"That jade carriage is so fast!"
"That speed... The person inside must be incredible!"
"It's decorated so lavishly, it looks like it's reserved for royalty. Could the Empress Profound Ice be inside?"
"Who knows if it's the Empress, but whoever's inside is definitely powerful!"
The cultivators stopped in their tracks, stunned by the sight of the jade carriage racing along, pulled by four Green-Winged Flying Birds.
They guessed that anyone who could make such a huge jade carriage fly at lightning speed
must be a truly formidable expert.
And quite possibly an expert of the Emperor Realm!
With that thought, all the cultivators who had been flying ahead of the jade carriage moved aside of their own accord.
After all, in the Northern Profound Heaven, the Empress Profound Ice was the strongest.
Anyone who came from the Empress's Profound Ice Palace was bound to earn people's respect.
Not to mention, the jade carriage before them was reserved for the royal family of the Profound Ice Palace.
Seeing the jade carriage speed ahead and leave all the cultivators behind in the blink of an eye, the four little girls were over the moon.
"Whoa~ We're flying so fast!"
"Daddy's magic is amazing!"
"I feel like I'm a beam of light!"
"Look, the four Green-Winged Flying Birds are following us. They're so silly!"
The little girls were beside themselves with excitement.
Their four pairs of beautiful, wide eyes were full of adoration and affection for Lin Xuan.
Lin Xuan basked in his daughters' fervent admiration, his vanity thoroughly gratified.
"If you like it, Daddy will take you flying often from now on."
The little girls heard him and clapped their hands in delight. "Yay!"
Xuanzhu eagerly leaned in and kissed Lin Xuan on the cheek.
Xuanxi, Xuanhan, and Xuanyou hurried to lean in and kiss him too.
Lin Xuan felt a cool, damp sensation on both cheeks.
Apparently, the little girls had left plenty of drool behind.
But that was no problem for Lin Xuan.
If his daughters liked it, then washing his face with their drool was no problem at all!
Laughing and playing along the way,
Lin Xuan soon saw a golden-yellow mountain up ahead, towering into the clouds, majestic and magnificent.
Seven-Colored Holy Radiance enveloped the summit, shining brilliantly beneath the clouds.
This was the symbol of the literary world of the Northern Profound Heaven: Mount Wenqu.
The Seven-Colored Holy Radiance was said to be the light of the Sages of the Literary Dao.
For billions of years, it had been worshipped by the literary circles of the Northern Profound Heaven, and even by scholars across the world.
Lin Xuan then put away the God-Speed Bracelet and slowed the jade carriage.
Before long, the carriage gently descended onto Mount Wenqu.
Lin Xuan walked with the four little girls for a short while before seeing a woman in a green dress approaching them.
"Cousin-in-law!" Mu Youqing was dressed to the nines. She came up to them with a bright smile.
"You're here pretty early," Lin Xuan said casually.
Mu Youqing nodded. "Of course. Under normal circumstances, only people from the literary world can attend an assembly like this Literary Dao Discussion Assembly."
"Besides, today's assembly has drawn great writers from the Nine Heavens Immortal Domain and even the lower realms. It's a real gathering of heroes."
"As an outsider to the Literary Dao, if I didn't come early, I might not get a seat at all."
Lin Xuan raised an eyebrow. "The requirements for attending are that strict?"
He had thought that anyone could attend an assembly like this.
Now it seemed the requirements were unusually high.
"Mm-hmm!" Mu Youqing nodded vigorously. "So, cousin-in-law, you being able to come with a VIP invitation really is a grand entrance!"
Lin Xuan smiled and shook his head. "Whether it's a grand entrance or not doesn't matter. I'm mainly bringing the kids here to have some fun and broaden their horizons."
Mu Youqing smiled radiantly.
Her cousin-in-law was a man of great talent and lofty status.
Yet he spoke with such warmth and humility, without a trace of arrogance or aggression.
But the more he acted that way, the more it showed just how extraordinary he was.
Sometimes, when great figures kept a low profile, it wasn't that they were trying to be humble.
They simply stood so high that an air of calm detachment came naturally to them.
"Then let's head over."
Mu Youqing picked up Xuanzhu and Xuanxi, then walked toward the summit of Mount Wenqu with Lin Xuan.
According to Mu Youqing, the Literary Dao Discussion Assembly was being held in the Wenqu Star Hall at the mountain's summit.
After they had walked about half a mile uphill,
a handsome man in a red robe stepped in front of Lin Xuan and the others, accompanied by two more people.
Mu Youqing frowned slightly when she saw the man in red.
She had little affection for a man named Sima Wenyi.
Sima Wenyi, however, beamed at Mu Youqing. "Junior Sister Youqing, it's been a long time!"
Mu Youqing looked displeased. "Please, don't try to claim we're close. I'm not your junior sister!"
Sima Wenyi was the favored disciple of Shen Yakang, another literary grandmaster of the Northern Profound Heaven.
Three months earlier, Mu Youqing had attended a lecture by Shen Yakang and happened to meet Sima Wenyi.
At first, Mu Youqing had no particular dislike of him.
But ever since they attended that lecture together, Sima Wenyi had insisted on calling her his junior sister and himself her senior.
Everything he said carried a suggestive undertone, which made Mu Youqing very uncomfortable.
"Fine, fine, I won't call you that!" Sima Wenyi immediately corrected himself.
"Youqing, inspiration struck me a couple of days ago, and I wrote a love poem destined to be celebrated for all ages. Would you like to hear it?"
As he spoke, he pulled a folded sheet of white paper from his sleeve.
"A poem destined to be celebrated for all ages?" Mu Youqing scoffed. "You'd better keep it to yourself!"
With that, she turned to leave with Xuanzhu and the others in her arms.
Sima Wenyi hurried after her. "Youqing, this really is a poem destined to be celebrated for all ages!"
"If you hear it and don't think it's any good, I'll turn around and leave right away!"
The other two who had come with Sima Wenyi nodded repeatedly.
"That's right. Our senior Sima's poem has already been read by our teacher, who praised it to the skies!"
"Miss Youqing, you know our teacher. He's a great writer on par with Grand Scholar Jiang. You have to trust his judgment, don't you?"
Mu Youqing thought for a moment, then said with a playful smile,
"I certainly trust Grand Scholar Shen's judgment. But I think you'd better not try to show off in front of an expert!"
"Show off in front of an expert? How am I doing that?" Sima Wenyi looked baffled.
He was Shen Yakang's favored disciple.
He was also fairly well-known in the literary circles of the Nine Heavens Immortal Domain.
Besides, his poem had been reviewed by Shen Yakang and many other people from the literary world.
That was precisely why he was confident enough to read it to Mu Youqing.
Who could have guessed she would say something like that?
Mu Youqing gave a mocking laugh. "Have you heard the lines, 'The rosy clouds and a lone wild duck fly side by side; the autumn river and the boundless sky share the same hue'?"
Sima Wenyi and the other two nodded together.
"Of course! Those two lines have been making the rounds in the literary circles of the Northern Profound Heaven these past two days!"
"They're said to be lines written five thousand years ago, and no one has ever managed to write a matching couplet."
"Exactly! Just in the past couple of days, someone finally came up with lines to match them. They're ingenious, unprecedented in all history!"
Mu Youqing looked at Sima Wenyi. "How does your writing compare to those lines?"
Sima Wenyi thought it over, then gritted his teeth. "It falls far short!"
"Exactly. That's why I said you were showing off in front of an expert."
Mu Youqing smiled and pointed to Lin Xuan behind her. "There, the person who wrote those lines is my cousin-in-law!"
Sima Wenyi and the others immediately turned their eyes to Lin Xuan.
Faced with Lin Xuan's transcendent, immortal aura, they all felt a little inferior.
Before you continue