"When all under heaven gave their utmost loyalty, it took form in honest transformation. When gentlemen gave their utmost loyalty, they gave their whole hearts; when petty men gave their utmost loyalty, they gave their full strength. Those who gave their strength stopped at their own persons; those who gave their hearts spread far and wide. Thus was the principle of enlightened kings: they must strive to employ the worthy. When worthy ministers gave their utmost loyalty to the state, the virtue of the ruler broadened. Government and education thereby became beautiful, rites and music thereby flourished, punishments thereby flourished, benevolence and favor thereby spread, and within the four seas there was peace. Once auspicious signs were established, they were proclaimed above and below; thus they were spread through Ya Song and passed on without end."
Lin Su stopped abruptly at this point in his discourse.
With a soft hum, the Dao Platform beneath his feet stacked layer upon layer, taking the form of nine ranks.
At the ultimate realm of discourse, the Nine-Ranked Dao Platform bloomed for the first time in this northern land.
Upon the Nine-Ranked Dao Platform, Lin Su drifted like a great sage.
Cao Ru, Grand Scholar of the Hall of Literary Brilliance, and the hundreds of Great Confucians in Youdu, the capital of Great Yu, stood dumb as wooden chickens.
The tens of millions of citizens throughout the city stared blankly at the Nine-Ranked Dao Platform rising from the ground in the sky, as though witnessing a sacred miracle.
The Nine-Ranked Dao Platform had never appeared in Great Yu's six hundred years of history, yet today, this peerless spectacle of the literary Dao had finally appeared in this ancient city, in this ancient nation.
By rights, the people should have cheered; the literary temples should