Not until Xu Zijin’s back had completely disappeared around the mouth of the alley did the street in front of the Examination Hall remain so quiet that not even a cough could be heard.
But moments later…
The long street suddenly erupted into noise.
The young men who had prided themselves on their status were now completely thrown into disarray. They tugged at one another’s sleeves, shouting and cursing incoherently.
Liu Wenyuan’s face was livid. In his panic, he searched for the pillar that could steady the situation.
“Brother Zheng! You can’t just let that madman…”
Liu Wenyuan’s words died the instant he saw Zheng Xiuyuan.
The newly titled Provincial Laureate of the capital region stood where he was, his back slightly more stooped than before.
He did not even glance at Liu Wenyuan, much less acknowledge the desperate looks the surrounding sons of noble families cast in his direction.
With a dejected expression, Zheng Xiuyuan climbed into his carriage and left.
The eldest grandson of the Xingyang Zheng clan had simply walked away without saying a word?!
Liu Wenyuan’s hand, raised halfway into the air, froze.
The surrounding scions of the noble families suddenly lost their mainstay. They looked at one another, their faces filled with panic and helplessness.
Meanwhile, the portly proprietor of Shulin Studio wore an expression of delight.
What did he care about the old school or the new school? His only responsibility was to make money!
At that moment, he wanted nothing more than to rush back to the studio.
Time was money!
Before long, the portly proprietor finally returned to his shop.
In the rear hall, more than a dozen engravers were bent over their work. Each held a carving knife, engraving romantic and sentimental miscellanies onto jujube-wood printing blocks.
The portly proprietor stormed in and overturned the nearest worktable.
“Stop! Stop everything! Put down whatever you’re doing!” he bellowed at the top of his lungs.
The craftsmen were so startled that they trembled, hurriedly stopping their carving.
The portly proprietor pulled the crumpled sheet of paper from his robes and slapped it onto the table.
Pointing at the disorderly charcoal writing, he sprayed spittle as he shouted, “Bring out every one of the finest jujube-wood blocks in the storeroom! Set the type overnight! Engrave the new Provincial Laureate’s analysis of the examination question, along with every outrageous word that Xu, the provincial runner-up, said on the street! Not a single character is to be omitted!”
One of the scholars nearby leaned over to take a look. He was a knowledgeable man, and the instant he finished reading, he drew in a sharp breath.
“Master, these are words insulting the Grand Libationer of the Imperial Academy. If we print this…”
“Print it! Anyone who dares stop me from making a fortune, I’ll fight him to the death!” The portly proprietor’s eyes were bloodshot. He jabbed a finger at the tabletop. “Once this thing is printed, every candidate in the capital will sell his cooking pot and iron wok to buy a copy! This is a firsthand record worth its weight in gold! Get those knives moving!”
In less than an hour, the remarks made on the examination-results street had sprouted wings and swept through all twelve wards of the capital.
On Front Gate Street, inside an extremely noisy teahouse…
Several candidates from the provinces who had just failed the examination were gathered by the window on the second floor, discussing the new rankings with gloomy expressions.
A scholar in a blue robe hurried up the stairs, so out of breath that he could barely speak.
“Something terrible has happened! There’s been a huge incident outside the Examination Hall!” The blue-robed scholar slapped the table. “That Xu Zijin, who was named the provincial runner-up, pointed at Zheng, the Provincial Laureate, and the sons of the noble families and cursed them to their faces in front of tens of thousands of people!”
The failed candidates put down their teacups and crowded around him.
“What did he say? Surely it was nothing more than the usual sour remarks about scholars belittling one another.”
The blue-robed scholar swallowed.
“He said the sons of noble families spend their entire lives poring over the classics, yet all they study are insects and plants trapped in piles of dead texts!”
“He said that the orthodox teachings of the Imperial Academy weren’t the learning of the sages at all, but remnants of the Buddhist school—an obsession with emptiness and contempt for practical governance! He called it deviant learning!”
The moment those words fell, an old candidate slammed his teacup onto the table.
“Deviant learning…” His lips trembled. “He actually dared to label the family teachings of the Xingyang Zheng clan, and the classical doctrines passed down by the Jiangnan noble families for generations, as deviant learning? This… this is turning the whole world upside down!”
The entire second floor of the teahouse sank into profound shock, followed by even more heated arguments and exclamations.
At the same time, inside the Eastern City Guildhall…
The main doors were tightly shut.
The atmosphere in the hall was oppressive to the extreme.
Liu Wenyuan swept every object from the table with one furious motion. Broken porcelain scattered across the floor.
“What a humiliation! He stripped the dignity from our faces and stomped it into the mud!” Liu Wenyuan’s eyes were bloodshot as he glared at the candidates from prominent families across the various prefectures and provinces who had gathered in the hall.
All of those noble-born young men were filled with fury.
Zheng Xiuyuan’s retreat had left them feeling a crisis and humiliation unlike anything they had ever known.
Another scion of a prominent family from Hedong rose to his feet and declared righteously, “Brother Zheng is mindful of a gentleman’s bearing and disdains to trade words with such a vulgar madman. But we cannot simply stand by! If we cannot defeat him in matters of scholarship, then his arguments are nothing but sophistry! We will crush him beneath the laws of Great Qian!”
Upon hearing this, a glimmer of clarity flashed through Liu Wenyuan’s eyes. He hurriedly seized a wolf-hair brush.
Then, gnashing his teeth, Liu Wenyuan said, “Bring me the red paper! Every scion of a prominent family in the guildhall today will sign a joint denunciation! We’ll use our clan connections to submit a memorial to the Court of Judicial Review and the Ministry of Rites! In the name of orthodoxy, we’ll brand this Xu Zijin as a demonic heretic who seeks to destroy the moral order! We must force the imperial court to strip him of his provincial-runner-up title and exile him three thousand li!”
…
Less than two hours later, the first batch of freshly inked copies of The Verbatim Record of the Debate on the Long Street, hurriedly printed by Shulin Studio, had already begun circulating through the marketplace.
At the Imperial Academy, in the lowest-grade dormitory…
The building stood in the shade and saw no sunlight for most of the year. A moldy odor hung in the air.
Li Ke stood in the open space before the dormitory, holding up a freshly purchased copy of the record with both hands.
Before him gathered more than a hundred poor students in blue-black robes washed so pale that their original color was barely visible.
Li Ke cleared his throat, and his voice gradually rose in pitch.
“Principle exists within concrete affairs; seek the Way through material things!” Li Ke read aloud from the printed text. “When the sages left their teachings, did they wish their successors to drown in textual commentary, indulging in trivia until they lost sight of what truly mattered?”
The eyes of the hundred impoverished students grew brighter and brighter. The resentment they had kept suppressed in their hearts for years beneath the weight of noble birth and family privilege was finally set ablaze.
“Well said!” one of the poor students shouted, thrusting up his arm. “Learning should be sought in practical affairs, not in the book halls monopolized by the noble families!”
Just as the crowd’s anger reached its peak, the courtyard gate outside the dormitory was kicked open.
Liu Wenyuan charged in with more than a dozen sons of noble families and several instructors from the Imperial Academy.
“Outrageous!” Liu Wenyuan pointed at Li Ke. “Who gave you permission to circulate such demonic nonsense here? This is the Imperial Academy, a sacred institution of learning in Great Qian! You wretches refuse to respect family teachings and scholarly lineages, gather a crowd, and cause disorder. Every one of you deserves to be expelled under the academy regulations!”
The instructor also wore a grim expression as he barked, “Disperse at once! Hand over that filthy text!”
In the past, whenever these poor students faced oppression from instructors and scions of noble families, they would have lowered their heads and admitted fault.
But today, not one of them took a step back.
Li Ke strode forward and faced Liu Wenyuan directly.
“Young Master Liu certainly wields great authority,” Li Ke said, raising the record in his hand, each word ringing like steel. “You keep invoking family teachings and scholarly lineage. Then let me ask you this: What was wrong with what Xu, the provincial runner-up, said on the long street today—that ‘those who spend their entire lives poring over the classics are all chasing empty fantasies’?”
Liu Wenyuan’s expression changed.
“Utter nonsense! Without reading the classics, how can one understand the Way?”
Li Ke pressed forward step by step, his words cutting like a blade.
“What sort of Way are you talking about? The practical principles governing the world, or the barrier your noble families have erected to monopolize the truth? You turn the meaning of the classics into something abstruse and incomprehensible!”
Liu Wenyuan had been struck where it hurt. His face turned pale, and the finger he pointed at Li Ke trembled uncontrollably.
“You… You’re slandering me! You crude brute—what could you possibly understand of the Great Way of the Sages?”
“I only know that Xu, the provincial runner-up, is right!” Li Ke roared. “Today’s debate is about the principles of learning. If you can’t produce a sound argument to refute Xu, the provincial runner-up’s record, then step aside! And stop barking in this Imperial College with that worthless family pedigree of yours!”
“You!”
Overcome with rage, Liu Wenyuan staggered backward. His heel caught on the threshold, and he nearly fell.
The sons of the aristocratic clans around them were rendered speechless as well.
They had been beaten back again and again in the debate and could only slink out of the study in disgrace.
The rebellious flame of the common-born scholars had already begun to spread like a prairie fire through the rear courtyard of the Imperial College.
…
The Chengyi Earl’s Residence.
Throughout the capital and beyond, the dispute between the new and old schools had long since thrown everything into an uproar.
The carriages of censorial officials and aristocratic families raced wildly through the streets and alleys.
In the dark lanes surrounding the Chengyi Earl’s Residence, who knew how many spies were lurking?
One by one, they hunched their necks and fixed their eyes on the two vermilion gates of the Xu Residence, hoping to catch a glimpse of how the Xu family—and the young man who had caused such earth-shaking trouble—would react when faced with condemnation from the entire city.
Would they panic? Would they cower?
But what they saw left them utterly dumbfounded.
The Xu Residence made no move at all.
The steward, Xu Fu, held a large broom in his hands and was leisurely sweeping the snow and fallen leaves from the stone steps outside the gate.
Swish… swish…
Xu Fu even paused to let out a great yawn, then slapped his lower back.
Inside and outside the residence, there was not the slightest hint of tension or preparation for battle. The whole place was relaxed to an almost outrageous degree.
The spies in the dark lanes exchanged bewildered glances.
“Has the Xu family gone mad? People outside are practically tearing their retainers apart, and they’re still sweeping the floor?”
In the rear quarters of the Xu Residence.
The warm chamber.
The room was as warm as spring.
Xu Qinghuan reclined against a rosewood couch, a thin fox-fur blanket draped over her. She held a little illustrated storybook in her hands and flipped through it, occasionally letting out a light, amused laugh.
Xu Qinghuan’s elder brother, Xu Wuyou, and second brother, Xu Zhan, sat in the grand chairs below her, teacups in hand.
A quick-witted young servant stood outside the threshold, giving a vivid account of the happenings along the main street.
“…And that’s how it happened. A few words from Student Li left that young master surnamed Liu so furious he nearly vomited blood. He fled the lowest-ranked study at the Imperial College stumbling and scrambling. Now, everyone outside is repeating Young Master Xu’s line, ‘Truth lies within the matter itself.’ The printed copies are selling for more than meat!”
The servant spoke so excitedly that spittle flew from his mouth.
Xu Qinghuan’s slender fingers turned another page. Her cool voice rang through the warm chamber.
“How much raw silk has the weaving workshop in Jiangning received this month?”
The servant froze for a moment, then hurriedly wiped the excitement from his face and respectfully replied, “Your Highness, the message brought by courier from Jiangning says that raw-silk receipts are up thirty percent from last month, and the female workers have all been hired.”
Only then did Xu Qinghuan smile faintly and nod.
Excellent. Excellent!
Xu Zhan set down his teacup and gave a cold snort.
“These aristocratic families can’t win a fight, and they can’t outwrite anyone either. Now they’re hiding in their guildhall drafting some sort of joint denunciation. A bunch of sour scholars who know nothing but how to swarm and bite. Little Sister, should I take the troops and flatten that guildhall?”
Xu Zhan had a fiery temper, and a murderous glint shone in his eyes.
Xu Wuyou lightly tapped the edge of the table, signaling his second brother to calm down.
“Don’t act rashly.” Xu Wuyou took a sip of tea, his gaze deep and thoughtful. “They’re panicking. That means Zijin’s strike landed squarely on the weak spot of their backs.”
“At a time like this, whoever loses his temper first will be at a disadvantage. They want to use numbers and influence to overwhelm reason. That only proves they’ve already suffered a crushing defeat in scholarship.”
Xu Wuyou looked toward Xu Qinghuan.
“Little Sister, that move of yours was ruthless.”
Xu Qinghuan closed her little storybook and yawned, looking somewhat bored. Her gaze shifted to Xu Zijin, who was writing at the desk in front of them.
“The orthodoxy devours people precisely because it monopolizes everything.”
“Xu Zijin has torn through that thin layer of window paper. Naturally, the people who make their living behind it are going mad. Let them go mad. The more loudly they rage, the more the people of the world will want to know what sort of principle could frighten these powerful clans into such a state.”
Xu Zijin had already changed out of the cotton robe still carrying the chill of winter. He was wearing an exceptionally comfortable robe suitable for lounging at home.
He sat upright before the writing desk.
A burner of aloeswood sent thin wisps of smoke curling into the air.
Xu Zijin held a purple-hair brush and was quietly practicing calligraphy from a model text.
His wrist was steady.
The brush traveled across the xuan paper, each character written with strict adherence to form and structure, yet infused with an indescribable, wild vigor.
From outside the window came Xu Fu’s shouts as he directed the servants clearing away the snow.
Xu Zijin raised his brush, dipped it in ink, and continued practicing in silence.
Xu Qinghuan: Damn! Xu Zijin is putting on an even better act than I am!
