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Xiao Liulang looked at her intently. His wrist was cold and painful, but his heart seemed unable to feel it. He opened his mouth and suddenly asked, "Do you treat other patients like this too?"
"No." Gu Jiao shook her head decisively, carefully applying the ice pack to his hand, "Only you."
Xiao Liulang's heart suddenly rose and was suddenly filled with strange and strong emotions. In fact, she didn't explicitly say what it was that was only for him, but it still rendered people unable to calm their breath.
The ice pack was too cold, in no time, her left hand was completely numb by the ice. She switched to right hand to hold the ice pack while her icy left hand supported his wrist.
As she did this several times, Xiao Liulang's wrists became less swollen and painless, and her hands froze to the point that she could hardly feel them.
When she went to pack her things, Xiao Liulang could feel that her movements were sluggish.
She closed the medical chest as if it was nothing. Actually, it was nothing to her, it was just a frozen hand, it wasn’t as if her whole body had frozen to stiffness like in her previous life.
However, this time, the things she didn’t care about, someone else cared about for her.
When she got up to deal with medical consumables, a slender, jade-like hand reached over and grabbed her cold hand.
The slender white hand, with an irresistible strength, wrapped tightly around her hand.
Her cold and painful fingertips suddenly warmed up.
Gu Jiao stared at him blankly.
He didn't look back at Gu Jiao, but silently held her other hand in his palm as well.
……
In the blink of an eye, it was fifteenth of the fourth month, and the preliminary exam before the palace exam began.
Xiao Liulang left before dawn and arrived at the main entrance of the palace in a horse-drawn carriage driven by Liu Quan.
There were three gates at the main entrance of the palace. The middle one was the main gate, which was wide and tall with a height of twenty feet. Then there were side gates on each side of the main gate.
The left side gate was mainly for the imperial family to enter and leave while the right side gate was mostly for the officials.
Today's examinees would enter through the right side gate.
Examinees lined up early outside the right side gate according to the numbers on their exam permits.
Xiao Liulang and Du Ruohan's exam numbers were together, Xiao Liulang was seventy-five while Du Ruohan was seventy-six. Du Ruohan arrived earlier than Xiao Liulang. He greeted Feng Lin and Lin Chengye, and then waited for Xiao Liulang for a while.
"Why are you so late? I almost thought you suddenly felt too timid to come!" Du Ruohan was a bit jealous of Xiao Liulang for squeezing him out of his original position in Feng Lin's mind, so he always had a snide comment or two whenever they met.
Xiao Liulang was too lazy to bicker with him and just silently stood in front of him.
Du Ruohan curled his lips, "Hey, are you nervous? Feng Lin and Lin Chengye are so nervous over there."
Both their exam numbers were higher than them, one was twenty-one and the other was thirty-seven. With them ahead in number than Xiao Liulang and Du Ruohan, they couldn’t stop shaking.
Fortunately, the rest of the people were trembling in nervousness just like them, and those who didn’t were in the minority.
First, everyone had never been to the imperial palace, so they were feeling tense, and second, it was especially cold today!
It was the fourth month, the weather was supposed to be fine, but it rained suddenly last night, making the temperature drop sharply. At the moment, there was still a strong wind blowing.
Xiao Liulang glanced back at him, "Are you nervous?"
Du Ruohan snorted, "What do I have to be nervous about?"
Xiao Liulang's eyes glanced down. If you don't shake your legs, it will be more convincing.
The scheduled time arrived and the side gate on the right opened up. Officials from the Ministry of Rites soon began to check the examinees’ tokens and exam permits. After that, an eunuch of the palace and an official of the Ministry of Rites would jointly lead the examinees into the Hall of Supreme Harmony in the palace.
This time, there wasn’t much body search. After all, everyone was no longer an ordinary Juren. Everybody here was a Gongshi, and the least achievement they could get was a Tong Jinshi.
What was Tong Jinshi? That was the reserve officials of the court.
"Alas, Little Liu, do you know who that is?" Halfway, Du Ruohan suddenly tugged at Xiao Liulang's sleeve and motioned with his eyes for him to look at a Gongshi with a square face not far away.
Xiao Liulang blandly said, "How come you talk more than Feng Lin all of a sudden?"
The two of them really talk a lot. It must be what you called ‘sharing bad habits’.
Du Ruohan continued with a tut, "Forget it if you don't want to hear it."
Xiao Liulang actually knew who Du Ruohan was referring to, it was Grand Secretary Yuan's youngest grandson, Yuan Yu. When he was waiting in line, he heard the officials of the Ministry of Rites specially greet Yuan Yu and call him Young Master Yuan.
The minister of the Ministry of Rites was a pupil of Grand Secretary Yuan, so it wasn’t surprising that he would especially take care of Yuan Yu.
As for the Senior Official of the State Ceremonial Bureau, he was a pupil of Grand Preceptor Zhuang and probably would favor An Junwang.
An Junwang's exam number was behind Xiao Liulang and Du Ruohan, so Xiao Liulang didn't see him.
All the examinees would take the exam in the main hall of the Hall of Supreme Harmony, where there were seating mats and desks, and ink, paper and inkstone were all provided by the court. Examinees must sit on their feet while answering the exam paper.
The exam supervisors were officials from the Ministry of Rites and State Ceremonial Bureau.
After listening to the instructions and ceremonial speech of the minister of the Ministry of Rites, the examinees cupped their hands in salute and began to take their seats.
There was only one eight-part essay in the preliminary exam, but the topic this time was no longer two unrelated phrases combined together. The topic was—— "The Tao(path) is not far from man. When men try to pursue a course, which is far from the common indications of consciousness, this course cannot be considered the Tao(path)." [T/N: Source: ]
This sentence came from The Doctrine of the Mean Chapter 13, which meant that The Tao was just around every person. If someone practiced the Tao but pretended to be lofty and kept the Tao away from others, then it was impossible for them to really practice the Tao.
There were many breakthrough points for this topic. They could discuss the nature and form of the Tao, but also delved into the degree and way of practicing Tao.
After a round of brutal entry-level exam, provincial exam and metropolitan exam, the examinees suddenly got such a simple question. They were not used to it.
As a result, a strange scene occurred in the examination hall. All the examinees stared at the exam papers on the table with a puzzled look, seriously suspecting that the exam supervisor had made a mistake.
"The examination begins." The minister of the Ministry of Rites announced. Only then did the examinees regain their senses as though they woke up from a dream. One by one, they grabbed the draft paper and began to solve the topic.
If there was any difficulty in this examination, it was probably the allotted time, only two hours.
However, given that the questions were really not difficult, two hours was just enough. Even Feng Lin and Lin Chengye did not feel too much pressure.
The preliminary exam wasn’t included in their final scores, and its main purpose wasn’t to select talents, but to warm up the examinees for the palace exam, as well as to teach them the imperial etiquette and examination hall rules in advance.
The minister of the Ministry of Rites and the Senior Official of the State Ceremonial Bureau jointly supervised the exam.
Xiao Liulang sat in the second to the last seat in the first column. It was supposed to be a spot where it wasn’t easy to attract the attention of the exam supervisors, but he had a crutch beside him.
The Senior Official of the State Ceremonial Bureau noticed the crutch at once and whispered to the eunuch beside him, "Who is that?"
The eunuch counted Xiao Liulang's exam number, then looked at the tokens in his hand and said, "A student in Imperial Academy."
"Why is he..."
The Senior Official of the State Ceremonial Bureau wanted to ask, why was he a cripple?
But when the words reached his lips, he felt it was inappropriate.
Since this dynasty had relaxed the conditions for taking the imperial examinations, then as an official of the court, he should also accept it well.
It was just that the Senior Official’s line of sight really couldn’t help getting sucked away by Xiao Liulang. It wasn’t his fault. It was because this was the first time he had seen a cripple in the imperial exam since the beginning of this dynasty.
Especially in the palace exam.
Raz P.'s Thoughts
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