Twenty Treatises

Lin Su entered the study, picked up his brush, hesitated slightly, then set it to paper. The moment he wrote, his brush danced like dragons and serpents...

After gaining the Literary Altar, a scholar's thoughts became incomparably swift, and his writing was endowed with the ability of "the brush racing like dragons and serpents." In other words, a Literary Altar scholar wrote ten times faster than an ordinary person!

Lin Su was even faster!

In less than twenty minutes, he set down his brush, picked up a stack of papers beside him, and walked out of the study. Lin Jialiang was still sitting there, lost in thought.

"Second Brother, take these and study them carefully. You don't need to memorize them by rote—just grasp their essence and apply it freely."

Lin Jialiang was utterly astonished. "You finished a policy essay in just over a quarter of an hour?... Hm?"

There were clearly twenty or thirty sheets of paper in Lin Su's hands!

And the handwriting was exceedingly small, with over a thousand words on every page.

"There are twenty essays in all, covering agriculture, industry, commerce, the military, the people, and government. So long as you truly comprehend them, not only will mere policy essays be nothing to you, but if one day you become a high-ranking official, you will be able to truly keep a region safe and at peace."

Lin Jialiang's eyes widened larger than bronze bells. Trembling, he accepted the twenty sheets and immediately saw the first essay on top.

"On Water Management":

"The flourishing of agriculture is the foundation of a nation. As the saying goes, the nation takes its people as its foundation, and the people take food as their heaven..."

His eyes abruptly lit up. Those few short words were a masterful summary, practically a classic. But as he read more closely, he completely lost himself in it. Water management was explained with such thorough clarity—water was not merely a disaster, but also a resource: irrigation, shipping, livelihood... Therefore, one could never regard water as an enemy simply because of floods. It had to be developed and utilized to the fullest, turning calamity into treasure...

Heavens! If this "On Water Management" were handed to the Ministry of Civil Affairs in the capital, it would be revered as a sacred manual.

And this had merely been written by his Third Brother in a quarter of an hour.

No! What his Third Brother had written was not merely this one essay.

There were more below.

"On Agricultural Stasis"...

"Ten Precepts for Civil Administration"...

"Seven Notes on Border Residents"...

"Thirteen Articles on Feudalism"...

"Third Brother..." Lin Jialiang's lips trembled faintly. "How do you know all this? Could it be that a sage truly bestowed it upon you from heaven?"

"Don't put such an enormous hat on me. Take them and use them as reference."

"I'm going!" Cradling the twenty policy essays, Lin Jialiang ran into the study, shut the door, and began reading in earnest.

Zhang Yiyu looked at the sky, then the ground, then the people in the courtyard, then Lin Jialiang's study. She even secretly pinched her own butt. It hurt—so this really was not a dream...

Twenty policy essays written in a quarter of an hour, enough to excite that scholar into such a state. I'd like to see exactly what you wrote.

Ordinary people could never glimpse so much as a word from Lin Jialiang's tightly shut study, but who was Zhang Yiyu?

The Zither Domain silently unfolded. An insubstantial zither string slipped through the window, and the manuscript in Lin Jialiang's hands was immediately projected into Zhang Yiyu's eyes.

Next, the zither string slipped into the drawer, and within moments, every manuscript inside entered her sight.

The next moment, Zhang Yiyu vanished from the Lin Family estate and appeared above the Yangtze River.

"Brother, I have something for you. Take a look and judge it."

Zhang Haoran appeared and immediately shook his head. "I already said it—I cannot possibly decipher the Ancient Heavenly Scroll for you again! Absolutely not! Not even if you beat me to death! My heart is willing, but my strength is not!"

"It isn't about deciphering the ancient scroll. I'm just showing you a few pages of manuscript."

"Manuscript? Heh. Turning the ancient scroll into manuscript, are you? Who do you think you can fool? I won't look!... I'm off to the Deer Cry Banquet..." He was preparing to flee.

"Lin Su wrote it!"

The moment those words came out, Zhang Haoran abruptly stopped moving.

"A policy essay he wrote."

Zhang Haoran's expression changed. "The manuscript of 'On the Four Nations'?" Naturally, he had read On the Four Nations—carefully, more than ten times. Each time, it reinforced one realization: monstrous genius! That monstrous genius had written a single policy essay that made him look up to it as one looked upon towering mountains. How should he describe that feeling? It was unpleasant, yet pleasant. Unpleasant because he suddenly felt that he truly was inferior to Lin Su; pleasant because a man of letters could never tear himself away from a peerless work. Reading it was like drinking jade nectar...

"Not 'On the Four Nations.' These are newly written. According to him, they cover agriculture, industry, commerce, government, the people, and the military. He gave them to his Second Brother as reference, and even boasted that if his Second Brother truly understood them, then not only would policy essays become nothing, he could even become a genuinely good official in the future."

"Quick, give them to me!"

The policy essays became streams of light and traveled thousands of miles away. A manuscript appeared in the air before Zhang Haoran. This was the benefit of literary and Dao dual cultivation—he could use a Daoist artifact to transmit information across great distances.

Zhang Haoran took one look, and his entire body shook violently. After finishing the first essay, he cried out, "Wonderful! Exquisite!"

After finishing the second, he was completely dumbfounded.

The third...

Someone outside called, "Young Master, it is time to set out for the Deer Cry Banquet..."

Zhang Haoran turned a deaf ear.

The fourth...

The fifth...

After reading all twenty essays, Zhang Haoran fell backward onto his back and did not move...

"Brother, are you all right?"

"No! Your brother is about to stop breathing. My Literary Altar has suffered a tremendous impact..." Zhang Haoran slowly sat up, his face looking terribly wrong.

"Surely not? He only spent a quarter of an hour writing twenty policy essays, and it shocked you into this state?"

"A quarter of an hour? Little Sister, you must have colluded with him to strike at me. I'll admit he is stronger than I am, but... but... don't even think you can make me abandon literature and cultivate the Dao..."

From the other side came an urgent call. "Young Master, the Deer Cry Banquet..."

"What are you rushing for? Are you rushing me to my death?... Ah, Father himself..." Zhang Haoran sprang to his feet, hurriedly shut off the communicator, and was most likely dragged away by his father to attend the Deer Cry Banquet.

Zhang Yiyu stood there in a daze. Were these policy essays really written that well?

I'll take a look! She read them too—a huge mass of text, speaking of strange principles...

Lin Su had used a pile of second-rate policy essays to lock his Second Brother in the study, and those same essays had drawn Zhang Yiyu away from the Lin Family.

Yet he still could not get any peace and quiet.

A black shadow suddenly appeared in the empty space before him. Though it was broad daylight, he distinctly felt that the shadow before him was void and unreal. It was an exceedingly strange sensation.

Dark Night herself also sensed the changes within her.

Last night, Lin Su's single remark had awakened her. After cultivating in seclusion for one night, her realm had opened wide, and she had nearly stepped across the threshold of the Peeking Void Realm, standing only a hair's breadth away from that wondrous and mysterious line.

It had been a long time since she had felt excitement, but today, a trace of it arose. She suddenly had the urge to share it with someone, and so she came directly before Lin Su.

But then, she too froze.

"You opened the Ren and Du Meridians and broke through to Martial Ancestor?"

Yesterday, he had only been a Martial Artist. Today, he had suddenly become a Martial Ancestor. Could it be that she had spent ten years in seclusion? No! This seclusion of hers had not truly counted as seclusion at all. It had only been one night.

Could a Martial Artist leap across realms and enter Martial Ancestor in a single night?

She had never heard of such a strange tale.

When she investigated, she sensed within him an immense and boundless aura—a demon core!

So that little wench had truly paid a bloody price...

Having seen through it, Dark Night suddenly felt something strange in her heart. It was like a toy from childhood, before she had even begun to play with it, being taken by someone else and altered beyond recognition...