The Human Race had always had a tradition of criticizing Sages, but if that criticism was not sufficiently correct and thorough, the Sacred Way would lash back at the critic instead.
If it was merely commentary on a Half-Sage and did not involve a contest of Sacred Ways, any scholar could take part.
Whether they opposed a Sage or took some other stance, they could discuss it as long as they did not use defamatory language. Even the occasional salacious tidbit was permissible, though such gossip rarely appeared on the Discourse Ranking.
A few days earlier, the entire Discourse Ranking had sung Fang Yun's praises without reservation. Even some members of the Kong Family had praised him as the equal of a Sage Kong for this new age, absolutely the ruler who would bring about the Human Race's resurgence.
Yet amid this atmosphere of universal fervor, an article appeared on the Discourse Ranking that accused Fang Yun outright of betrayal!
<Shocking! Sage Fang has actually betrayed scholars!>
When they saw the article's title, many scholars were left utterly windblown and bewildered. They thought, There really are all sorts of people these days. Some scholar from the Qing Kingdom must have gone mad. Perhaps it's one of the Qing Lord's good-for-nothing sons. After all, the Qing Kingdom's princes were now fighting for the Qing Lord's throne until their heads cracked and blood flowed. Had the kingdom's great families not kept them in check, the Qing Kingdom would already have split apart, staging a grand drama of nine dragons struggling for the succession.
The fact that such an article had not been deleted meant Sage Fang had not flown into a rage. Perhaps the article's meaning was the opposite of its title; that was a common tactic.
And so everyone could not