To everyone’s surprise, Wang Qinghai spoke up first and challenged Liu Man,

“Was your work completed under the supervision of Mr. Su Yi?”

His words were hinting at how he suspected that Su Yi wrote this for her.

Of course, Liu Man mimicked Su Yi’s clerical script style, but no matter how similar their words looked, one of them was male and one of them was female. One of them was an elder, while one of them was a youngster. Their style also looked prominently different. Professional calligraphists could notice the difference right away.

Wang Qinghai’s question made it clear that he was obviously challenging Liu Man.

None of the others felt that there was an issue, for this part was specially designed for the judges to question the contestants.

Liu Man did not panic and said calmly, “No. I wrote this independently.”

“Oh? Can you discuss with us why you chose to write these words?”

“I wrote this piece two months ago. At that time, I was being treated unfairly and had just been fired from my university. This is a description of what was going on inside me. No matter how much the others slander and frame me, my mind still remains as pure and clean as a bright mirror, and I remain free and complete.”

Liu Man did not try to hide this past downfall in her life at all.

The Hanfu Goddess was not famous enough that everyone knew about her. Calligraphists and cyber stars were in two different tiers, and their industries would never connect.

Therefore, her words made many people feel surprised. Whenever someone mentioned that they got fired, everyone would subconsciously think of scums or unscrupulous students, but this girl looks like neither!

They then subconsciously looked towards Su Yi. This time, when Su Yi took in his apprentice, it was sudden and in a hurry. He didn’t report to the association, and most people didn’t know about the specific details. Of course, not everyone was hidden in the dark. Ou Yangcen was very clear about the situation.

Time passed quickly. Lots of talented people appeared in the calligraphy circles. Now, it was the younger generation that dominated in the calligraphy association. The youngsters had their own thoughts.

Su Yi had trouble communicating with them. He now barely attended the activities hosted by the association, and he only talk to the elders like Ou Yangcen.

However, Ou Yangcen still asked Su Yi, “Which school was your apprentice fired from?”

“I’ll tell you about it at dinner.”

Wang Qinghai did not ask follow up questions about why Liu Man got fired; it had nothing to do with calligraphy. Next, he said,

“Please give us your opinion on the first ever monument in the Da Duo Dynasty.”

This question seemed very difficult, and many contestants may not even know what this monument was, not to mention giving an opinion of it? They probably wouldn’t even be able to say a single word and would result in an embarrassing departure.

About half a month ago, Liu Man, like the rest of them, had no idea what this monument from the Da Duo Dynasty was. At that time, Professor Su gave her a file containing all kinds of different questions. One of them was this question Wang Qinghai had just asked.

Professor Su said that, although in the face-to-face round, the judges could ask whatever they wanted to ask about, but they would usually refer to this “top-secret file”. This was like a collection of questions, similar to the ones for different exams. After all, thinking of an appropriate question was also something that wasted brain cells. The judges were usually very busy and would only get to know the contestants and the others’ work on the day of the evaluation. They wouldn’t tire their brains out just to think of questions for hundreds of people!

Because Professor Su did this when he was a judge at the exhibit. He kept this collection of questions that the association handed out in his study, and he never threw it away. To his surprise, it could still be of some use.

Professor Su also said that he couldn’t guarantee that the judge would definitely ask the questions from the file, but being prepared would definitely be better than being helpless when asked on the spot. And so, Liu Man got completely prepared and memorized every question and answer in the collection.

She searched through her mind for a moment before she answered, “The Long Zang Shi monument is publicly recognized as the first and best monument back in the Duo Dynasty…”

The girl’s gentle and soft voice flowed through the room. She was very confident and relaxed.

Everyone who heard her answer all exclaimed in their mind: Which school was foolish enough to fire such an outstanding student?

And the challenger, Wang Qinghai, along with Su Xuezhen, all had weird expressions, as if they were surprised that Liu Man was able to answer it.

Excluding them, the other three judges all nodded, satisfied. They all put a check mark before Liu Man’s name on their respective lists.

It seemed that Liu Man had passed this part. She sighed in relief.

The judge continued to ask the others. The nine following people all had very unsatisfactory answers. Some people, like contestants in previous groups, completely didn’t know how to answer when they were challenged with very difficult questions. Some people stammered and barely got on point, and some gave very unreasonable replies, not making any sense.

Only two people replied as fluently as Liu Man did. One was Su Maolin, and the other was a man standing right behind Liu Man. When he replied to the question, Liu Man turned her head and saw his name card; his name was Wu Qu.

Liu Man felt that Wu Qu was at least 30 years old. His hair was scarce, and he was a bit fat, but none of it affected his sophisticated temperament.

When Liu Man sneaked a look at Wu Qu, he also took a glance at her in a competitive way. Obviously, he put his whole mind into trying to pass the evaluation.

No matter how everyone responded, they all had to enter the final portion — writing with their brush on the spot.

The five judges discussed for two minutes, and at last, Wang Qinghai was the one who announced the topic: “Every single font came into shape in the Han Dynasty. The people in the two different Han Dynasties helped the art of calligraphy prosper with their smart and clever ideas. They created huge numbers of classical pieces, and at this moment, our calligraphy exhibit is hosted at the Han Dynasty exhibit. Therefore, we would like to ask everyone to write the famous bronze carving, ‘Yun Yang Ding’ from the Western Han Dynasty, and change the font from seal characters to the clerical script. You have fifteen minutes.”

As soon as the topic was given, all the contestants had a bad expression on their faces.

Because the topic was way too challenging!

They were only good at the clerical script, so people would rarely go study the seal character. The Han bronze carving was very unpopular, and the Yun Yang Ding was the most unpopular out of all unpopular pieces. Some of the seal character calligraphists might not have even read this passage before.

Some people sweated, some furiously scratched their head, and some tried their best to search back through their memory.

Liu Man stared at the white rice paper, absent-minded.

Her teacher had reminded her so many times for her to write using seal characters this round, but as a result, the judge, as if intentionally going against them, gave a topic that required translating from seal characters to the clerical script. How could she do this?

She didn’t feel like this was hard. Quite on the contrary, she felt like it was super easy. It was much easier than the Jin passages and the Song poems, which were given for the two previous groups!

She knew nothing about the struggles and the sadness in her competitors’ mind. She thought everyone else felt it was easy, just like she did.

So she was very troubled; she was worried about whether her rookie calligraphy style was enough to best out her competitors.

Zhou Budai felt worried for Liu Man, seeing her completely helpless face. He started learning calligraphy when he was five, and he had studied it for sixteen whole years. Even he didn’t know what this passage, Yun Yang Ding, was.

Su Yi and Ou Yangcen knew about the content of Yun Yang Ding. Its carved copy was displayed in the Gudu Museum.

Ou Yangcen, “This part is too strict. Looks like your apprentice can only stop here.”

“That’s yet to be decided on.”

Everyone felt very anxious, but Su Yi had a big smile on.

Translated by: Sydney

Edited by: Michael