On the day of the New Year's Examination, a steady spring rain fell as usual in Jiangning City, and candidates holding various oil-paper umbrellas entered the hall of the Fuxue School one after another.
Wei Chen and Sheng Changbai walked to the eaves of the academy, drained the water from their umbrellas, and checked their book bags.
There is no government funding for the annual examination, so candidates have to bring their own answer sheets. If the paper gets wet by rain, it will be very bad.
Fortunately, their book bags were both valuable and waterproof, and the pens, inks, and papers inside were not wet by the rain.
This year's annual examination was conducted by students from Jiangning Prefectural School and the ten subordinate county schools. The academic administration set the examination directly in the Prefecture School. The Prefectural School and the county school each occupied a large room as the examination room.
Although it is an exam that determines the rank of students, the discipline in the exam room is not as strict as that of the boy exam.
There was no seat numbering or body search, only two tutors from the government school were sitting there to supervise the exam.
Wei Chen and Sheng Changbai walked into the room, each found a place to sit down, and then put pen, ink, paper and inkstone on the table and spread them out.
There was light rain outside the window, and Wei Chen moved the paper inside to prevent the raindrops hitting the window edge from splashing in.
After Wei Chen sat down, a middle-aged student came over. He seemed to recognize Wei Chen and smiled flatteringly at Wei Chen, then sat down behind Wei Chen.
It was still some time before the exam started, and there were many empty seats around, but this person chose the seat next to Wei Chen, which made Wei Chen a little strange, but after all, he was in the examination room, so Wei Chen didn't ask any questions.
After waiting for a short time, the two instructors began to distribute the test papers for the annual examination. Wei Chen took the paper and took a look and found that the questions were very different from the children's test.
The children's examinations are all big questions, such as questions on the Four Books, questions on the Five Classics, expressions of judgment, policy questions, etc.
But when it comes to the annual examination, most of the questions are about Tie Jing and Mo Yi, and only the last two questions are current questions.
When Wei Chen saw the title, he couldn't help but burst out laughing. When he was teaching Sheng Changfeng during this period, he had given him so many scriptures and meanings. He never imagined that these were the subjects of his annual exam.
Tie Jing and Mo Yi are both memorization questions with standard answers. I think Walrus did these questions to test the basic skills of the students, lest they lose their basic knowledge of the Four Books and Five Classics after entering the academy. .
However, for Wei Chen, who has a photographic memory, these basic questions that test his recitation skills are simply scoring questions, and he can do them with his eyes closed.
The exam lasted three hours. Wei Chen finished writing the previous Tie Jing and Mo Yi in less than one-tenth of the time, leaving a lot of time to write the next two Shi Wen questions.
A question from the Four Books and a question from the Five Classics were all ordinary big questions. They were not difficult for Wei Chen, but Wei Chen did not take them lightly.
Compared with the previous basic questions, these two questions are push-pull questions. If you answer them well, your score will be ranked first or second.
The three hundred members of the Jiangning Mansion are either old scholars or outstanding talents. If Wei Chen wants to stand out among them and get the first class, the difficulty will definitely not be any easier than getting in the top ten in the government examination or the college examination.
Wei Chen wrote with great concentration. The tip of his pen flicked and stroked, and neat lines of regular characters emerged, occupying a large area of the paper in a short time.
Since Wei Chen started studying, he has been writing copybooks for half an hour every day without stopping. Now his handwriting cannot be said to be everyone's style, but at least it can be neat and beautiful.
In the examination room, two instructors walked around, their sharp eyes roving around. There were only eighty people in this examination room, and every move of the candidates could not escape the eyes of the two instructors.
The exam time continued to pass, and when Wei Chen finished writing the last question on the Five Classics, some students had already begun to hand in their papers.
Wei Chen checked it several times leisurely and began to copy the articles on the manuscript paper into the main volume.
Half an hour before the deadline for handing in papers, there was the sound of chairs moving behind Wei Chen, and the middle-aged student sitting behind Wei Chen walked past Wei Chen.
Suddenly, his body tilted, the inkstone in his hand slipped, and the wet ink inside spilled out. Several papers on Wei Chen's desk were not spared.
"Snapped!"
The inkstone fell to the ground, making a crisp sound, and immediately fell into pieces. The students in the examination room couldn't help but stop their pens and look here.
The middle-aged student who had soiled Wei Chen's paper was shocked: "Brother Xingyun, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to do it."
Seeing the commotion in the examination room, one instructor came over to check the situation, and another instructor shouted: "What are you looking at? Continue taking exams!"
Under the stern gaze of the instructor, the candidates who were watching the excitement did not dare to look around anymore, but they kept paying attention to Wei Chen from the corner of their eyes.
When the discipline instructor came over, the middle-aged student named Guo Lei was still apologizing to Wei Chen. The discipline instructor frowned and asked, "What's going on?"
The expression on Guo Lei's face almost made him cry: "Replying to the instructor, when the student just handed in the paper, the inkstone in his hand accidentally slipped, which disturbed the examination room."
The instructor scolded Guo Lei with a straight face: "How could you be so careless in the examination room!"
Guo Lei bowed repeatedly, his face full of fear: "It's all the students' fault, and the students are willing to be punished."
Hearing Guo Lei blaming himself so much, the instructor also believed that it was just an unintentional mistake, and his stern face softened a bit.
The instructor turned to look at the victimized Wei Chen and saw the ink-spattered paper on his desk. He sighed and said, "There is not much time left for the exam, so hurry up and re-record it. What happened today was also an accident. I will be studying political science." I’ll explain it to you in front of the adults.”
Hearing what the instructor said, all the students present felt sorry for Wei Chen.
It was now less than half a quarter of an hour before the exam ended, and it was definitely too late for Wei Chen to rewrite it, so he could only hand in the paper that was stained by ink.
According to the rules, in the imperial examination, those with dirty papers will be dismissed directly. Even if there is a supervisor to intercede for Wei Chen, he will definitely not be able to escape if the paper is unclean. Being able to get the lowest rank is considered an extrajudicial favor.
If he only gets the lowest grade in the annual examination, Wei Chen's status as a senior student will not be preserved, and he will probably be reduced to one grade and become an overweight.
Including the instructor, almost everyone in the examination room thought that this was just an accident. After all, Guo Lei was known as an honest person in the academy, and the look of self-blame and guilt just now did not look like he was pretending.
However, a few old students who had been in the academy for more than ten or twenty years felt that there seemed to be something fishy about it.
In the past, there were old men in the academy who had punished disobedient newcomers like this. They secretly speculated that maybe Wei Chen, the little Sanyuan, was too popular and attracted the plot of jealous people.
In any case, if Wei Chen is really downgraded to a junior student because of his poor grades, it means that one of the junior students' quota will be vacant, and then the chances of the senior students to fill in for junior students will be even greater.
Therefore, when they saw Wei Chen's misfortune, many of them were happy to see it, and even took pleasure in it.
However, Wei Chen, the victim of this accident, was not as angry as everyone expected, but instead behaved very calmly.
Hearing that Discipline said that he would speak up for himself in front of the Academic Affairs Bureau, Wei Chen just smiled and waved his hand: "Thank you very much, Discipline. I won't trouble Academic Affairs Master for a small matter."
The instructor was a little surprised when he heard this, but he didn't say anything more and just nodded towards Wei Chen.
Guo Lei on the side said guiltily: "Xingyun, it's me who has caused you trouble. If you want to beat or scold me, Guo Lei will admit it."
Wei Chen chuckled lightly and looked at Guo Lei thoughtfully: "Brother Guo, you made an unintentional mistake, don't blame yourself."
