Chapter 178 Novelist: Loyalty, Strange Tales, Personal Experience, Erotic Palace

In the residence of the commander of the Tianjing Guards, as noon approached, the sweltering heat of the scorching sun reached the house.

He picked up the gambling document sent by Zhou Tieyi and read it carefully.

He picked up the pen and wrote on a few documents. Then he picked up the official seal next to him and stamped them one by one.

Zhao Guanshan said to Wu Qian, "Give him the document, and wait for him to sign the time and place, then hand it back."

This document is made in duplicate.

Logically speaking, a copy should be left directly in Tianjingwei for archival storage.

However, the document of appointment for the fight given by Zhou Tieyi did not even contain the time and place of the fight, so it could not be archived at all.

Only after Zhou Tieyi finishes his work can the file be saved.

Doing so is certainly not in accordance with procedure.

But it's just a programming error.

If he is completely correct in the general direction, then his authority as the chief of the Tianjing Guard will not be shaken.

Wu Qian stepped forward and took the document respectfully.

At this time, Zhao Guanshan spoke again, "Gambling is only between two people. If he affects the people, I, Zhao Guanshan, will not forgive him, and His Majesty will not forgive him either!"

After Wu Qian left, Zhao Guanshan looked at his adjutant and said, "I'm going to take a lunch break. If anyone wants to see me later, I won't see them."

Wu Qian came to Tianjing Guard, and there must be someone in Confucianism who wants to know what he is here for, but he will not tell Confucianism about this matter. He only needs to delay it for an hour, and everything will have nothing to do with him, so this hour is just the right time for a nap.

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After noon, Zhou Tieyi took the official seal of the duel document and asked Wu Qian, "Besides the seal, what else did Zhao Guanshan say?"

Wu Qian thought about it and did not state it in the third person, but repeated Zhao Guanshan's original words.

Zhou Tieyi laughed and said, "He knows what's going on, but I don't know what's going on?"

When Zhou Tieyi's Jueying pulled the carriage and marched out of Baihu City with fifty personal guards, everyone realized that Zhou Tieyi, who had been "resting" for a few days, was going to cause trouble again.

It was just because Zhao Guanshan had taken a nap for an hour, so when Zhou Tieyi's carriage drove towards the famous theater "Tai'an Garden" in Suzaku City, everyone guessed that Zhou Tieyi was going to take action against the novelist.

In the carriage, Zhou Tieyi and Hu Wenlang sat opposite each other. Hu Wenlang handed the sorted papers to Zhou Tieyi, which listed the names of several novelists' direct descendants, their strengths, and analysis and speculations of their abilities.

These novelists were all in Tianjing and were all over 25 and under 30 years old.

Among them, the weakest has the strength of the sixth rank "Seeing the World", and the strongest has the strength of the fifth rank "Manifesting the Saint".

If Zhou Tieyi wants to split the entire novelist community and let Hu Wenlang help him control at least a quarter of the novelists, he needs to firmly suppress the "anti-Confucian school" among the novelists.

Although novelists as a whole rely on Confucianism, the attitude towards Confucianism naturally varies due to the different genres of novels.

"The most popular school of novelists nowadays is the 'loyalty school'."

Hu Wenlang did not feel the slightest bit of guilt for betraying his own school.

"The core of this school of novels is to help Confucianism promote the doctrine of 'loyalty and righteousness'. Most of them use stories of military commanders and counsellors as the background to add legendary elements, thus achieving the purpose of helping Confucianism to gain fame."

"Among these people, Qiao Yongen's "The New Biography of Xue Ren" is a typical example."

Since Qiao Yongen called him a running dog in Yun Palace, Hu Wenlang certainly didn't mind adding Qiao Yongen's name to the targets to be eliminated.

Zhou Tieyi thought for a moment and asked, "I remember that you, the sixth-rank novelist, 'See the World', went to Huangquan in person to write 'Qi Xiaosheng's Adventures in Huangquan'. Xue Ren is a figure from the Five Dynasties of the North and South. Can he write this story to help him practice and improve his strength?"

When he first met Hu Wenlang, Zhou Tieyi had a rough understanding of the novelist's practice, but he only had a superficial understanding.

Although novelists are a school of thought that 'makes the fake look real', one cannot simply imagine a novel out of thin air and expect to get effective feedback.

If it were that simple, the novelist would only need to raise the level of combat power in his novel, and the novelist would probably have a higher status than he has now.

On the contrary, the earlier in a novelist's practice, the more he needs to rely on "truth".

Only when one's cultivation is more advanced, reaching the middle or even upper level, will one be qualified to "pass off as the real thing".

Therefore, the vernacular novels in this world are like the classical novels of the previous life. The most famous ones all have specific historical references and reliance.

On this basis, it was adapted into a myth.

"Because they are backed by Confucianism, so they have a heritage."

Hu Wenlang explained, "Novels in general, even if they are popular for a while, will gradually be replaced by other novels and lose their appeal because they are out of touch with reality."

"However, this kind of 'loyalty' school of novels is regularly promoted by Confucianists, so it is enduring and can even be 're-edited' or 're-edited'. For example, Qiao Yongen's 'New Biography of Xue Ren' is inherited from his master's 'Loyalty and Righteousness of Xue Ren', which in turn is inherited from his ancestor's 'Commentary on General Xue'."

"Only the author of the book 'General Xue's Commentary', who really lived in the era of General Xue Ren and personally experienced the events of that time, could use this as the basis for his novel."

Zhou Tieyi nodded slightly, indicating that he understood.

The "loyalty" school of novelists helped Confucianism to promote the five Confucian virtues of benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom and trustworthiness at the grassroots level.

Then, in turn, Confucianism will use its stable power to help the "loyalty and righteousness" school stabilize its position.

This can be seen as the editor-in-chief’s strong recommendation.

As long as you have the editor-in-chief's strong recommendation, even if you write repetitive things and make people bored, there will still be people who read them repeatedly, constantly attracting new readers to replace the losses of old readers and maintain your own strength.

This is the traffic password!

Hu Wenlang continued, "Of course, this kind of inheritance has a biggest requirement, that is, it requires the strength of a third-grade novelist, 'Hongming'. Only those who possess the Taoist tradition of the upper third grade can truly pass on their power to their apprentices."

"Because of the inheritance of the Taoist tradition, generally speaking, their strength is also the strongest. The 'Xue Ren' that Qiao Yongen manifested through the 'Manifestation of the Divine' method has almost 80% of the strength of Xue Ren when he was at the fifth level in terms of combat skills."

"In addition to the 'loyalty' school, the second largest school is the 'strange stories' school. The world is so big that even the Taoists, Buddhas, and Confucian saints cannot know everything. Therefore, strange stories are endless. Novelists collect rumors, witness these strange things, and then write novels based on them."

"This school's attitude towards Confucianism is more neutral, and their methods are more unpredictable."

"The third major school is the 'personal experience' school to which I belong. The stories written are all based on one's own experiences of traveling the world, supplemented by literary methods, and written into novels."

Zhou Tieyi thought for a moment and asked, "Logically speaking, your 'personal experience' school should be the largest school of novelists."

Most of the "loyalty and righteousness" faction relies on inheritance, but inheritance must have an end, right? For example, the founder of the novel "General Xue's Commentary" should be regarded as a "personal experience" faction.

Hu Wenlang smiled and said, "Has the general forgotten the meaning of 'making the fake look real' in novels? If General Xue Ren in 'General Xue's Commentary' is seven parts true and three parts false, then Qiao Yongen's 'New Biography of Xue Ren' is three parts true and seven parts false!"

After Hu Wenlang's reminder, Zhou Tieyi reacted instantly.

The purpose of Confucianism in cultivating the "loyal and righteous" faction of novelists is to promote benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom and trustworthiness.

But even a saint cannot fully achieve benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom and trustworthiness, let alone human beings with seven emotions and six desires in reality?
In the real world, people with seven emotions and six desires find it difficult to become saints.

Even a person like Mei Qingchen could be killed in his own heart, blocking his path to becoming a sage.

But the only people whose hearts I cannot destroy are the sages in the books!
And people in novels can easily become saints!

Under the distortion of writings from generation to generation, he gradually became detached from history and turned into the image of the sage that Confucianism wanted, and then came to teach the people of the world!
This is the core practice method of the novel. No wonder Hu Wenlang refused to explain it to me in detail at the beginning.

Zhou Tieyi then took the opportunity to think about the experiences of the "personal experience" faction. People like Hu Wenlang, who had traveled all over the world, must be knowledgeable.

I have witnessed the exploitation of people all over the world by Confucianism and Legalism.

Therefore, when their novels were first written, they naturally contained some critical thoughts. As one of the biggest beneficiaries of the current situation in the world, Confucianism and Legalism are naturally also among those who are criticized.

Therefore, the "personal experience" school of novelists could not even maintain the neutrality of the "strange stories" school. They vaguely rejected the control of Confucianism and wanted to restore order to the novelists and completely liberate them from the hands of Confucianism.

However, the strength of the "personal experience" faction is limited, and they dare not express this idea directly, so they can only hide it in their hearts.

He was able to win over Hu Wenlang not only because he promised him an opportunity to become a first-class novelist, but also because he allowed Hu Wenlang to see the possibility of liberating novelists.

Zhou Tieyi looked at Hu Wenlang with a smile, "What about the fourth one?"

Hu Wenlang showed a knowing expression, "Hasn't the General already guessed it? The fourth major genre of novelists is the 'Spring Palace' genre."

Pornographic novels have been suppressed from ancient times to the present, but have never been eliminated.

Because "sex" itself is a basic human need, curiosity about and interpretation of "sex" will naturally evolve into the genre of pornographic novels.

Even in this world where many schools of thought are prominent, Confucianism can only denounce the "Spring Palace" school, but cannot completely destroy it.

Of course, there are some marginal factions among novelists, but these marginal factions cannot compete with the above four factions at all, so there is no need to elaborate on them.

When Zhou Tieyi takes action, he will naturally target the "loyalty" faction.

Hu Wenlang had already helped him choose Qiao Yongen as the target. Zhou Tieyi thought about it carefully and decided that this target was not bad and of course there was no need to change it.

"Tell me about Qiao Yongen's strength."

"The biggest source of his strength is, of course, the New Biography of Xue Ren. The 'Xue Ren' in his book is similar in strength to the fifth-rank General Xue Ren in history, which is the fifth-rank 'Forged Soldiers' in your martial arts."

"According to records, Xue Ren is good at spearmanship. The core power of his self-created [Thousand Stars Falling] is the way of stars. He has two ways to exert this power."

"The first is to directly evolve into an 'ink body'. This body can probably exert 80% of Xue Ren's strength when he was at the fifth level, but this 80% only refers to the comprehension of combat skills."

"After all, the ink body cannot compare to the flesh and blood body that has been tempered by thousands of times by the military strategists. Without the blessing of the soldiers and the corresponding peerless magic weapons, it is far from the real Xue Ren. It is already very good to have 30% of his strength."

After talking about the flaws, Hu Wenlang talked about its advantages, "However, compared to the original Xue Ren, Qiao Yongen, relying on his master's teachings, endowed Xue Ren with the Confucian way of 'loyalty and righteousness' in the book, so that in addition to being able to control the Gang Qi, this Xue Ren can also mobilize the Haoran Qi. You need to be careful about this."

Zhou Tieyi estimated in his mind that, after adding and subtracting, a novelist with a heritage could exert 30% to 40% of the combat power of a top military practitioner of the same level.

This is already quite good combat power.

You have to know that even if Xue Ren could only exert the strength of the fifth rank, he was recorded in history books as a strong man who finally broke through to the second rank. Among the five rank, he is also at the top level.

"What about the second method?"

Zhou Tieyi asked.

Hu Wenlang said seriously, "The second method is to contain the ink body with oneself. This method can avoid the disadvantage of the novelist's fragile body, but the mixture of truth and falsehood will affect the novelist's mind and make him unable to distinguish whether he is a person in the book or a real person. Therefore, this method of containment can only be maintained by the novelist for dozens of breaths at most."

"In addition to being able to control 'Xue Ren', Qiao Yongen was also good at shadow puppetry when he was on the seventh-grade 'stage'. However, he has not shown his shadow puppetry skills for a long time. He must be keeping them as a trump card."

"Considering that our novelist's true form is fragile, I guess his shadow puppet technique should be able to confuse the perception of opponents of the same level and make them misjudge his true form."

Hu Wenlang analyzed with reason and evidence.

However, for Zhou Tieyi, as long as Qiao Yongen's shadow puppetry technique has not reached the third level, he will not be able to hide from his own real vision.

This is actually good news for me.

"In addition to being able to hide his fragile body, I guess his shadow puppet technique can also evolve a certain number of 'soldiers' to help his commander 'Xue Ren' exert even greater strength."

“It’s a reasonable combination of skills.”

Zhou Tieyi said with a smile.

The seventh rank of novelist, "going on stage", is like the seventh rank of Confucianist, "self-cultivation", in that both allow one to learn a variety of skills.

However, because my energy is limited, I usually choose one or two useful things to learn.

For example, I know that Hu Wenlang's "ventriloquism" can deceive practitioners who are one level higher than himself. Hu Wenlang is a calm guy, so he should have other abilities.

"In addition to the Shadow Puppet Technique, the General Flag must also be careful of the Novelist's sixth-rank ability of 'Seeing the World'."

"The ability to see the world is related to dreams?"

Zhou Tieyi guessed.

Hu Wenlang looked at Zhou Tieyi in surprise.

When ordinary people hear the phrase "see the world", they will guess that it refers to real scenes, and believe that the novelist can evolve the real scenes that he or she has personally experienced into reality, but that would be a big mistake!
"How did the General Flag guess this?"

Hu Wenlang asked tentatively.

Zhou Tieyi was able to guess this, on the one hand, because the ability of Mo Fei's Yunxiang car that could travel through dreams had never been reflected in the novelist's abilities.

On the other hand, because of Guan Guan's reminder, the novelist has the ability to hunt down those who travel to and from the Realm of Illusion, and they must have abilities and means related to the dream realm.

However, Zhou Tieyi would not explain how he guessed it. Anyway, as the legitimate son of General Huwei and his mother being a Taoist master, he had too many channels to know the novelist's practice secrets.

The reason why he took the initiative to express his guess instead of waiting for Hu Wenlang to state it one by one was to implicitly tell Hu Wenlang, who had not yet returned home, something.

That is, I want to split the novelists. In addition to you, I also have channels to contact other novelists, and I have been doing this in secret, but you don't know it.

Seeing that Zhou Tieyi didn't say anything, Hu Wenlang sighed in his heart. As expected, with the resources Zhou Tieyi had, he might not be his only choice.

Hu Wenlang did not continue to talk about this matter, but talked about another component of Qiao Yongen's strength.

"The novelist 'Jian Shijian' has the ability to create dreams. By changing the environment, he gradually draws people into the dreams he has woven. If people cannot distinguish between the real and the fake, they will be completely trapped in the dream."

“And the more the world a novelist has seen, and the more real it is, the more deceptive the dreams he weaves will be.”

"With the ability to create dreams, novelists also have the ability to travel through the real world through dreams. My Yunxiang car is the concrete manifestation of this ability."

"But it is noon now, and no one is asleep around. His ability to travel through time and space with 'See the World' is unlikely to be fully utilized. The General Flag Officer just needs to be careful of his ability to confuse people."

After listening to the various methods used by the novelist to advance from the ninth rank to the fifth rank, the novelist really deserves the opportunity to be promoted to the upper ninth rank and become the great inheritance of the tenth major school.

Various means are coordinated and changed with each other, emerging one after another.

"In addition to his own strength, Qiao Yongen has another treasure that needs attention."

"This treasure is the 'Hu Inkstone', which is a treasure that can continuously produce special ink. With the ink produced by the Hu Inkstone, he can temporarily transform the ink into various simple means of attack. The supporting characters in the book are like the 'Oil Stealing Mouse' that I condensed that day. These means of attack are definitely not as good as the 'Xue Ren' he evolved, but they are also quite difficult. It is best not to give him time to temporarily evolve a large number of supporting characters in the book."

"At the same time, the ink produced by the lake inkstone has the property of pollution. Once stained by the ink, the treasures and even the control of people's own power will be hindered, just like the ink staining a colored scroll, causing it to lose its original color."

Summoning flow.

Zhou Tieyi understood it in his own way.

Xue Ren, with his eighth-rank title of "Li Shu", is a permanent summon target.

Novelists can also summon other characters from books, but these characters can only exist temporarily and need to be summoned again for the next use. The strength of the summoned characters is definitely lower, and it is also a huge consumption for the novelist.

With 'Hu Yan', although Qiao Yongen cannot increase the upper limit of the strength of the characters he summons, he can increase the number and make up for the consumption during summoning.

(End of this chapter)