Most of those who were begged lowered their heads, only a few smiled and did not hide their pride.
"The four of you, forget it. Let's not ask for anything. This literary gathering is just like life. It's a good thing to see others win, but you can also smile when you see others suffer misfortune!" Chang Dongyun said.
"Chang Dongyun, you bastard, I treated you to a drink for nothing!"
"After this literary gathering, I'll treat you to two drinks!"
"You have no mercy at all! I curse you to death!"
"It's better to let it break than being a piece of waste paper in front of Fang Yun."
Everyone who was not in the same group with Fang Yun grinned at the same time.
Fang Yun smiled and shook his head, continuing to look at the desk.
The five people on the writing desk had already prepared a draft in mind. After the head of the Wei family gave the order, the five people picked up their pens and started writing.
As they wrote, more and more orange talent appeared on the paper.
When the five people finished writing, one person's poetry and prose talent reached one foot and one inch high, one inch higher than the county.
The other four did not leave the county, and the one with the least talent was Liucun.
“Alas…” The man sighed softly, bowed to everyone, and left sadly. This meant that no one knew what he had written, which was equivalent to a complete failure.
Next, the head of the Wei family recited the poems of the four people one by one, starting from the fourth place, and pointed out their names, making them famous.
Afterwards, except for the first person, the other three left.
Finally, the head of the Wei family invited a Hanlin to come on stage to comment on the seven-character quatrain of the person ranked first. Every word was gem, which drew a lot of applause.
The second group of five scholars comes on stage.
Group after group of people came on stage, and one after another left sadly.
Fang Yun sympathized with every group of unknown fifth people, but he did not blame the elimination system, because the world was countless times more cruel than this literary meeting. The small failure of the literary meeting was not even a lesson, but just a small setback that everyone would encounter.
All the participants in this literary gathering were Juren or Jinshi. In terms of talent and learning, Jinshi far surpassed Juren. However, in terms of talent and ability in poetry, there was not much difference between Juren and Jinshi.
While studying classics and essays on policy and policy emphasizes learning, poetry relies more on talent.
Fang Yun had to admit that the scholars in Jing Country were very different from those in the big countries.
At the Mid-Autumn Literary Meeting on August 15, candidates from ten countries appeared. Although there were no poems that could protect the country, many of them were famous in the prefectures and cities, so their presence in the counties would not cause any surprise.
But at this Chongyang Literary Festival, when it was the last group's turn, there was only one Dafu song. There was not even one Mingzhou song.
However, Fang Yun discovered another problem. There were very few famous talents on the stage today. Some of them were not in the capital, but many were on the top of the mountain, but they did not participate in this literary meeting.
Fang Yun shook his head helplessly, understanding that those people were trying to protect themselves, fearing to be drawn into the dispute between him and Nangong Daru, and even more afraid to be drawn into the dispute between the left and right seats.
A Hanlin finished commenting on the fourteenth group of poems. Everyone walked off the stage, leaving only the head of the Wei family.
The head of the Wei family smiled and said, "Although what I am going to say next is unfair to other literary friends, I still want to say it. Everyone, are you tired of waiting? Then there is no need to wait, the last group of people will come on stage! The model of literati, the four praised scholars, the leader of the Holy Ruins, the literary champion of a state, the top eight in the imperial examination, the twelve articles in the Holy Journal, the cabinet walker, and the world's number one scholar Fang Yun Fang Zhenguo, please come to the literary stage!"
There was thunderous applause.
Fang Yun stood up and bowed to all parties to express his gratitude, then quickly walked towards the writing desk with the other four people.
The four of them looked at Fang Yun with resentment, as sad as a child who had his snacks robbed for a year.
Fang Yun coughed lightly, bowed slightly, and walked up to the desk. He walked towards the fifth table.
Five people stood by the table, and one of them whispered, "It is said that at the Mid-Autumn Festival, there was a genius who hated Fang Yun to death because the emcee was going to introduce that person, but Fang Yun's poem "Song of Water Melody" became popular all over the world, overshadowing that person's literary reputation. No one knows what that person wrote to this day, and I don't know how many tears he shed! How about the four of us compete first? The last one to leave, let the head of the Wei family recite the three of us poems first, and after we leave, let Fang Yun write his own poem and let him compete with the great scholar Nangong for the first place."
"Don't dream about it. If we have a chance to resist, why would we beg those people? Look at the smiles of those people in the audience. I really want to jump off the Jade Mountain!"
"Let's write together, and then dance together after we're done!"
"good!"
The four of them started writing together in grief and indignation, but they only wrote one sentence. Then they looked up at the people below the stage at the same time and discovered something even sadder: everyone was actually staring at Fang Yun!
Neither the great scholars or university officials at the first table nor the women and children in the distance, even the white fox, looked at the four of them.
Even the head of the Wei family, who was presiding over the literary gathering, walked behind Fang Yun, watched Fang Yun write, and recited with his tongue blazing with thunder. This was a treatment that no one had enjoyed before.
"I won't write anymore!" A man put down his pen in grief and anger, hurriedly walked behind Fang Yun, and stretched his neck to read.
The other three people looked at each other, silently made the same action, and walked behind Fang Yun together.
The head of the Wei family recited the title with thunderous tongue: "On the ninth day of the ninth month, remembering the brothers of Shengxu..."
Fang Yun continued writing.
“As a stranger in a strange land…”
When the head of the Wei family finished reading, everyone saw the orange-yellow talent rising from the paper, but it rose very little, only two inches. Not only was it inferior to many poetic geniuses of the time, it was not even as good as other people in the Chongyang Literary Society.
"Jiang Lang has run out of ideas!" the young duke whispered.
Lei Yuanting nodded with a smile.
Many people on the left shook their heads and sighed, seemingly expressing regret.
On the other hand, the person sitting on the right said nothing and stared at Fang Yun nervously.
Fang Yun slowly wrote down the second sentence, and the head of the Wei family also slowly recited it, and then everyone saw a wonder that they had never seen before.
Every time Fang Yun wrote a word, his talent rose five inches. It wasn't just that his talent was surging, it seemed like it was flying!
"Every festive occasion brings more thoughts of family members."
After writing the second sentence of seven words, the talent on the paper rose by three feet and five inches!
Most people were stunned by this terrifying growth of talent. No one had ever seen such a strange phenomenon.
"A legendary sentence to protect the country!" a Jinshi blurted out.
However, those who had higher literary status did not care about this talent and phenomenon, but were pondering the sentence "Every festival makes me miss my family more."
Minister of Literature Jiang Hechuan could not help but mutter to himself: "There are thousands of poems about missing one's family, but none of them can compare to Fang Yun's seven words."
"The emotion in this sentence is so true and profound that it has reached the realm of returning to the original simplicity. The rhetoric is far inferior to that of the poem "Water Melody: When Will the Bright Moon Appear", but the feeling of missing someone is surprisingly not inferior. Fang Zhenguo is indeed worthy of this. Even if we write thousands of poems, we will never be able to write such a sincere yet simple poem."
"First there was 'If love lasts forever, why would it matter if we were together day and night', then there was 'The moon is bright over the sea, and we share this moment even though we are thousands of miles apart', then there was 'May we live long, and share the beauty of the moon', and a few days ago there was 'My clothes are getting looser, but I will never regret it, I am exhausted for her', and today there is 'I miss my loved ones even more during every festive occasion', Fang Yun's strong expression of love is probably unprecedented."
"If Cao Zhi were alive again, he would probably take off the 'Eight-bucket Crown' himself and give it to Fang Yun."
Amid the discussion among the crowd, Fang Yun completed the poem.
Being a stranger in a strange land,
I miss my family more during every festive season.
I know my brothers are climbing high.
There is one less person wearing dogwood branches.
His talent broke through four feet and officially protected the country.
Minister of Culture Jiang Hechuan stood up and clapped slowly.
The rest of the people stood up one after another, including the great scholar Nangong Leng of the Wu State. Even Tong Luan, the assistant minister of the Ministry of War, whose grandson died because of Fang Yun, could not help but nod slightly.
The audience stood up for the third time at the Chongyang Literary Contest. (To be continued...)