"Gulp!"
"Gulp!"
Inside Orchid Pavilion Tower, countless people stood rooted to the spot, swallowing involuntarily.
Every pair of eyes stared at Jiang Xiaobai in utter shock.
Earthshaking!
Yes, with prose like this, with a vision like this, it was unquestionably an earthshaking essay!
Neither gladdened by outward things nor saddened by one's own lot!
Be the first to worry over the world's troubles, and the last to rejoice in its joys.
Those two lines seemed to echo in everyone's ears still.
Over and over, sending tingles across their scalps.
The middle-aged Brush Holder stood beside Jiang Xiaobai, unable to recover his senses for a long time.
After a while, he raised a hand and wiped the damp corners of his eyes.
It was not sorrow, nor excitement overwhelming his composure, but a sense of honor.
The honor of being here today to oversee this assessment.
The honor of hearing this essay with his own ears.
The honor of witnessing such an earthshaking essay come into the world.
This essay was simply sublime!
In the Jia Character Area, all twelve contestants fell silent.
Not one of them spoke now.
Even Guo Zhan, who had worn a cold expression throughout, lowered his head.
Zhong Yu bowed his head lower still, because he, too, had just written about a tower.
But compared with Jiang Xiaobai's essay, his was undoubtedly mud beneath the clouds.
One stood in the heavens, the other lay beneath the earth. The gulf was too vast.
So vast that he could not even summon the thought of comparing them.
Had he fallen short by only a hair, he could still have refused to concede.
But with a gap like this... how could he possibly refuse?!
So the gulf between one person and another could be this stark!
The others had