Qi's preliminary examinations resembled the Ming dynasty of ancient Huaxia in form and content, but there were many differences as well.
The first round was fairly simple: dictation from the Four Books and Five Classics, plus annotation of a few passages, and finally a topic drawn from the Four Books, on which you had to write a complete eight-legged essay—a form built of eight set parts: the theme statement, the theme thread, the opening argument, and so on.
The second round wasn't hard either. You dictated longer stretches of the classics and still wrote an eight-legged essay, only with harder topics, drawn from both the Four Books and the Five Classics together; last came several passages from those classics, asking for your understanding of them, with no format restrictions at all.
Xiao Mo passed the first two rounds without trouble. He was a tongsheng now.
The third round was held fifteen days later, so the candidates could take a rest.
Xiao Mo thought it over and decided not to go back to the village.
He would review right there in Qingshan County and prepare for the third round.
Meanwhile, at Sheshan, north of Stone Bridge Village.
Inside the cave, a white snake slowly opened her eyes.
Her vision was blurry, and whatever was stuck to her body felt awful.
The white snake rubbed herself hard against the rock beside her, over and over.
It took a great deal of effort—she even scraped a few of her new scales off—but at last the white snake worked herself free of the shed skin.
"I'm so long..."
Bai Ruxue looked over her own body and estimated it at seven chi, and much thicker around than before.
With a shake, she shifted into human form.
The girl ran out of the cave to the edge of a pool.
The water was like a mirror, reflecting the girl's slender, graceful figure.
"Wow... I'm so tall... and so pretty..."
She spun twice at the water's edge, her skirt swirling, thoroughly pleased with how she looked.
I'm taller than him now, aren't I?
Next time he sees me, I'll give him a real fright.
A soft joy welled up in Bai Ruxue's heart; in her mind she was already picturing the astonished look on Xiao Mo's face when he saw her.
She skipped back to the cave. Xiaoqing was still asleep.
"When Xiaoqing wakes up, she has to grow big and tall too~"
Bai Ruxue patted Xiaoqing lightly on the head, then hopped out of the cave again.
The girl went to the little path he always took up the mountain, and sat down on the same rock beside it.
She propped her chin on her hand and gazed into the distance, waiting for him to come back.
One day.
Two days.
Three days... four days...
Bai Ruxue waited and waited, tossing pebbles one after another.
She lost count of how many pebbles she had thrown.
She had lost count of how many blades of grass she had yanked up.
How many mice she had eaten as they scurried past.
But still he did not come back.
He hasn't forgotten me, has he?
Will he even come back?
"He'll come back!" Bai Ruxue shook her head hard, clenched her little fists, and rallied herself. "He said so—he said he'd definitely come back to play with me..."
Another ten days passed... and still there was no sign of him.
"Stinky Xiao Mo, if you don't come find me soon, I'm going to get mad!"
That was what the girl said that day.
But Xiao Mo still did not return.
On the twentieth day of waiting for Xiao Mo, at sunset...
Bai Ruxue stood on the rock, cupped her pale little hands around her mouth, and shouted down the path toward the foot of the mountain: "Stinky Xiao Mo! I'm giving you one more chance! If you don't come now, I'm really going to be mad!"
On the twenty-first day, the sun went down and night gradually filled the whole sky.
The girl was still standing on the rock, shouting: "Xiao Mo, I'm giving you one last, last chance. If you don't show up tomorrow, I'm really going to be angry."
The twenty-second day...
"Xiao Mo, I am really, really, really angry now—you won't be able to coax me out of this one!"
The girl's voice echoed through the mountain woods.
The twenty-third day...
"Xiao Mo! I'm never speaking to you again!"
The twenty-fourth day, the twenty-fifth day...
Every day, Bai Ruxue sat on that rock and waited.
And every evening when she left, she would loudly curse Xiao Mo, her shouts echoing through the woods.
"Xiao Mo... where are you..."
On the night of the twenty-sixth day, with darkness drawn over the whole sky, the girl sat on the rock with her arms wrapped around her knees, her head buried against her thighs.
"Why haven't you come back..."
Her crystalline tears slowly soaked into her dress.
Above the night sky, the stars were scattered in countless points of light, as though the Creator had strewn grains of glowing sand across the whole vault of heaven.
Clear moonlight drifted down from the sky and traced a faint halo around the girl.
The girl did not know when she had fallen asleep.
Nor did she know how many times she had cursed "stinky Xiao Mo" in her heart.
But she was still there waiting, going nowhere.
He said he would come back...
"Chirp chirp chirp chirp..."
At dawn on the twenty-seventh day, the sky was stained white again.
Birds chattered in the mountain woods.
A lizard crawled up to the girl's feet and raised its head to look, but then, as if it sensed something stirring, it slipped away with a zip.
On the little path, a man's figure appeared.
Xiao Mo walked on, step by step.
He should have come back long before this after the examination, but the newly appointed county magistrate had insisted on treating the new xiucai to meals and holding all sorts of banquets.
There was no way Xiao Mo dared to turn down such an invitation.
The upshot was that after the examination and the posting of the results, Xiao Mo had stayed in Qingshan County a full six extra days.
I wonder if she's getting anxious from all this waiting.
At the thought of the little white snake, Xiao Mo unconsciously quickened his steps.
Halfway up the mountain, Xiao Mo looked up and saw a girl sitting on a rock with her arms around her knees, her small face buried against her thighs.
The girl seemed to be asleep.
Xiao Mo was not sure it was Ruxue.
From her figure, this girl was a grown woman, not a little thing in her first bloom of youth.
Xiao Mo stepped forward and called softly, "Miss?"
At the sound, the girl's shoulders trembled slightly, as though she had woken.
When she lifted her eyes, Xiao Mo's mind went blank for a moment.
The girl looked about sixteen. Her eyes were like a spring breeze sweeping the branch tips into a whole tree of blossom; the outer corners tilted up in a natural little curve, like the sauciest bend at the tip of a peach petal.
Her pupils were a clear, moist ink-black, and yet something deep within them pooled like a still lake.
Her long, thick lashes were like butterfly wings; when they quivered they cast a small soft shadow beneath her eyes, which only made that gaze brim and ripple the more, with all a girl's own clarity and innocence.
When her eyes shifted, three parts of natural allure slipped out unguarded, only to be locked fast behind that limpid base, leaving nothing but a lively grace and gentleness that made the heart bow in admiration.
She looked up at the man before her, still muddled with sleep.
As she made out his features, her eyes grew brighter and brighter.
Only, across her tender white cheeks ran faint tear tracks, and the corners of her eyes were red from crying.
"Ruxue?" Xiao Mo asked.
Bai Ruxue's throat moved; she wanted to answer.
But in the end, as if sulking, the girl turned her head away, pouted her little mouth, and said in a wounded voice:
"I'm not Bai Ruxue at all."
"Stinky Xiao Mo, I don't even know you."