Once inside his examination cell, Xiao Mo settled in to wait for the examination to formally begin.
The provincial examination of Qi was divided into three sessions in all.
The first session tested the meaning of the classics.
The Four Books usually supplied three questions.
Candidates were required to take passages from the Great Learning, the Doctrine of the Mean, the Analects, and the Mencius and expound on them.
The Five Classics questions corresponded to the Classic of Poetry, the Book of Documents, the Book of Rites, the Book of Changes, and the Spring and Autumn Annals—one question from each, of which a candidate picked four.
Indeed.
Qi's history was in fact somewhat similar to that of Huaxia on Blue Sea Star: there had been a Spring and Autumn and a Warring States period here too, and there had been a Confucius and a Laozi.
Only here, those sages of legend were all cultivators who had transcended the Ascension realm, men who had ascended to the heavens and become gods.
Such a possibility was not out of the question.
This world had always permitted cultivation, after all.
Ancestors who had opened up a whole new Dao like that might truly have reached a realm beyond imagining.
After the preliminary examinations, the eight-legged essay format was no longer strictly enforced.
Candidates could give their talent free rein.
Xiao Mo had no great confidence in the first session.
He did not consider himself a genius.
The teachers he had studied under had a certain reputation, but only within a few towns around.
They were not true masters of the age.
Quite a few juren candidates, by contrast, had hired famous teachers from the prefecture for one-on-one tutoring.
So for the first session, all Xiao Mo hoped for was not to drag his own score down.
The second session was applied writing: discourse, judgment, edict, mandate, and memorial.
Discourse: one question, usually requiring the candidate to state and argue a view on some historical event, some figure, or some political or ethical proposition.
Judgment: five questions, presenting five mock lawsuits or official-document cases and requiring the candidate to draft a ruling according to the Great Qi Code and the relevant ritual law.
Edict, mandate, and memorial: one question each.
As for the second day's session, Xiao Mo was fairly confident.
He could let his thinking range freely over the many cases he had seen on Blue Sea Star; his horizon was somewhat wider than that of the scholars of this world, and his angles a little fresher.
The third session was the policy questions.
The policy questions usually came five to a paper.
The topics covered an extremely wide range.
Evaluating historical events and the successes and failures of historical figures, and drawing the lessons of history.
And addressing the real problems facing the state right now—politics, the economy, taxation, canal grain transport, military border defense, the military system, popular instruction, disaster relief, culture—and offering analysis and proposed remedies.
The last of the policy questions asked for his views on the vassal princes and kings of Qi.
"The vassal princes and kings of Qi..."
Looking at the question, Xiao Mo's brows drew together.
Xiao Mo was not the sort to shut the world out beyond his window.
He knew that the present emperor's wish to curb the vassal kings was no recent whim, and that the court's officials had been loud in their calls for it.
But he had not expected that the chief examiner of Jiangnan Province would put "vassal kings" out in the open on this year's paper. That could only have had the emperor's tacit approval.
This is really shoving it right in the vassal kings' faces...
Xiao Mo had to support curbing the vassals—that was the politically correct answer.
"But how to curb them..."
He thought it over for a long while.
Then Xiao Mo wrote three characters on his exam paper: "The Edict of Grace."
At the chen hour on the fourth day the bell rang; the candidates put down their pens, and the papers were collected one after another.
The scholars filed out of the Examination Hall in a steady stream.
Some felt sure they had passed this examination.
Some felt they had blown it completely.
Others were asking the scholars around them what they had made of this or that question.
In the crowd, the first thing Xiao Mo saw was a veiled young woman.
Her embroidered shoes planted on a rock, she gazed into the distance, searching for one particular figure.
The instant she caught sight of Xiao Mo, her lovely eyes kindled with a thousand sparks of delight. "Xiao Mo! Over here, over here..."
Bai Ruxue hopped down off the rock and ran toward Xiao Mo.
"All done?" Bai Ruxue asked.
"Mm. All done." Xiao Mo nodded and patted her lightly on the head. "Come on, let's go home."
"Yay~ Going home~"
The paper-grading pavilion of the Examination Hall.
The grading for the provincial examination took five days in all.
Every paper had to be graded three times.
Under Qi's newest rules, if all three officials grading a paper judged it acceptable, it could be selected as juren, and they wrote the character lu—"admit"—upon it.
If two officials judged it acceptable, it was passed up to the chief examiner, who reviewed it last and decided whether to admit it.
If only one official judged it acceptable, that candidate could only come back in three years.
And on the third day of grading, an official named Yang Zifang came upon a certain paper.
The handwriting was good, the lines of reasoning clear, and the thinking even showed a certain fresh breadth.
Halfway through, Yang Zifang reckoned this scholar would more or less pass.
But when he saw the answer to the final question, he shot to his feet.
"Old Fang, hold off a moment and take a look at this paper!" Yang Zifang said to the colleague beside him.
"What's wrong with it?" Fang Yue took the paper and read. "Good handwriting. A bit thin on the Four Books and Five Classics, but the later sections are all decent, and the policy questions are better yet. Worth admitting, hm???"
When he reached the last question—
Fang Yue sprang up just as Yang Zifang had, eyes wide, reading it over and over.
"What are you two acting so strange for? Let me see that paper."
"I'll have a look too."
The other officials in the room all set down the papers in their hands and came over.
When they saw the last question on that paper, every one of them froze, reading it again and again.
A stick of incense later, Yang Zifang hurried into the chief examiner's room with the paper.
"Lord Zhang, there is a paper here that requires your inspection."
Yang Zifang bowed to Zhang Qianzhi.
Zhang Qianzhi was a Hanlin Academician and headed the Hanlin Academy.
The post of Hanlin Academician was largely honorary, but this Lord Zhang enjoyed great renown, stood extremely high in seniority, and was deeply valued by the emperor.
Even the current chancellor had been Lord Zhang's disciple.
The reason Zhang Qianzhi had come to Jiangnan Province as chief examiner this time was mainly that he had nothing to do in the capital and wanted to get out and travel a while.
"Leave it there," Lord Zhang said flatly. "I'll finish this one first."
"Lord Zhang..." Yang Zifang gathered his words. "This paper—the five colleagues in my room have all read it, and every one of them thinks it should pass."
"Hm?" Zhang Qianzhi raised his head.
A paper needed only three gradings, and yet six examiners had read this one.
And once three examiners had passed it, it need not be sent up at all—yet he had brought it anyway.
"What problem does this paper have?" Zhang Qianzhi asked.
"No problem at all. It is only that this candidate's final answer on 'curbing the vassal kings'—your subordinate and the others all felt that Your Honor ought to give it a look."
"Bring it here."
"Yes, my lord."
Zhang Qianzhi took the paper and read it from beginning to end, making a point of not turning to the last essay first.
But when he did reach the final essay, his brows knitted.
Zhang Qianzhi simply tore off the sealed name slip beside the paper. Yang Zifang sucked in a sharp breath—only Old Zhang would dare to do such a thing...
"Xiao Mo."
"This one's interesting."