Fang Yun returned to Baling beneath the stars and moon, just as the eastern sky began to turn fish-belly white.
Autumn frost covered the earth, cold and white, its chill biting into the flesh.
As he entered the bounds of Baling City, Fang Yun habitually took out his Official Seal and used Dual-Mindedness to read the Discourse Ranking and his messages at the same time.
Seeing the neatly aligned row of Great Scholars' "admissions announcements" at the top of the Discourse Ranking, Fang Yun could not help laughing.
Zhang Zangxiang, a Great Scholar of the Medical School; Xu Shi, a Great Scholar of the Agricultural School; Gao Mo, a Great Scholar of the Legalist School; He Qionghai, a Great Scholar of the School of War; Yun Luo, a Great Scholar of the Confucian School... The string of names shook the Discourse Ranking, and beneath these Great Scholars of the Sacred Academy, Great Scholars from the various kingdoms joined in the fun.
Sai Xiaoyu of the Shu Kingdom, Nangong Leng of the Wu Kingdom, Ye Hongyu of the Shen Kingdom, Zhou Qingtian of the Qi Kingdom, Jiang Hechuan of the Jing Kingdom...
Fang Yun broke into an amused laugh when he saw Jiang Hechuan's name. He had never expected this universally acknowledged kindly old man to join in as well.
Countless scholars were discussing matters beneath those posts, and almost everyone's view was astonishingly unanimous: Fang Yun and the Great Scholars of the other kingdoms were cutting away the Qing Kingdom's roots.
Swing your hoe well enough, and there was no wall whose foundations you could not dig out. People were repeating that saying all over the Discourse Ranking.
Large numbers of Qing Kingdom scholars posted denunciations. Though they dared not call out the Great Scholars by name, they attacked through