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Du Ruohan wanted something to refresh himself. As a result, the moment he opened his baggage, a small medicine bag fell out.
He momentarily paused before remembering that this was given to him by Gu Jiao, saying that they were wind chill medicine and frostbite ointment. The wind chill medicine was taken orally three times a day, two pills at a time; the frostbite ointment was for external use and was optional.
But... Would it really work?
If he took medicine blindly, it would be bad if he got a bad stomach.
Du Ruohan persisted for another half an hour, but the morning was about to pass, and yet he hadn't even finished a quarter of the questions.
If he continued like this, it would be no different from abandoning the exam.
Du Ruohan gritted his teeth, put two wind chill medicine pills into his mouth and swallowed them with water!
Feng Lin and Lin Chengye were doing well in their exams, not because of how talented they were, but mainly due to their present mentality. This was their first metropolitan exam, but they were young and already had the reputation of a Juren. Even if they failed this exam, they wouldn't be ashamed.
Of course, Xiao Liulang still hoped that they could pass the exam, especially Lin Chengye. After all, when Xiao Liulang offered to tutor Lin Chengye at the beginning, he promised to refund half the payment if Lin Chengye didn’t pass.
That was more than two thousand taels of silver——
In the evening, when the beat of the drum echoed, all the examinees stopped writing and waited for the exam supervisors to come, seal their names and collect the exam papers.
Their exam papers would be sent to Qinghui Hall first, where six examiners from Hanlin Academy would copy them out using a writing brush dipped in red ink, which was called the vermillion exam paper. The names in these vermillion exam papers would also be sealed before they were sent to the inner hall.
This process was to prevent some marking officers from recognizing the examinees’ handwriting and engaging in malpractices for personal gain.
The examinees came out on the 10th and re-entered on the 11th.
The second exam was eight-part essay.
The topic came from The Analects of Confucius—— "A nobleman is all-embracing and not partial, and Guan Zhong was quite limited in capacity,“ which were two sentences that were not at all related to each other.
It was worth mentioning that the sentence "A nobleman is all-embracing and not partial" had already once appeared in the special civil-service exam eleven years ago, that was to say, it wasn’t a new topic.
That event had produced a lot of excellent eight-part essays. On this basis, impressing the marking officers again was going to be a lot harder. Examinees should not only come up with new ideas based on this sentence alone, but also take into account the next sentence.
The atmosphere in the examination halls was obviously much more dignified than during the first exam.
Apart from the roaring wind, there was only the rustle of the examinee’s writing in the whole examination compound.
Before long, someone fell ill.
He was a Juren in his fifties. He had only managed to become a Xiucai in his thirties, and pass the provincial exam at the age of forty. This was his sixth time taking the metropolitan exam. If he still failed to pass this year, he would be sixty years old by the next metropolitan exam.
The pressure on him was imaginable.
However, the Heavens didn't favor him just because he carried a heavy pressure. He was already frail to begin with, and now sitting in an exam cell on the most edge, the cold wind poured straight into him. In fact, he had already shown some bad signs in the first exam and merely toughened his scalp and persevered today.
But he still wasn’t able to endure till the end of the second exam. He fell down before he finished writing.
If it was just a cold, it was still fine. It happened that he had a stroke.
He could only be carried out by the imperial guards.
This time, he failed the metropolitan exam again.
This time was the most prepared he had ever been, and when he performed the best so far. Without any accident, he should be able to pass it. Unfortunately, he had an accident.
The collapse of old Juren increased the psychological pressure on the examinees, and the examination hall became more stilled.
Here, while the examinees were burying their heads in the exam, the six examiners from the Hanlin Academy in Qinghui Hall also finished copying all the exam papers in the first exam.
The examinees’ original exam papers were sealed and put in special cabinets. They would not be taken out and archived with the vermillion exam paper until the grading for all three sessions were done.
Under the escort of the imperial guards, the vermillion exam papers of the first session were sent to the inner hall, and the six examiners breathed a sigh of relief.
Seeing that there was no one else in Qinghui Hall, one of them joked in a low voice, "I think I seem to have copied An Junwang's exam paper."
Not to mention the answers were perfect, each word was written in a unique and vigorous style. Having seen so many exam papers in metropolitan exams, that one absolutely had the best handwriting so far, almost comparable to a treasured calligraphy of a calligraphy great master.
Unexpectedly, the moment his voice fell, the examiner opposite him spoke, "I think An Junwang's exam paper should be on my side."
He also copied a perfect exam paper, which was absolutely impeccable. Except for An Junwang, no one in the whole State of Zhao could be capable of it.
The names in the exam papers were sealed, so they couldn't see which belonged to who. Before they started copying, they only labeled the original exam papers and the vermillion exam papers with serial numbers. After copying, they would put the two exam papers side by side and stamp them.
If there was a mistake in the serial number, one could look at the stamp.
The scribe examiners were very careful. So far, there had been no mistakes in the exam paper.
The two people began to argue in a low voice, and neither could persuade the other.
The examinees knew nothing about the dispute between the examiners. The examination time was coming to an end, and they were still working hard.
An Junwang had put his writing brush down early.
His eyes would go blind at night, so he always tried to finish answering the exam in broad daylight.
The drum echoed and the second exam was over.
The examiner supervisors came to seal the exam papers again. There were a lot of people who wailed this time around. Obviously, the first exam went too smoothly, which led them to underestimate the difficulty of the second exam.
However, the real nightmare was the third one.
The third exam was questions on politics or state affairs.
It was so tricky that some examinees couldn’t wait to faint as soon as they laid their eyes on it.
The topic was actually about the establishment of an heir.
In the "Spring and Autumn Annals", it said, "The heir should be chosen among the Di sons based on age, not merit; the heir should be chosen based on status, not age.”
[T/N: Di children are children of the official wife.]
It was said that only the Di sons were qualified to inherit the family property. Even if the concubine-born sons were born earlier than the Di sons, the Di sons still took the highest priority. Unless the Di son died, only then would it be the concubine-born son’s turn to be promoted.
For example, the former Little Marquis of Zhao, who was the youngest son in the family and had two concubine-born older brothers before him. His older brothers had no inheritance rights, and only he could be called Little Marquis.
Now that he was dead, Marquis Xuanping Estate should be inherited by the concubine-born eldest son, unless another son emerged from Princess Xinyang's belly.
If there were several Di sons in the family, then the eldest Di son was the most valuable and the one to inherit the family property, such as Gu Changqing of Marquis Ding'an Estate.
Both cases were classified as legitimate heirs, but there were also those legitimate heirs who were not worthy of their position, such as the former Crown Prince.
Empress Dowager Zhuang had no children all her life, and Imperial Consort Liu’s son, as the eldest prince, was conferred the title of Crown Prince by the previous Emperor.
After he rebelled with the Liu Family, he was demoted to a commoner. After that, the second prince should take up the Crown Prince position according to the law, but in the end, the one who became the Crown Prince was the Fifth Prince, which was the current Emperor.
After His Majesty ascended the throne, he made Empress Xiao's son the Crown Prince.
If you agreed with the statement that the heir should be chosen based on age, not merit, then you were expressing that His Majesty got his throne in the wrong way; if you don't agree with it, you were accusing His Majesty of conferring the Crown Prince position to the wrong person. After all, everyone knew that the Crown Prince, though a court official, wasn’t the most outstanding of several princes.
This was simply a killing topic!
Examinees from the You Province were going crazy.
Just who did they offend? Their provincial exam had the topic about cutting off the vassals, and now the metropolitan exam's topic was even more tricky. This damn exam was actually about the Emperor’s household matters!
Although it wasn’t clearly stated that it was a matter of designating a Crown Prince, no one was a fool.
Besides, the matter of designating a Crown Prince wasn’t strictly an Emperor's household matter, but a state affair.
Since it was a state affair, there was nothing wrong in using such a topic to test their group of Juren.
In short, they want to mush their brains with this exam.
Thanks to the cold weather, no one suffered from heatstroke, but another two Juren on the older side felt unwell, all because they were frightened by this topic.
An Junwang also frowned slightly when he read the topic.
Raz P.'s Thoughts
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