Hua Song

Hua Song takes An Chong to a teahouse he knows well, seats them on the fifth floor overlooking the competition grounds, and hands him a rank five investigative Gu worm that shows the talent qi above each scholar’s head. He explains that talent qi alone does not guarantee success, since the competition asks scholars to compose poems on the spot without cheating, testing their upbringing and inspiration rather than raw talent. When An Chong notices interlinked formations amplifying the scholars’ creative thinking, Hua Song confirms it is an immortal formation, and he tells An Chong that the teahouse’s mortal top scholar tea was created by Old Immortal Hua Yu in his youth as a rank four Gu Master. When Li Xiao Bai’s spring poem produces a famed-poem effect, Hua Song reads and praises it at length for using night imagery instead of the usual greenery or peach blossoms. ^{ch. 1976}

Hua Song is Teacher Jiang’s teacher, which makes Li Xiao Bai his grand-disciple, and he has watched Li Xiao Bai’s progress through the world poetry competition since it began. After Li Xiao Bai keeps meeting Teacher Jiang in the crucial rounds, holds back rather than defeat his teacher, and is eliminated, Hua Song leaves an information path Gu Master inheritance, housed in the mortal Gu House Book House, for Li Xiao Bai to find; when Teacher Jiang guesses the gift was meant to spare him guilt, Hua Song agrees. He explains that, as the competition’s host, favoring Li Xiao Bai for personal reasons would have drawn criticism from other Gu Immortals and cost him standing with Old Immortal Hua Yu, and that Li Xiao Bai is still too young to become an immortal outright. ^{ch. 2008}