Li Fanming looked helplessly at Prefect Yao and said, "Mr. Yao, I did attend your classes back then, but so many years have passed. You can't keep questioning me as though I were still a pupil in your classroom. I'm already a Metropolitan Graduate. I don't need to take the Imperial Examination anymore."
"As a member of the Tower Contest Society, you actually helped Void Sage Fang. What's wrong with asking you a single question?" Prefect Yao said with a smile.
"That's right! Out with it! You're Void Sage Fang's good friend, so your assessment of Zhang Longxiang's poetry will be interesting."
"Exactly! Exactly!"
Seeing everyone join in the teasing, Li Fanming could only say, "All right, all right, all right! I'll talk. Will that satisfy you?"
Everyone smiled as they watched Li Fanming.
"The opening couplet, 'Long ago I heard of Dongting's waters; today I ascend Yueyang Tower,' is nothing particularly special on its own. But when we consider the whole poem, we find a faint sense of release between past and present, as though a long-held wish has been fulfilled. Moreover, Dongting Lake and Yueyang Tower here should be understood in the same way as 'The bright moon of Qin, the frontier passes of Han': he heard of both Dongting Lake and Yueyang Tower in the past, and today he has finally arrived. The two form a whole rather than standing apart."
Everyone nodded gently.
"In fact, Zhang Longxiang's previous poem already portrayed Dongting Lake with tremendous grandeur. 'In the eighth month, the lake's waters brim level; embracing the void, they merge with the vast clear sky. Its mists steam over Cloud-Dream Marsh; its waves shake Yueyang City.' Those four lines made Dongting Lake boundless, its waves surging as though poised to swallow Yueyang City, giving it the