Wielding the Arts Against Outer Gods

A stern-looking woman in dark robes entered the room alongside the man, gripping an oddly shaped ritual implement.

Her eyes narrowed. Extreme wariness mingled with icy menace in her gaze as she fixed it on Li Shun, as though he were a fiend.

The energy around her was taut as a fully drawn bow. At the slightest hint that something was amiss, she seemed ready to strike without hesitation and kill Li Shun on the spot.

Neither of them showed any intention of announcing who they were.

The middle-aged man looked down at Li Shun, his face cold as frost. Without a word to spare, he said stiffly, "I ask. You answer."

Though Li Shun had grown familiar with the interrogation process, he let none of it show. He put on just the right measure of unease and nervousness, then gave a stiff nod.

Once again, the questions concerned passages from the Confucian School's classics.

This time, however, the questioning was far more rigorous, peeling back layer after layer. It ranged from the subtle meanings in the sages' original texts to generations of great scholars' commentaries and textual studies, and finally to Li Shun's own insights into the Dao. By the end, Li Shun almost felt as though he were sitting an imperial examination, with danger lurking at every step.

The grueling interrogation lasted a full two hours.

Li Shun answered every question smoothly, and not a trace of murkiness or strange color appeared in his energy. Only then did the tension in the man and woman conducting the interrogation visibly begin to ease.

Once the questioning was over, the two introduced themselves.

The middle-aged man was Fu Yue, a practitioner of the Confucian School's Haoran Qi tradition.

The woman was Jiang Guanyu, an inspector of Great Qian's Heaven Oversight