Jiang Mengxiong defeated Central State's foremost True Insight cultivator, You Qinxu, with the Calamity Water Fist in Dao Calendar 3882.
Immediately afterward, Yujing Mountain's headmaster, Zong Dezhen, came knocking and taught him precisely what "Central State's foremost" meant.
Only Qi State's Son of Heaven, Jiang Shu, personally protecting him spared him from death. But he did not escape living punishment. He was cast into the far-northern glaciers, where Zong Dezhen pressed down Ultimate Intent Cold Prison with one hand and tormented Jiang Mengxiong for a full five years.
Clearly, Jiang Mengxiong and You Qinxu had fought fairly. Meeting by the roadside, both had been prepared for the consequences of that battle.
Had Jiang Mengxiong lost and died, absolutely no one could have said a word for him. But he won, only to suffer an undeserved lesson. Proud as he was, punished without guilt—it was no wonder that he had remained bitter about it all these years.
Yet that was reality.
Reason certainly existed, but not everyone was qualified to speak of it.
Justice certainly existed too, but before powers capable of trampling the rules, you needed an equal power to uphold it for you.
The prerequisite for sitting down to discuss right and wrong was having the qualifications to sit down.
And in the second year after Jiang Mengxiong emerged from the far-northern glaciers, the Qi-Xia War erupted. Qi State leapt in a single bound into a Hegemon State, dominating the Eastern Domain.
What had happened at Calamity Water would never happen again!
In the later Prodigy War at Star Moon Plain, Jing prodigies had the right to kill, and Qi prodigies had their quota for killing as well.
Jiang Mengxiong's one-on-one defeat of Central State's foremost True Insight cultivator was naturally a reflection of Qi State's rising national strength.