Beside Tingtao Pavilion, for a moment all seemed to be silent.
Only Liu Xi was bleeding from seven orifices, evidently breathing more outward than inward.
His appearance was so miserable, yet there was no one on the scene who pitied him.
"I am not..." he lay on the ground, asking hoarsely with his last vestige of defiance, "Why? It's been forty years, yet those people and events you recall so clearly and distinctly.
Were you sent by that treacherous son of mine, specifically... to harm me?"
Only the winding river flowed, the sound of water trickling by.
The young man stood in the early summer breeze, leisurely saying:
"My name is Chen Xu, the top scholar of the Yunjiang Prefecture academy exam in the eleventh year of Yonghui. Top scholar of a session, though a rather light title, but was I specifically invited to harm you?
You might be weighing yourself too heavily and looking down too lightly on a scholar.
