Do Not Speak of Valuing the Person When You Only Stir Their Hearts

Traitorous minister Qiu Yan!

Hearing that title, Qiu Yan's gaze did not change in the slightest. He knew that the scene before him was something Han Bian had conjured through the aura, the classics, and visualization.

But the Imperial Academy students within this illusion were not necessarily fake.

As his gaze swept across them, he found several familiar faces among the crowd—Zhou Guan, Luo Jiayun, Cao Hanqi, and the others were all there. Wen Zhizhen was among them as well, as was Feng Zhao, whom he had met only once before.

These people had originally each gone their separate ways.

Zhou Guan had passed the Metropolitan Examination and now held an office in the court. Luo Jiayun had failed and returned home to study diligently in preparation for another attempt. As for Wen Zhizhen, there was no need to say more: he had become the scapegoat in the cheating case. After being imprisoned in the Imperial City for a time, he had been stripped of his scholarly credentials and permanently barred from appointment. The Imperial Examinations were forever beyond his reach in this lifetime. Worse still, his reputation had been utterly ruined; even if he devoted himself to learning, he might not achieve anything.

As for Feng Zhao, Qiu Yan did not know where he had gone now, but it was not difficult to infer his general circumstances.

Not a single one of them had ever entered the Imperial Academy.

These people had gone in different directions, and their fortune varied in strength. They had few dealings with one another, yet their circumstances were not determined wholly by fortune, only influenced by it to a certain degree.

Now, their faces had appeared here for a reason. The few of them shared certain similarities.

"These people are projections manifested from fortune.