Xu Zijin tilted his head back and drained the cup of fine wine from the Western Regions.
He turned the jade goblet upside down, its rim facing the floor.
Not a single drop remained.
Watching the empty cup, Xiao Jingxing’s eyes crinkled as he threw back his head and laughed. “What a remarkable capacity! Someone, add a place at the left! Grant him a seat!”
The seat to the left had always been reserved at imperial banquets for the emperor’s most trusted advisers—the place of highest distinction.
The Chief Secretary beamed and hurriedly waved to the attendants nearby. Two maids in blue immediately lifted a huanghuali wood armchair and hastened down half a step from the dais.
Under the gaze of the entire hall, Xu Zijin set down his goblet and bowed deeply. “Your Highness is too kind. Zijin is overwhelmed by the honor.”
The smile that had just appeared on the Chief Secretary’s face instantly froze.
“The ranking of the imperial examination is a grand matter of state.” Xu Zijin straightened and looked directly at Xiao Jingxing, each word clear and forceful. “The ranking determined by Lord Yan conforms to law and precedent. I placed second, and I accept the result wholeheartedly.”
The smile at the corners of Xiao Jingxing’s mouth stalled.
Xu Zijin’s tone remained calm, yet he yielded not an inch. “Your Highness has shown me undue favor. But as for the four words ‘you ought to be first,’ I dare not accept them.”
The hall fell into a terrifying silence.
Even Song Zhiyuan stopped stroking his beard.
“Coming from Your Highness, those words will earn you praise throughout the realm for cherishing talent. But once they reach outsiders’ ears, they will become a private favor bestowed by Your Highness.”
Xu Zijin’s voice was earnest, as though he were truly considering the greater good.
“If I were greedy enough to accept first place today, then whenever people spoke of me in years to come, they would care nothing for the actual principles in my essay. They would only say that I was one of Your Highness’s men!”
Several officials from the Ministry of Rites held even their breath.
Xu Zijin bowed once more. “To burden Your Highness’s good name over a single scholar’s examination paper—I truly would not dare!”
There was not a single flaw to be found in those words.
Every sentence claimed to safeguard the First Prince’s reputation, yet every sentence rejected the “deed of servitude” he had offered.
With an attitude of humble obedience, Xu Zijin had raised a soft shield before everyone and cleanly blocked the chains First Prince Xiao Jingxing had thrown at him.
He had left no grounds whatsoever for anyone to take offense.
Someone had been reaching for a piece of Qingzhou abalone with ivory chopsticks; the chopsticks now hovered in midair.
Someone else had raised a wine cup to toast a colleague, only for his wrist to freeze halfway there.
The two men were no more than two feet apart.
Xiao Jingxing still held the cup of leftover wine, the gracious smile of a prince who valued worthy men unchanged on his face.
But his fingers had tightened around the cup.
Rage surged madly through Xiao Jingxing’s chest, nearly burning through his reason.
Yet he could not erupt on the spot.
The moment he lost his temper, the dignity of the emperor’s eldest son would become a laughingstock.
He would remember this debt to the end of his days.
“Well said—‘would not dare!’” Xiao Jingxing stared at Xu Zijin for two breaths before suddenly bursting into laughter.
He casually tossed his cup into the Chief Secretary’s tray and clapped his hands heavily. “Mr. Xu is truly a man of lofty integrity! Not only is your writing penetrating, but your refusal to curry favor with power is a virtue beyond the reach of ordinary men.
“Today, this prince has learned something from you!”
He strode around and climbed the wooden steps back to the principal seat on the dais.
With a sweep of his broad sleeve, he settled into the large chair and his tone instantly dropped to a freezing chill.
“If that is the case, Mr. Xu, make yourself comfortable.”
The Chief Secretary understood at once. With a cold expression, he waved to the two maids. The armchair was silently removed.
Xiao Jingxing lifted the hot tea beside him and skimmed away the foam, no longer sparing Xu Zijin even a glance.
His attitude could not have been clearer.
The atmosphere in the hall changed abruptly.
The powerful clans’ officials, who had still been wary of the First Prince’s stance, immediately let their eyes roam freely.
Zhou Mingyuan lifted his cold wine and took a sip without the slightest attempt at concealment. Song Zhiyuan gave an even more contemptuous snort.
Everyone knew that without imperial protection, this New Learning radical would be torn to pieces by the old scholarly clans once tonight was over.
At the back, Niu Dazhuang anxiously rubbed his hands, his face flushed with helpless frustration.
Just as the First Prince watched coldly, waiting for the Old Learning faction to strike and settle their accounts—
At the front, among the seats for honored guests, the newly crowned Provincial Laureate Zheng Xiuyuan pushed aside the table laden with wine and dishes.
Song Zhiyuan instinctively straightened and shouted, “Zheng, the Provincial Laureate! What do you think you’re doing? Don’t disrupt the rules!”
Zheng Xiuyuan completely ignored the rebuke behind him.
Holding his wine cup, he looked calmly at Xu Zijin.
“I had someone purchase a copy of Brother Xu’s examination essay,” Zheng Xiuyuan said, his voice filled with emotion and touched by curiosity. “When I read it the first time, I thought it was nothing but outrageous nonsense, unfit to be seen.”
“After reading it a second time, I saw the clashes of principles within it—rigorous and solid.”
He paused for a breath and met Xu Zijin’s eyes.
“When I read it a third time, I understood.”
Zheng Xiuyuan slowly turned around. He faced the assembled scholars of the Old Learning faction behind him, then Song Zhiyuan, and finally the high dais.
He paused for a breath.
The clamor of Bright Moon Tower seemed to recede in an instant. In a moment of absent thought, his mind returned to an afternoon when the snow had yet to stop falling.
In the rear compound of the Xingyang Zheng clan, cold wind swept through the corridors.
Zheng Xiuyuan stood silently beneath the study’s veranda, holding a bowl of ginseng broth.
Since returning from a lecture at the Imperial Academy, his grandfather, Zheng Bo'an, had locked himself in the room for three full days without taking so much as a drop of water.
“Grandfather, please drink some hot soup.” Worried, Zheng Xiuyuan pushed the door open a crack.
The door hinge creaked. What appeared before him was a floor strewn with crumpled balls of paper.
The Grand Libationer of the Imperial Academy, revered by the scholarly clans as a pillar of the realm, now had even his hairpin hanging loose.
Dressed in a single robe and gaunt with exhaustion, he knelt before the writing desk.
On the desk lay none other than the Treatise on the Void as Qi.
Beside it were hundreds of drafts of Refuting Falsehoods, each covered in savage strokes of red ink.
Zheng Xiuyuan saw his grandfather’s hands—hands that had always been as steady as Mount Tai—trembling as they gripped the wolf-hair brush.
“I can’t refute it… I can’t refute it…”
The old Chancellor’s murky eyes were webbed with blood vessels, and he seemed almost possessed.
“Quibbling over insects, fish, plants, and trees… Spending a lifetime plumbing the classics, all of it is empty…”
Plop.
The wolf-hair brush rolled to the floor. The old Chancellor slumped back against his chair and tilted his head upward. Two silent tears slid down the deep furrows of his face.
He did not bend to retrieve the brush. Instead, with a sigh that sounded at once despairing and relieved, he murmured, “He has returned the principles of Heaven to the people!! Our path… is finished!”
At that moment, Zheng Xiuyuan, standing outside the door, felt as though he had been struck by lightning.
His thoughts returned to the present. Candlelight from the upper floor of Bright Moon Tower illuminated Zheng Xiuyuan’s eyes.
Zheng Xiuyuan slowly turned around. He faced the assembled scholars of the Old Learning faction behind him, then Song Zhiyuan, and finally the high dais.
“The Provincial Laureate title this year was the last shred of dignity Lord Yan left to the Xingyang Zheng clan.”
The entire hall was stunned!
Several elderly scholars of the Imperial Academy went deathly pale.
At the very back, in the lowest-ranking seat, the chief examiner Yan Yuan, who had kept his head bowed and said nothing since the banquet began, finally raised his eyes.
He looked at Zheng Xiuyuan in the center of the hall and slowly exhaled a breath of stale air.
This was madness!
The eldest grandson of the Xingyang Zheng clan, the face the old scholarly clans of the realm had united to put forward, the legitimate Provincial Laureate of this year’s examination—
He had actually removed the crown of Provincial Laureate with his own hands at the Deer Cry Banquet, before the eyes of the entire realm, and offered it to a New Learning radical branded a heretic!
“Utter nonsense!” An elderly Imperial Academy scholar was so furious that his entire body trembled. He pointed straight at Zheng Xiuyuan. “You are the Zheng clan’s direct-line grandson! How can you speak on behalf of this demon? You are destroying your own defenses!”
Facing the outrage throughout the hall, Zheng Xiuyuan remained composed. He turned back toward Xu Zijin.
“The Zheng clan upholds the old learning and places great importance on the transmission of family teachings.” Zheng Xiuyuan raised his wine cup in both hands until it was level with his brows, leaning forward slightly. His tone was open and forthright. “But the first rule of the Zheng family code is this: the only thing we honor is the word ‘truth.’
“In the presence of learning, neither family background nor social standing matters. Whoever lays bare the true principles of Heaven and Earth is the foremost of all.”
At the high platform, First Prince Xiao Jingxing’s expression finally darkened.
He had intended to stand by while the great clans dealt with Xu Zijin, using the opportunity to force him to bow his head.
Yet now, the universally acknowledged foremost scholar of Old Learning had personally stepped forward to endorse this New Learning radical.
The “first place” bestowed by Xiao Jingxing was something Xu Zijin did not want; meanwhile, the true Provincial Laureate had offered it to him of his own accord!
Confronted with Zheng Xiuyuan’s upright and respectful toast, Xu Zijin shifted half a step aside, avoiding the grand gesture.
Then he extended both hands and firmly supported Zheng Xiuyuan by the arms, helping him straighten. “Brother Zheng’s bearing commands my admiration.”
Xu Zijin turned to the wine maid, who stood completely stunned beside them. His voice was calm, yet left no room for refusal. “Please fill it again.”
Only then did the maid return to her senses. She hurried forward and refilled the jade cup in Xu Zijin’s hand.
Xu Zijin raised the brimming cup and clinked it against Zheng Xiuyuan’s white porcelain one.
Clink—
The two men tilted back their heads and drained their cups of strong wine together.
Neither servile nor overbearing—one exchange, and their dignity was made plain.
