harsh in this muggy waterside pavilion. "What is this thing! Ten characters forming a sentence? The rules of the Great Qian literary circles dictate five or seven characters per line, quatrains, and regulated verses. Where are there such sentences of uneven length!"
He turned his head abruptly, wildly waving the gold-flecked folding fan in his hand in the air, trying to rally support.
"Everyone, look closely! These ten characters do not follow the tonal patterns, do not match in antithesis, and don't even have the most basic rhyme!"
"This is not a poem at all! This is the nonsense of a rustic village woman! She is trying to fool the Grand Chancellor and Elder Gu!"
"That's right! What kind of poem is this!"
"It's simply a disgrace to the refined arts! Throw her out!"
The clamor boiled over again, almost lifting the roof off the waterside pavilion.
Xu Qinghuan didn't even bat an eyelid.
"I haven't even finished writing, what are you all yelling about?"
The cicadas outside were still noisy, and Zhao Xuan's exasperated curses were right in her ears.
Her wrist didn't pause in the slightest, continuing to glide across the paper.
The tip of the brush rubbed against the paper surface, making a rustling sound.
Twelve characters were seen, completed in one breath. Without any sloppiness:
Thinking of the endlessness of heaven and earth, I am alone, sorrowful, and my tears fall.
Twenty-two characters were neatly arranged on the rice paper.
With a twist of her wrist, Xu Qinghuan casually rested the weasel-hair brush, still stained with ink, on the red sandalwood brush rest.
She straightened her back, moving her gaze away from the rice paper, and coldly swept over the flushed faces full of mockery and anger before her.
"Looking back, I do not see the ancients; looking ahead, I do not see those to come."
At this moment, Xu Zijin couldn't help but speak. There was no rhythmic chanting, no pretentious head-shaking.
He merely softly called out this masterpiece.
"Thinking of the endlessness of heaven and earth, I am alone, sorrowful, and my tears fall."
The twenty-two characters were calmly recited out loud.
The voice floated along the hot wind of the waterside pavilion, crossed the pier, drowned out the cicadas, pierced through the air, and reached everyone's ears.
Zhao Xuan had just opened his mouth, preparing to continue bringing out the metrical rules from the Great Qian legal commentaries to make a fuss, but his voice suddenly broke off, stuck in his throat.
Inside and outside the waterside pavilion, by the pier, over five hundred imperial students and failed scholars suddenly lost their voices.
The surrounding clamor disappeared.
Only the muffled sound of water waves slapping against the wooden pillars remained.
Kong Zongyun stood on the steps, his eyes full of shock upon hearing these twenty-two characters.
He took a step forward. Then a second step, a third step.
He walked very hurriedly, his steps stumbling, even forgetting to lean on the purple bamboo cane in his hand.
Gu Zongming followed closely behind, taking two strides to reach the red sandalwood desk, standing beside Kong Zongyun.
The two old men, whose combined ages were nearly one hundred and fifty, the leading authorities of the Great Qian literary circles, were now staring at the neat handwriting on the rice paper.
Smack.
Kong Zongyun's right hand completely let go, and the purple bamboo cane, which symbolized his status as the Grand Chancellor of the Imperial Academy and which even the Emperor had specially permitted him to bring to the imperial court, lost its support. It smashed heavily onto the bluestone slabs and rolled twice.
He didn't even spare it a glance.
Gu Zongming reached out his right hand, his withered fingers hovering an inch above the paper, slowly moving downwards along the strokes of the characters for "endlessness of heaven and earth." The old man's fingertips trembled uncontrollably.
Kong Zongyun was a man of deep calculation. He had sat in the position of Grand Chancellor of the Imperial Academy for ten years.
Over these ten years, he had watched Xu Jie's disciples and former subordinates monopolize the imperial court, and watched as decadent writings filled the imperial examination halls.
The Great Qian literary circles had been dominated by Xu Jie and his group of veteran cabinet ministers for too long. They followed the ornate and decadent poetic style of the Six Dynasties, filling pages with effeminate tones and piled-up rhetoric, a bunch of spineless works. As the Grand Chancellor, he held the title of the upright faction in vain, finding it very difficult to completely overpower the cabinet in terms of literary style.
But now, the sharpest blade had been delivered into his hands. He needed a hammer to smash Xu Jie's literary foundation.
Xu Qinghuan's poem was that hammer. Not only did he need to praise it, but he needed to praise it to the heavens, elevating this poem to the status of a bible in the Great Qian literary circles.
In this way, the poetic style revered by Xu Jie and his cronies would be completely reduced to an inferior status, reviving the literary style of his Kong family: "When substance eclipses refinement, it is rustic; when refinement eclipses substance, it is pedantic."
"Excellent... what an excellent 'Looking back, I do not see the ancients'!"
Kong Zongyun suddenly raised his volume, his aged voice carrying a frenzied excitement as it exploded above the waterside pavilion.
"Since the founding of our nation, the Great Qian literary circles have followed the old ways of the previous dynasty, full of romantic nonsense and baseless groaning in decadent tones! The piled-up rhetoric and heavy effeminate tones are nauseating!"
He turned around, his sharp gaze sweeping over the crowd of dead-silent scholars below.
"You cling to those tonal patterns and metrical rules as if they were imperial decrees every day. Among the things you write, which line has any backbone? Which line has flesh and blood?"
Kong Zongyun pointed at the rice paper on the desk, tapping his finger forcefully.
"Look at these twenty-two characters! The strokes are vigorous, the artistic conception is profound! Not half a word is written about sorrow, yet every single word is dripping with blood!"
"How does this not completely sweep away a century of weak and decadent atmosphere in the literary circles!"
"This is the first spring thunder of the Great Qian literary circles!"
He directly defined the nature of this poem, using his authority as the Grand Chancellor of the Imperial Academy to push it onto the highest altar of the Great Qian literary circles, conveniently delivering a vicious slap to the face of the cabinet's civil official faction.
However, the actual effect would still depend on how they capitalized on the momentum in the future.
Gu Zongming ignored Kong Zongyun's impassioned speech; his gaze simply could not leave that piece of paper.
"The first two lines write about time," Gu Zongming muttered to himself, his voice hoarse. "History and the future, the ancients and those to come."
"A person standing in the torrent of time, unable to see the beginning or the end, with nothingness both before and behind."
He raised his head, looking at the glaring sunlight outside the waterside pavilion, his eye sockets rimmed with red.
"The latter two lines write about space. The universe and the self, how vast heaven and earth are, and how insignificant a person is."
Gu Zongming looked at Xu Qinghuan, his eyes full of disbelief and fascination.
"Commandery Princess Xu, you have actually elevated a person's loneliness into the vastness of the universe! What a grand breadth of mind, what profound desolation!"
"To have such thoughts at this age? It is truly unbelievable!"
However, no one was going to question whether Xu Qinghuan had plagiarized, because this poem was enough to establish her on the monumental pillars of history in Great Qian and beyond.
Gu Zongming took a deep breath and loudly declared to the scholars.
"The poem 'Spring River in the Flower Moon Night' from Jiangning suppressed the entire region with a single piece. Today's poem is enough to stand alongside it!"
"This is the first definitive masterpiece of lamenting the past and grieving the present since the Tang style! Rules? Metrical patterns? In front of such epoch-making poetic lines, those things are just a pile of waste paper!"
Zhao Xuan stood frozen in place, his face deathly pale.
His mind buzzed. The words of Kong Zongyun and Gu Zongming hammered heavily against his proud literati arrogance, smashing it to pieces.
He opened his mouth, a gurgling sound coming from his throat, but he could not speak. He wanted to point out that this poem lacked parallelism, that it lacked flowery rhetoric.
But his mind was churning, and he could not find a single line of poetry capable of suppressing the imposing aura of these twenty-two characters.
All of his literary knowledge seemed so pale and ridiculous in the face of this pure, grandiose emotion.
He had studied the sages for ten years, memorized tonal patterns and metrical rules for ten years. He thought that was the absolute truth of the world.
But now, Xu Qinghuan had pierced his heavens with just twenty-two characters—twenty-two characters that completely ignored the rules of tone and meter.
The profound loneliness and desolation seeping from the poem, an emotion so vast that even heaven and earth could not contain it, gripped his throat tightly and suffocated him.
Zhao Xuan's knees gave way.
His knees slammed heavily onto the scorching bluestone slabs, letting out a muffled thud. A dull pain radiated from his legs, but he remained completely oblivious to it.
He did not get up, nor could he.
Behind him, dozens of imperial academy students who had just been clamoring to drive Xu Qinghuan out of Shichahai could no longer stand straight. One after another, they fell to their knees.
A huge swath of people knelt across the bluestone courtyard.
No one mentioned the incorrect word count anymore, nor the lack of parallelism.
On the periphery, several older scholars who had failed the imperial examinations raised their sleeves, covering their faces tightly as their shoulders shook violently.
Tears mixed with sweat flowed down through their fingers. The grievances of half a lifetime wasted in the capital, wallowing in unfulfilled ambition, were completely detonated in the face of the poem's sheer desolation.
On the second floor of the Moon-Gazing Pavilion, in an adjacent private room.
The purple clay teacup in Xie Yunwan's hand suddenly tilted.
Her fingers loosened.
The teacup smashed onto the red sandalwood table, shattering, and the tea spilled all over the surface.
She paid it no mind.
Her back was stiff, her breathing stopped.
She prided herself on being the number one talented lady in Jiangnan. She had thought Xu Qinghuan's "A Moonlit Night on the Spring River" was a swan song, a masterpiece impossible to surpass.
She had even secretly suspected that it was a ghostwritten piece the Xu family had bought with a heavy sum of gold.
But now, these twenty-two characters had been written right before her very eyes.
Xie Yunwan closed her eyes. She knew that from today onward, in the literary circles of the Great Qian Dynasty, the name Xu Qinghuan would be an insurmountable mountain.
Her proud talent, under such absolute crushing dominance, could not even be considered a joke.
In another private room.
The red-infused jade thumb ring in Xiao Jingyan's hand stopped spinning.
His hand holding the teacup froze in mid-air. Scalding tea overflowed, burning the back of his hand, but he felt nothing.
Xiao Jingyan watched the tea flow across the tabletop. His mind raced.
A woman who could simultaneously subjugate the Grand Chancellor of the Imperial Academy and the leading figure of the Jiangnan literary world—she had forcefully torn open a rift in the hearts of the world's scholars with this single poem.
She had forcefully carved a piece out of the core foundation of the civil official faction.
This blade was not only sharp, but it had also grown its own roots.
In the center of the waterside pavilion.
Kong Zongyun took a half-step back and straightened the hem of his washed-out Confucian robe.
He crossed his hands, raised them above his head, and bowed deeply toward Xu Qinghuan, who stood before the desk.
This was the profound courtesy shown to a teacher.
Beside him, Gu Zongming simultaneously cupped his hands and bowed all the way to the ground.
Under the gaze of over five hundred scholars, two paramount figures of the Great Qian literary world bowed their heads to a woman.
The sun remained scorching, and the cicadas continued their noisy chirping.
Xu Qinghuan stood there, the hem of her moon-white long gown gently swaying in the breeze.
She accepted their bow without even blinking an eye.
