Since there were not many words in the test questions, it only took less than 20 minutes for the craftsmen to carve the wooden boards for printing on site.
But it took more than two hours to print the test paper.
After the test papers were printed, the printer also directed the government officials to seal up the carved wooden boards, and the examiner asked his own soldiers to deliver the test papers into the examination room and distribute them to the candidates.
These Jia soldiers are not county soldiers. They are the Imperial Army under the direct command of His Majesty the Emperor. They are lent by the Emperor to the Ministry of Rites, and the Ministry of Rites then dispatches them to the examiners of each province.
Therefore, they only accepted orders from the emperor, the Minister of Rites, and the examiner.
Even the governors and governors of various provinces cannot direct them to do things.
This fully ensures the safety and confidentiality of the provincial examination.
In fact, even the Taoist officials who took the medicine were members of the Taoist Supervision Department dispatched by the Ministry of Rites.
In short, in order to carry out the provincial examination smoothly, the energy and financial resources spent by the court were beyond the imagination of ordinary candidates.
After receiving the test paper, Fang Xiaoyue quickly reviewed the test questions as usual.
As I learned before, there are very few sections on Sutras and Ink Meanings, with only one question.
However, four test poems are required, and the questions of the four essays are extremely tricky, which can be said to make things difficult for the candidates.
Fang Xiaoyue looked at the sky and arrived at the examination room at about nine o'clock to queue up. Afterwards, when all the candidates entered the room, it was already three quarters past midnight. Since the preparation of the examination paper took an hour and two quarters, it should be almost two quarters past noon, which is 11:30.
It has to be said that the skylight is the best at this time, and Fang Xiaoyue's small grid is close to the yard. Although the linen is hung, the linen at this time is relatively sparse, so the light in the small grid is very good.
Therefore, Fang Xiaoyue did not waste time, but took the lead in writing the answers to the scriptures and Mo Yi on the draft paper without thinking, and then wrote three test poems.
After finishing all this work, the time has reached 6:30 noon, which is 12:30.
By this time, Fang Xiaoyue also felt hungry, so she took out the wheat cake and started eating.
Fortunately, the wheat cake this time was sent by the servant of wealthy businessman Qian Laipeng. It is said that it was made by the chef of Qian's house.
This is no ordinary wheat cake, it is made with fine flour, large grains of raisins, beef cubes and fresh milk.
It tastes sweet, chewy and has a large portion. Just one wheat cake weighs one and a half kilograms.
In terms of taste, Fang Xiaoyue felt that it was a bit better than some of the white gum masters in his original world.
Of course, this skill is still inferior to what it was when my cooking skills were at their peak.
But Fang Xiaoyue didn't care about this at all. Instead, after eating up a piece of wheat cake, she carefully took out the gourd, drank a few sips of hot water, covered her mouth, and burped comfortably.
This is also one of the taboos in the examination room.
If you eat something and burp loudly with your mouth open, the patrolling armored soldiers may regard it as disturbing the order of the scientific expedition. At that time, you will not simply be thrown out, but may even be kicked out. The name was written down by the deputy examiner, Mr. Academic Affairs.
If you want to take the scientific examination, just wait until next life.
According to what Lei Wangcai said when chatting in his spare time, during a provincial examination, a candidate entered the examination room because he ate unclean food and kept farting, which was regarded as disturbing the examination room by the soldiers.
The most terrible thing is that when the deputy examiner Xuezheng came to inquire, this guy fired twelve consecutive cannonballs, which made the deputy examiner Xuezheng hold his nose and cursed, which was insulting to politeness, and he was immediately crossed. If you go out, you will be banned from taking exams for life.
This is not surprising. In the eyes of the scholar, you can't even hold your fart in your mouth. When you enter the officialdom, you will fart anytime and anywhere when meeting colleagues or superiors. How is that decent?
What's more, what if there is a chance to meet His Majesty the Emperor?
Farting in front of His Majesty the Emperor is more than just disrespectful.
But it’s so disrespectful!
The charge of disrespect can be applied to many situations, but its essence is to treat the emperor with disrespect!
To put it bluntly, this thing is disrespectful to the emperor!
In Daze Kingdom, the emperor is the Son of Heaven, the Lord of Ten Thousand Vehicles sent by God to qualify for the human world.
Do you have no respect for the emperor? Do you want to rebel or something?
Therefore, this disrespect is actually a very serious crime, and is listed as one of the ten most evil crimes in Daze Kingdom, along with crimes such as rebellion, treason, and unfilial piety.
Of course, if the emperor thinks highly of you, the indispensable kind of respect, even if you fart in front of the emperor, even if you haven't slept well at night and your eyes are twitching, His Majesty the Emperor will forgive you, and even Yu is also concerned about sending an imperial doctor to treat you and giving you high-end medicinal materials.
Jane is in the emperor's heart.
But who can say that they are guaranteed to receive this kind of treatment?
Even Zhou Wuji, the former Sanchao Pavilion old man, was even called Godfather by His Majesty the Emperor after he ascended the throne. His Majesty the Emperor was more excited than serving his own mother because he had some minor problems. He sent out imperial doctors one after another, and even Personal eunuchs were often sent to visit.
This kind of treatment can be said to be that of His Majesty the Emperor's biological father.
But what happens next?
After His Majesty the Emperor took control of the government, he saw that Zhou Wuji was not happy with him. After a lot of troubles, Zhou Wuji was not even qualified to retire and return to his hometown, so he was thrown into the sky prison. In the end, the three divisions were interrogated and more than 30 kinds of crimes were listed. crime.
Although His Majesty the Emperor said that he was pitiful for his old age and was not sentenced to execution or anything like that, he was sentenced to exile in the northwest and his whole family was confiscated.
As a result, the old chief minister, the godfather of His Majesty the Emperor, died of illness halfway through.
Therefore, Master Xuezheng felt that he was saving the candidate.
These topics are far off topic.
Fang Xiaoyue had lunch, lay on the wooden bed and rested for a while, then got up and wrote the last test poem.
After that, he sat at his desk and started thinking.
This time the topic of the four essays seems very simple.
Just one sentence: From Yao and Shun to Tang.
This is from "Mencius. Part 2 of the wholehearted chapter".
From Yao and Shun to Tang, there are many words behind it: more than five hundred years old...
As far as the candidates in the current examination room are concerned, most candidates feel that the test questions are simple, much simpler than the mix and match, inversion, etc. proposition methods.
But Fang Xiaoyue knew that often such seemingly simple questions were actually very difficult.
Because everything that can be written has been written in the scientific examinations of all dynasties.
If you don't solve the problem well, what you write will be equal to plagiarism.
If you fail to answer the questions well, the examiner will demolish your test paper at the first glance.
Because the examiners have to look at so many test papers, how could they still look at how well you write later?
You have problems opening the book and answering the questions, and even if the rest of your writing is extravagant, no one will take a second look at it.
This is the cruelty of scientific examinations.
In Fang Xiaoyue's view, the level of scientific examinations in Daze Country is actually not high. It is estimated that most candidates will have difficulty in solving the four-book essay perfectly.
After all, for a question like this, simply breaking words and sentences will cause questions to be missed.
The so-called omission of a question means that the meaning of the question is not completely understood.
And if you want to break the whole, you can only break the mind.
Point out the two meanings of the saying that a saint will emerge within five hundred years.
Fang Xiaoyue wrote this: The life of a saint has a permanent period, and he may teach his way at the same time, or he may spread his way in another world.
This sentence directly breaks the topic and points out that in five hundred years, a saint will appear, and the saint will preach to the present or future generations.
If the four essays have a total of 100 points, Fang Xiaoyue can score 50 points just by breaking the question like this.
Once the topic is written, the following steps, including title introduction, introduction, entry into the topic, starting section, middle section, back section, and closing section, will naturally be written slowly without any setbacks.
In fact, when Fang Xiaoyue finished tying her buttocks, she realized that it was still bright outside and it only took her about two hours.
This four-script essay can be said to be Fang Xiaoyue's current pinnacle work, and it is slightly beyond his four-script essay level.
Even if he reviewed it again and again, he couldn't find anything that could be modified.
As the saying goes, adding one character makes it more complex, while subtracting one character makes it clumsy.
To be honest, Fang Xiaoyue didn't expect that she was in such good condition today and could finish all the test questions in just half a day.
Of course, he didn't rush to copy it into the test paper. Instead, he put away the scratch paper and test paper, washed his hands, moved around in the small grid for a while, and then went to bed.
It is still a bit early to go to bed at this time.
After all, the sky had just darkened at this time, and most of the candidates were still racking their brains to answer the questions.
Hearing the slight snore coming from Fang Xiaoyue's small cubicle, a candidate next to him rolled his eyes, took out a candle, lit it, and continued to work hard.
In his opinion, candidates like Fang Xiaoyue are just showing off. Otherwise, would they go to bed so early?
At around nine o'clock the next day, Fang Xiaoyue woke up to a burst of crying after a sound sleep all night.
He stood up from the bed and looked at the direction where the crying came from.
It must be that one of the candidates had a mental breakdown. Otherwise, it would be impossible for him to cry so loudly in the examination room. This would be a violation of the rules of the examination room.
Sure enough, it didn't take long for the two armored soldiers to walk over. After not listening to the warning, the two armored soldiers opened the door of the small grid. They didn't care about the candidate's begging for mercy and directly attacked him. Get up and throw it out of the examination room.
This is not surprising. The more important an examination occasion is, the more likely such problems will occur.
Many candidates' families are not wealthy. Some have the whole family scrimping and living frugally to support their studies, while others have the whole family support them together.
It is said that some candidates even sold their wives and daughters to pay for the provincial examination!
This is a desperate move.
Therefore, under such strong pressure, it is normal for these candidates to go crazy due to the sudden breakdown of their nervous energy.
After getting up, Fang Xiaoyue ate a wheat cake, drank some water, and walked back and forth in the small grid. When it was bright outside, she spread out the examination paper and began to copy the contents on the scratch paper onto the examination paper.
The whole process is still very careful and cautious, and there is no chance of any negligence or slack.
After writing the last stroke, Fang Xiaoyue put away the pen and ink and checked whether there were any omissions in the signature on the test paper before signaling the soldier to step forward to collect the paper.
It should be said that he could actually finish the test paper yesterday. However, the usual rule of the scientific examination is that the paper must be handed in after noon the next day, so he has just delayed it until now.
When a soldier sent him out of the examination hall, Fang Xiaoyue walked a few steps and then stretched.
Comfortable!
Now we are waiting for the results of the provincial examination to be released.
After Fang Xiaoyue took the carriage back to the inn, she did not completely fall into a state of desolation, but continued to practice calligraphy and martial arts.
Whether it is improving one's strength in scientific examinations or self-protection ability, it is very important.
He has not forgotten that in Kuangluo County, there is still a nest of yellow skins that may bring disaster to him at any time.
Unlike the college examination, the provincial examination paper takes three days to complete.
During these three days, Fang Xiaoyue basically didn't leave the inn. Except for going to the lobby when eating, he spent the rest of the time squatting in the guest room, practicing calligraphy and calligraphy, practicing calligraphy again, and interacting with each other. as a break.
In the examination hall, the examiners were looking through the exam papers after marking and copying them.
In Daze Country, the examination papers for the county examination, government examination, and college examination do not need to be copied, only the name of the lake is required, so if the examiner wants to cheat, the difficulty is still very low.
But precisely because these three tests are just for testing a scholar, the examiners do not need to take this risk for some money, and the price/performance ratio is too low.
If someone wants to be a scholar, even if they give money, how much can they give?
But the provincial examination is different.
Passing the provincial examination means promoting people, and promoting people can lead to officialdom.
Therefore, in order to strictly prevent favoritism and fraud, starting from the provincial examination, in addition to the method of naming the test papers, it is also necessary to have clerks copy the test papers one by one.
The test papers that the examiners saw were all copied, thus eliminating the possibility of the examiners identifying the candidates through their handwriting.
At the same time, when the clerk is copying, if it is found that a candidate has made obvious marks or secret notes in the answers to the test paper, the test paper can be directly removed after reporting it to the examiner.
In short, these layers of methods are nothing more than to enforce strict examination discipline and prevent cheating.
In fact, except for very few cases, generally speaking, these examiners will basically not help candidates cheat for a little money.
You know, for most officials, money is far less important than their official position.
Therefore, those who practice favoritism and malpractice often turn out to be big eucalyptus.
A fellow examiner shook his head, threw a test paper into the pile of disparaging papers, and snorted coldly: "It's vulgar! It's just rotten wood!"
In fact, this fellow examiner was not excessive at all, because most of the candidates did such a good job in the four essays this time that it made people shake their heads.
After being demoted on several examination papers in a row, this fellow examiner felt a little disgusted and did not have much hope for the next candidates. After all, for an official like him who was a Jinshi, the articles written by these scholars were... The level of sincerity is too low.
