Hua Bushi smiled and said: "It is precisely because the people who came to the Lingxiao Sword Discussion Meeting are all famous masters of various sects, it is most appropriate for this meeting to be presided over by a literati, if not, I am afraid that no one will be convinced."

As the saying goes: "There is no first, there is no second", this is not only for the martial arts, but also for the Jianghu sects, especially the famous factions, will always think that their own martial arts are the first in the world.

The essence of the Lingxiao Sword Club is that it is a battlefield for all parties to compete for the interests of the capital, and the "Seven Great Sects of the Central Plains" are all involved in it, no matter which sect's master presides over this meeting, and no matter how high the person's martial arts and prestige are, it is inevitable that there will be a suspicion of bias, and thus be criticized. In fact, there is no sect or master on the rivers and lakes that is enough to overpower all the others and dominate.

Therefore, instead of finding a grandmaster master to preside over the sword meeting, it is better to let Tang Wanfang, who does not know martial arts, has no prestige, and is impossible to intervene in the interests of all parties, do it, and everyone has no opinion.

The so-called mediocrity makes good use of it, and this is the truth.

Sima Rulan is also a smart person, Hua Bushi mentioned it slightly, and immediately understood the reason.

Bypassing the screen, there is the main banquet hall of Lingxiao Pavilion in front of you. The decoration of this place is luxurious, still in the lobby downstairs, the ground is paved with snow-white marble, smooth as a mirror, under the ceiling above, dozens of delicate palace lamps are hung, the whole banquet hall is illuminated, the light is dazzling under the refraction, and people suddenly have a sense of golden brilliance.

In the center of the banquet hall is an empty field with a radius of five zhang, and a number of seats are divided into seats with glazed walls on the east, west and south sides. After careful counting, there were as many as ten seats in the hall, which were obviously prepared for the ten sects participating in this meeting.

On the north side of the hall is a stone platform about a foot high, on which there is nothing else, only eight rosewood Taishi chairs placed side by side. The chairs are covered with red brocade cushions, and are also inlaid with pearls and agate, shining brightly and luxuriously.

Under the guidance of Dou Fei, Hua Bushi and his entourage walked to a seat at the west end of the banquet hall, but they saw that there were already two people in the banquet, but they were a powerful gray-robed old man and a man dressed as a master in his thirties.

When he approached, Dou Fei stepped forward to meet him, and then introduced Hua Bushi to the old man in the gray robe, it turned out that the old man in the gray robe was Dou Fei's father, Dou Ruyuan, the hall master of "Wanli Hall", and the person who was dressed as the master was a steward of the household department, named Zou Tong.

The backstage of "Wanli Tang" in the capital is Xu Hao, the left waiter of the household department, and this Zou steward is obviously the person sent by Xu Shilang.

When Dou Ruyuan saw Hua Bushi, his attitude was extremely enthusiastic, and he thanked the eldest young master for being invited to come again and again, but it was the steward Zou Tong, although he was polite and thoughtful on the surface, the look on his face always seemed a little stiff.

Xu Hao belongs to the Five Kings Party, and in the lobby downstairs just now, the conversation between Hua Bushi and Qiu Hengbo can be heard by everyone that this "evil dog boy" has a great relationship with the Cao family. Not long ago, the leader of the Five Kings Party, Lao Wen Tiren, was impeached by Cao Huachun, and the two parties are now on the same footing, and it is natural that Zou Tong is not afraid of China.

This Zou steward naturally didn't know that although Hua Bushi had an old relationship with Cao Duyun, he actually had nothing to do with the eunuch party, and he had never intervened in the party struggle in the imperial court.

On the table of the Eight Immortals, it was already full of delicacies from the mountains and seas, as well as delicious wine and delicacies, but all the people sitting at the table did not have much heart to eat and drink. What the father and son of the Dou family were thinking about was what kind of ranking and how much benefit "Wanlitang" could win at the sword discussion meeting later, but Wu Yinghao's heart was thinking about how he would follow and show loyalty when Hua Bushi visited the Cao family three days later, so as to have a relationship with the Cao family.

And Hua Bushi's attention was on the various shili in the banquet hall.

Previously, in the downstairs lobby, the guests who came were only divided into two corners of the east and west to sit casually, but in the banquet hall, they were clearly distributed on the seats of the invited side, "Yanjing Eight Gates" plus two new sects, and the ten seats in the hall represented the ten directions, showing a faint confrontation on the three sides of the hall.

The leaders of each shili, as well as the invited masters, can all be seen clearly here.

There are four seats on each side of the east and west sides, which are the "Eight Gates of Yanjing" in Beijing, and the two places on the south side are the other two new entry schools.

"Jinyangmen" ranks first among the current "Yanjing Eight Gates", occupying the first table in the east. The head of the house, Jin Dafu, is a stocky middle-aged man, and the master invited to help is Tang Lianhua of the "Tang Gate in Shu". The big boss of "Jinyangmen" is Wang Chengen, the leader of the eunuch party, and there are two other people in brocade clothes with smooth faces in front of the table, who should be eunuchs in the palace.

Under the "Jinyang Gate" is the "Longwei Martial Arts Hall", which is now ranked second, and the six sturdy men in strong suits at the table stand solemnly, and Master Yuantong sits leisurely on the chair with a big belly, and a middle-aged martial artist sitting next to him thinks that he is the head of the martial arts hall.

The next seats are "Zhengdaomen", "Chujianghui", "Heshengmen" and "Qingfeng Yuan", each with "Huashan", "Emei", "Putuo" and other sects of masters sitting, "Wanlitang" is ranked seventh, the seat is the third in the west, and it is also the penultimate position in the main seat on the east and west sides.

The "Tianxiang Society" at the end did not have the support of the masters in the "Seven Great Sects of the Central Plains", but invited a middle-aged couple from the "Huangshan School" to help. From Hua Bushi's point of view, the couple with a long sword on their backs are introverted, and their martial arts must not be weak, so they took a few more glances at them.

The current ranking of the "Eight Gates of Yanjing" was set at last year's Lingxiao Sword Conference, and it will be rewritten soon, and it is unknown whether these sects can still maintain the status of the "Eight Gates of Yanjing" and remain in the capital.

In fact, compared to the eight seats on the east and west sides, the two sects located in the south are more noticeable.

"Evergreen Xuan" is undoubtedly the most powerful sect in the hall. Baohua Zhenren and Fei Xuanzi are both Suqi who have been famous in the rivers and lakes for a long time, representing the two major schools of "Wudang" and "Kongtong" respectively, plus a master of martial arts, Qiu Hengbo, the ambition of the Cao family in this sword meeting is obviously not just to obtain the name of "Yanjing Eight Gates".

Compared with the luxurious lineup of "Evergreen Xuan", the "Xiandu faction", which is also in the south and next to it, is so shabby that it is not like words.

In front of a huge table of eight immortals, there are only two people sitting, a thin old man with a long beard and a wrinkled face, with a long sword hanging from his waist, I think it is the head of the family, Fan Dongxi, a middle-aged woman beside him has a thick waist and legs, wearing a green cloth shirt, wrapping her head with a piece of floral cloth, fat head and big ears, and her appearance is very ugly.

A three-foot-long boxwood stick leaned at the woman's feet, about her weapon.

Hua Bushi's gaze stopped on the seat of the "Xiandu Sect", and said in a low voice: "Mrs. Yiyi, that middle-aged woman is not on the list you made earlier, but I don't know where it came from?"

Chu Yiyi followed his gaze, but frowned slightly, and said: "The concubine doesn't know that woman, according to the information found by the 'Thousand Flowers Fang', there doesn't seem to be this person in the 'Xiandu Sect'. ”

Chu Yiyi, who is the person in charge of "Thousand Flowers", has a very wide vision of the characters in the martial arts, and even she doesn't know her, so she must not be a person who often appears on the rivers and lakes.

Dou Ruyuan, who was sitting next to him, heard the two of them talking, and interjected: "This 'Xiandu faction' is just a small gang in the Tongzhou area, and it is too child's play to rely on these few two people, neither inviting masters of famous families nor supporting officials." ”

The steward Zou Daodao: "Hall Master Dou is right, these sesame-sized sects also want to enter the capital to find a bargain, do you really think that the territory in the city is so good? I think they are just here to go through the motions, and when everyone competes for the rankings later, I'm afraid they won't even dare to say a word!"

Hua Bushi looked at the two people at the table in the distance, smiled faintly, and said, "I hope it is as Steward Zou said." ”

While talking, I suddenly heard a gong sound in the hall, and a person walked out from the side, came to the empty field in the center of the hall and stood still, and said loudly: "My Tang Wanfang, Tian is the lord of Lingxiao Pavilion, and I am invited by the 'Yanjing Eight Gates' to preside over this meeting.

The boss of Lingxiao Pavilion is about forty years old, wearing a Confucian scarf, wearing a robe, with bright eyebrows and starry eyes, a clear face, five long whiskers fluttering under his chin, and he is born with a good skin, and his demeanor is also quite magnificent, but his steps are frivolous and his breath is shallow, and he is obviously a literati who does not know martial arts.

Between speaking, Tang Wanfang waved the white jade folding fan in his hand and unfolded it with a "snap", but he saw a seven-word poem of "Beauty to the Moon" inscribed on the fan, which was extremely handsome and handsome, and it was actually Tang Bohu's true handwriting.

He paused for a moment, waiting for everyone's eyes in the hall to focus on him before he continued: "This year's Lingxiao Sword Discussion Meeting is not very different from previous years, most of the friends here must already be very clear about the rules of this meeting, but there are new participants, I still have a few words, and the rules are preached again." ”

The rules of the Sword Club are not complicated. The purpose of this meeting was twofold, one was to decide on the new "Eight Gates of Yanjing", that is, to determine the qualifications of the eight schools to develop in the capital in the next year, and the other was to discuss the division of land and the ownership of industries among the various factions.

Therefore, the Sword Society also has two corresponding procedures, the first is the competition for the ranking of the sect, and then the discussion. The eight jeweled sandalwood chairs placed on the low platform on the north side of the banquet hall represent the qualifications of the "Eight Gates of Yanjing", and from left to right, they are ranked from one to eight.

The so-called rules, in fact, have no other, that is, the naked strong win, and the inferior are eliminated. As long as you have the ability to sit on the eight chairs and not be challenged by others, you can become the new "Yanjing Eight Gates" and stay in the capital.