Refuse to trample on the pride of heaven

Chapter 423: Great Scholar Li Qinghuan

Lu Wensheng brushed off his robe and suddenly chuckled.

The laughter spread in the air through the glow of the candlelight, as clear as the breaking of an ice spike, but also wrapped in a hint of sarcasm.

"Xiao Yan, are you just hiding in the land of gentleness and feeling sorry for yourself? Oh, the most ridiculous thing in the world is that you have a sober script but insist on playing the role of a drunken clown."

You said I was a clown?! Xiao Yan was extremely angry, but he couldn't say anything.

He opened his mouth, but only a broken breath came out of his throat - those rebuttals were like fish bones stuck in his throat, and were forced back by the cold light in Lu Wensheng's eyes.

Duan Jiashu stood beside Lu Wensheng, his eyes wide open with admiration, and felt that his senior brother's words just now were like a blunt knife, slowly cutting away the other party's layers of disguise - Senior Brother Lu's scolding was becoming more and more elegant, and if he were to become a censor, he would definitely have a place.

Wu Feipeng sighed, as if to say, "As I expected."

Lu Wensheng felt that his expectations were in vain. It was as boring as if he got the wrong one when drawing a blind box. It was a complete waste of his time. Sure enough, he should go and see the great scholar later, or find someone to fool the emperor?

Lu Wensheng was too lazy to look at Xiao Yanqing’s pale face. He just felt that this “Hongmen Banquet” was even more boring than he had expected.

"Let's go," he flicked his sleeves, turned around and was about to leave.

"It's a waste of time to waste time with this kind of person."

Wu Feipeng shook his head and sighed softly, his tone containing a lazy smile: "Brother, why get angry?" He turned his head to look at Xiao Yan, his peach blossom eyes rippling with tiny lights.

"Some people pretend to be foolish for so long that they even believe it themselves - at least this way they can feel at ease holding the golden bowl and drinking the magic potion, which can be considered a kind of 'skill'."

These words were spoken softly, but they were like a fine needle piercing Xiao Yan's heart accurately.

He clenched the wine glass in his sleeve tightly, his knuckles turned white, but he heard Wu Feipeng continue slowly: "But, drunk people will always sober up one day, and when they see the greasy hands and the mud under their feet..."

Wu Feipeng dragged out the last syllable, implying something: "I'm afraid you won't even know how to regret it."

Xiao Yan: “???”

He frowned, feeling that there was a knife hidden in these seemingly gentle words, but he couldn't find any evidence. He felt a fire of evil rising from the bottom of his heart to the top of his head.

Xiao Yan looked up and met Wu Feipeng's eyes that seemed to be smiling but not smiling - those eyes were clearly filled with a gentle light, but deep inside they contained a coldness that saw through everything, just like the water in a lake in December, which looked calm and waveless, but underneath was frozen with ice that had not melted for a thousand years.

He suddenly felt that this seemingly gentle man was more frightening than Lu Wensheng, who had spoken sharply just now. His sinister nature, which was truly murderous, could kill people.

The familiar dark feeling came over me...

He said that this person must have some illicit side job!

Duan Jiashu was shocked when he saw this. Under the heavy filter, he finally realized something - why did Wu Feipeng suddenly become so... mean? His smiling face made him look like a fox with bad intentions, or a smiling tiger.

Before leaving, Wu Feipeng bowed to Xiao Yan from a distance, his smile was gentle but his eyes were calm: "My Lord, please enjoy your meal. We will not disturb you from watching the show."

This is simply using your ultimate skill right at the opponent's face, chasing and killing them.

Lu Wensheng had already walked to the door of the private room. Upon hearing this, he turned around and glanced at Xiao Yan, whose face was gloomy, and a barely audible sneer escaped from his nose.

He originally thought that this romantic marquis might have some outstanding qualities, but now it seems that he is just a deserter frightened by reality. All his words were in vain.

"Boring." He whispered these two words, his robe swaying in the light and shadow of the door frame, and then he disappeared around the corner of the stairs with Wu Feipeng and Duan Jiashu.

"Pretending to be confused..." Xiao Yan muttered to himself, "So I have been pretending to be confused all along?"

He suddenly let out a dry laugh, which sounded particularly desolate in the empty private room.

The setting sun outside the window was sinking into the western hills. The last ray of golden light filtered through the window lattice, stretching his shadow very long, making him look like a puppet on the stage with its strings pulled out.

------

The great scholar was called Li Qinghuan. He had indeed made solid academic achievements and opened a private school in Xiangsheng City. While a dozen children in the private school were reciting the "Book of Songs" with their heads shaking, he could casually point out the ambiguity of a certain chapter in Mao's Commentary and Zheng's Annotation; the "Book of Rites" piled on his desk had the blank space at the foot of the page filled with annotations in tiny regular script.

My biggest dream is to have students all over the world, and to leave a name as a "learned scholar" in local chronicles after my death.

But ever since he knew that he was one of the core elements of the formation, underneath his starched and crisply-washed robe, he was filled with constant fear.

He avoided Tang He and his group of "outsiders" like the plague. He was caught when he was buying mung bean cakes in a vegetarian shop. In a fit of excitement, he actually stepped on the moss at the base of the wall and climbed into the backyard of the medicine shop next door. His movements were not at all like those of an old scholar.

"I still have classes to attend,"

Being blocked this time, Li Qinghuan tried to bypass Tang He and the others. The soles of his shoes made a rustling sound as they rolled over the fallen leaves. "It's a sin to delay the children's studies." His tone was deliberately calm, but it couldn't hide the slightly trembling ending of his voice.

Yan Zhaoming didn't have that much patience, he raised his eyebrows and sneered: "Mr. Li, I'm afraid you've delayed your own life, right?"

These words were like a needle, accurately piercing Li Qinghuan's forced calmness.

He suddenly stopped, turned around and stared at Yan Zhaoming, with complex emotions surging in his cloudy eyes - embarrassment of having his secrets exposed, fear of death, and a barely perceptible resentment.

"You don't understand anything!" Li Qinghuan's voice suddenly rose.

He was not unaware of the role of the center of the formation, but he was even more aware of his fate as one of the centers of the formation.

He was not a pure idealist like Lin Zhuxuan. Whenever he thought about sacrificing his life to the turbid river that had swallowed countless innocent souls, he felt his throat tighten, as if he was back to that flooded night many years ago.

The muddy waves shattered the window frames, the cold river water poured into his lungs, and there were desperate cries around him. When he desperately grabbed a piece of driftwood, his fingertips touched the swollen body of his neighbor.

Before the flood took away half of his life, he thought he would die calmly, but when he was really on the verge of death, all the books of sages turned into bubbles, and only the infinite desire for life remained.

When the cold flood poured into his throat, when he saw with his own eyes the neighbor's children being swept away by the whirlpool in front of his eyes, when the plague raged and the streets were filled with swollen corpses... his fear of death was like the mud at the bottom of the river, deeply embedded in the bones.

That was not the generosity of "everyone is mortal since ancient times" as described by literati, but the extreme pain of having one's vitality stripped away inch by inch by the river water, and the feeling of powerlessness of watching oneself being swallowed by a whirlpool like a fallen leaf.