Is This a Dream?

He didn't begin to answer the questions right away. He first closed his eyes, as if he were carefully considering how to answer. When his eyes opened, they shone brightly. He picked up the brush and immediately began to write down the first answer.

In the same moment that his brush touched the paper, a righteous, noble aura suddenly appeared within the city, causing colors to flash in Heaven and Earth. At the same time, in the Forbidden Palace elsewhere in the city, the emperor sat there holding a Go piece in his hand. Sitting across the game board from him was a Daoist priest, a smiling old man with the air of a transcendent being.

Suddenly, the Daoist priest's face flickered, and he looked in the direction of the exam grounds, an expression of shock on his face.

"One of the scholars taking the Imperial examinations provoked a righteous, noble aura! Which one?"