Top Scholar Pavilion.
There was only one that truly lived up to its name: the one in Eastern Capital Kaifeng Prefecture.
By convention, scholars who made the list of successful candidates were sure to celebrate at Top Scholar Pavilion. Fine wine and beautiful women were all on offer.
And they were truly beautiful women. Since Top Scholar Pavilion was government-run, official courtesans from the Music Bureau worked there too, all of them top quality.
With such an auspicious tradition, Top Scholar Pavilions gradually began appearing across the prefectures, usually right across from the Examination Hall. They were wildly popular.
Unfortunately, Yong Prefecture's Top Scholar Pavilion had fallen victim to disaster.
The previous night, Ming Cult followers had already infiltrated it and seized control of the entire establishment.
"Dharma King, the time has come!"
At the lookout's warning, a burly, imposing old man emerged.
A scar stretched straight from the corner of his eye down to his neck, as grotesque as a centipede. Two heavy hammers rested on his shoulders, yet he carried them as lightly as if they weighed nothing. His hair had gone gray, but the old man had mastered an iron-body technique and cut an imposing figure.
"Today, I will bathe Yong Prefecture in blood and avenge the Holy Maiden!"
Thinking of Fairy He, whom the people of Yong Prefecture had so quickly forgotten, the old man's face brimmed with hatred and tenderness.
Who would willingly be a lovesick fool? Not unless love had run too deep to take back, caught between longing and dread that fate was nearing its end. Yet, in the end, he still couldn't have it all.
That brief passage distilled the essence of a million words. By the time the old man emerged from his memories, the scene below had already erupted into commotion.
"Dong'an's Huang Shang!"
"Huang Shengzhong! Congratulations! Congratulations!"
Though Huang Shang kept a low profile and hadn't attended literary gatherings to show off his poetic talent, he was Zhang Zai's disciple, and the Four Verses of the Humble Abode had long since spread far and wide. He was no ordinary candidate.
When other scholars placed first in their prefectural examinations, people still muttered among themselves. But the moment Huang Shang passed, everyone recognized him.
Seeing the scholars crowd around Huang Shang, the old man barked, "Attack!"
Whoosh!
A dozen agile figures sprang out, flinging hidden weapons at their targets—not only the defenseless scholars, but also the guards patrolling the Examination Hall and the servants of wealthy families and local gentry.
In a small place like Yong Prefecture, the release of the examination results was practically a festival. All the notable figures in town were bound to attend.
Those people were the Ming Cult's true targets.
They had suffered plenty in their recent clashes with Wu Que and Nightingale. Now, driven into a corner, they had simply dropped all pretense.
A terrorist attack. Hostages.
If all went well, they'd simply launch a rebellion. If not, they'd use their hostages to force Wu Que and Nightingale to appear, then avenge the former Holy Maiden, He Sijun, and her disciple, Zhu Yan.
The old man didn't attack himself. He looked down, ready to savor the panic on the faces of those powerful people who usually held their heads high.
The attack had indeed come too suddenly.
The troops stationed in Jinghu South Circuit were weak, and even in the capital, no one would have expected martial-world thugs to strike during the imperial examination results announcement. The scholars were utterly stunned.
"How dare you!"
Only then did a thunderous shout ring out, shaking the heavens.
It came from Huang Shang, standing in the middle of the crowd!
He held no brush. He simply took one step forward.
Faced with the sudden attack by martial-world bandits, he strode forward without the slightest fear and roared at them.
To ordinary people, his voice was merely loud. But to the Ming Cult, it was like a bolt of thunder exploding out of a clear sky. Its shockwave swept the hidden weapons aside and left them dizzy. They couldn't even launch the second wave of their attack, which they had already prepared.
"It's the top candidate!"
"Noble Spirit!"
Only after that shout did the scholars come to their senses. Seeing the hidden weapons, they were so frightened their hands and feet went weak.
But at the same time, the four characters Noble Spirit flashed through the minds of the scholars who revered Mencius's teachings, and they shouted them aloud.
Mencius said, "I am skilled at nurturing my vast, flowing qi. As for this qi, it is supremely great and supremely strong. Nourish it with uprightness and do it no harm, and it will fill the space between Heaven and Earth."
In other words, Noble Spirit was great and strong. If nurtured through upright conduct without being harmed, it would fill the space between Heaven and Earth.
It wasn't actually a force, but the Confucian bearing and backbone.
What Huang Shang was displaying now wasn't quite what Mencius had envisioned, yet the two shared a remarkable similarity.
When the results were announced and he placed first, Huang Shang had felt the Literary Qi in his body surge to nearly twice its former strength.
Anyone else would have struggled to adapt to such explosive growth. Fortunately, Huang Shang had been preparing gradually over the past few days. He remained calm as a surge welled between his brows, and an exceptionally pure stream of true qi gushed from his Ancestral Aperture.
Literary Qi could strengthen the soul, and the soul could in turn develop the Ancestral Aperture. At that moment, Huang Shang felt that, if he wished, he could use the infusion of Literary Qi to strengthen himself, widen his twelve main meridians and eight extraordinary meridians, and leap straight into the ranks of true martial-world experts.
It wasn't a delusion brought on by overconfidence. It was real.
Although he had little true qi, its purity surpassed that of the low-martial world.
Ordinary martial artists relied on the Lower Dantian to generate true qi, then carefully opened up their meridians through years of painstaking effort. If they grew impatient and tried to rush the process, they risked qi deviation.
But he generated true qi directly from the Upper Dantian. It could even be called innate true qi. As it circulated through his meridians and grew stronger, his originally narrow meridians widened along with it.
One method took twice the effort for half the result; the other took half the effort for twice the result. The difference was plain.
Even so, Huang Shang had already made up his mind.
He wouldn't get greedy.
He would use most of the true qi gained from his rapidly swelling Literary Qi to strengthen his twelve main meridians.
As expected, in a short time, his true qi multiplied several times over, and the strength of his twelve main meridians had reached the level of an accomplished martial artist.
Next, Huang Shang tried combining true qi and Literary Qi, putting both to use at once.
True qi borrowed Literary Qi's intangible nature to fill the space between Heaven and Earth, while Literary Qi borrowed true qi's grounded solidity to sink into his body.
"I nurture my Noble Spirit!"
All of this sounded like a long process, but it took only a few dozen breaths. Hearing the scholars cry out in astonishment, Huang Shang felt that Mencius's term Noble Spirit suited him rather well.
Of course, the power he wielded wasn't the same as the one Mencius had spoken of, nor did it need to be.
Everyone born beneath Heaven and Earth had a path of their own.
Only by following your own path could you walk the great and open road.
So by choosing the same name, Huang Shang was expressing not only his uprightness before Heaven and Earth, with nothing to hide, but also wielding it as a means of attack.
His shout left everyone, in the open or hidden, utterly horrified.
He took a step.
Forward.
The crowd that had once gathered around him now parted of its own accord.
Huang Shang walked to the very front of the scholars and led them as they faced the Ming Cult.
"Bandits!"
One scholar, his voice trembling, was the first to shout.
"Bandits! Bandits! Bandits!"
Once one had started, the rest of the scholars found their courage. They glared furiously at the thugs clutching swords and blades.
Standing shoulder to shoulder before the Examination Hall, the scholars unleashed a thunderous cry that surged like a rolling tide.
The Ming Cult followers, by contrast, retreated again and again.
Their ears rang and their heads spun. They stumbled backward, then finally collapsed to the ground, unable to stop themselves. Blood streamed from their eyes, ears, noses, and mouths. They had been shaken to death.
The old man was a born powerhouse, a man who had feared nothing. But up on the tavern, even his hands were shaking.
"Go! Go!"
"No! It's fake! I don't believe it!"
Reason told him that something was terribly wrong down there. Yet his desire to avenge the Holy Maiden drove him to leap from Top Scholar Pavilion, clench his teeth, and advance toward Huang Shang one step at a time.
Huang Shang looked at him and said, "Only when a man knows what not to do can he accomplish what he ought to do. You evil cultists have rebelled against the authorities and sought to set the land ablaze. You deserve death!"
The Great Song had stood for a century. Though the country had seen upheaval from time to time and war had often broken out along its borders, peace had largely prevailed within its own territory.
For people living in modern times, such peace might seem ordinary. But after the centuries of turmoil that had followed the late Tang and the Five Dynasties, this was a rare and precious period of happiness for the Han people.
Now the Ming Cult was about to destroy that hard-won peace.
Facing these bandits, Huang Shang finally took out the Zhuge Pen and swiftly wrote two characters.
Mountain!
Heaven!
Heaven over Mountain: the Great Taming Hexagram!
The Great Taming Hexagram meant climbing high to survey all beneath Heaven. Nothing was greater than Heaven; nothing could stop one more firmly than a mountain. One halted one's advance and continually stored up strength.
It was a move that built momentum.
In an ordinary battle, it would take a long time to gather strength. But in the Examination Hall, where Literary Qi surged and had nowhere to go, it took almost no time at all!
As Noble Spirit gathered at the tip of his brush and drew upon the Literary Qi within the Examination Hall, it surged forth with an irresistible force. Terror and despair finally appeared in the old man's eyes.
Too late!
As Wu Que and Nightingale watched in shock from their hiding place, the mighty, imposing Ming Cult Dharma King was swallowed by the flood of Literary Qi, vanishing in an instant like a wave swept into the ocean.
To ordinary onlookers, it looked as if the bandit leader had tried to harm the top candidate but been rebuked in a thunderous voice. His body swayed, he stumbled backward three steps, and the hammer he had raised smashed into his own skull before he fell backward.
"So this is how Literary Qi cultivation works? The Examination Hall gives him home-field advantage. That's terrifying!"
Wu Que sucked in a breath, never imagining that the battle would already be over without either of them having to step in.
Huang Shang lowered his brush and pondered the first enhancement brought by the imperial examinations.
His figure was etched into the hearts and minds of the scholars.
Many years later, some would become jinshi, some would govern a region, and some would till the land to make a living. None of them would ever forget that day.
Thunder woke the sleepers; upright qi filled Heaven and Earth!
Divine might!
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