Gu Haitang told herself in her heart: What I'm doing is just for the sake of the family and the sect, and to consider the possibility of alliance marriages in the future.
...
The venue of the Hundred Flowers Banquet is set beside a serene lake in the valley, surrounded by hundreds of kinds of precious flowers, all competing in beauty and blooming profusely at this moment.
Amidst the various celestial flowers and spirit grasses surrounding them, the living water from the lake draws up, building square platforms and pavilions on the water, connected by nine winding bridges.
Each square platform is open-air, akin to an elegant seat, delicately arranged for three to five people of the same force to sit down.
The arrangement of each rectangular platform involves much ingenuity, subtly embedding the principles of the Nine Palaces and Eight Trigrams, inside and outside forming three layers, interwoven and encircling a multi-story cylindrical "Dao Lecture Platform" at the center.
