The people of Jing Kingdom had worried that Great Scholar Tang Zhengwei's intervention would unsettle Fang Yun, but to their surprise, Fang Yun resolved it with just a few simple sentences.
The officials of Qing Kingdom felt stifled. Today, Fang Yun had practically battled an entire realm with his tongue and scourged all eight directions with his words. The moment he appeared, he had denounced the Qing Lord as a third-rate ruler, then shattered Nie Changju's literary guts, destroyed Zong Wuyuan's literary reputation, and later even dragged every person in Qing Kingdom into it. Now that a Great Scholar had stepped forward, he too had been persuaded to withdraw in a few sentences. It seemed there was no one left under heaven who could contend with Fang Yun.
Some Qing Kingdom officials secretly transmitted messages to the Qing Lord, urging him to abandon those petty tricks. Before Fang Yun, every crooked scheme would instead become nourishment for his literary reputation. Aside from making other scholars admire Fang Yun even more, they served no purpose.
Just then, more than a dozen passenger ships docked at the Yangtze River wharf outside Yueyang Tower. One after another, people wearing white mourning clothes, draped in coarse hemp and girded with black sashes, disembarked.
At first, only a few people noticed them coming ashore, but soon, many turned to look.
More than two thousand people dressed in hemp mourning garb left the ships, and an enormous portrait was carried ashore.
Eight Hanlin Academicians carried a wooden platform as though bearing a sedan chair. A gigantic portrait of a Grand Academician stood upright upon it.
Many recognized the man in the painting. He was the previous head of the Lei Family, Grand Academician Lei Zhongmo, who had died in the Dragon Race Battle Realm. Most now