The first day of the Plum Gathering brought three shocking pieces of news.
The first was that the final victor in the Plum Gathering's qin contest was not Bai Zao, the Zhongzhou Sect's favored daughter of heaven, but a young woman from the Water-Moon Convent. Her name was Guodong, and she was said to be Lian Sanyue's last disciple. Her looks and bearing were ordinary, and she admitted that this was her first time playing the qin, yet she drew praise from the Zen Child, and even Bai Zao acknowledged her own inferiority.
"In any case, the Water-Moon Convent wins." This famous saying of the cultivation world had been proven true once again.
The second piece of news was that Tong Yan had not attended the first day of the Plum Gathering, but had gone to the Old Plum Garden instead. On the street outside the garden, he had won more than thirty games in succession, defeating Scholar Guo, the reigning dynasty's foremost master of the Way of Go, in the middle game after the scholar came on hearing the news. There was another matter of great interest: his conversation with Jing Jiu.
The more important news, however, concerned what had happened inside the Old Plum Garden.
Heaven Near Person, whom countless people had been searching for so desperately, had been cultivating in seclusion here all along. Luo Huainan had successfully obtained an audience, and what he had asked had already spread. Just as Jing Jiu had said, it had raised his prestige once again. Many people knew that Zhao Layue and Jing Jiu had also entered the nunnery, but no one knew what they had asked or how Heaven Near Person had answered.
Still less did anyone know that something else had happened the previous night.
Jing Jiu had