Diqin Designer

Chapter 191: Almost Caught as Cheating

Fan Zeng looked up at the other people in the examination room and saw that most of them were like him, with serious expressions and few could write quickly. The middle-aged man next to him wrote quite fast.

This fellow villager who is suspected to have come from Chu is also so proficient in mathematics?
Don’t judge a person by his appearance!
After skipping the fill-in-the-blank question, we moved on to the first short-answer question.

This is a very classic geometry theorem question, and also an easy-to-get-points question.

He first told Fan Zeng about the idea of ​​"the hypotenuse is three, the leg is four, and the side is five" proposed by Shang Gao in the Zhou Dynasty, and then directly gave the conclusion that the sum of the squares of the two right-angled sides of a right triangle is equal to the square of the hypotenuse. Finally, he asked, in a triangle with right-angled sides of twelve inches and thirteen inches respectively, how long is the hypotenuse?
This was not difficult for Fan Zeng, it was just a combination of multiplication and addition. The next question was a military question:
Knight Xiao Ming rides a warhorse at a speed of 30 miles per hour from place A to deliver information to place B, which is 330 miles away from place A. Place B knows that place A has sent someone to deliver military intelligence, so it specially sends knight Xiao Wang to meet the target. Knight Xiao Wang's warhorse can travel 25 miles per hour. When will the two meet, and how many miles away from place A will the place where they meet be?

This problem was not difficult for Fan Zeng, and he figured it out quickly. However, the next geometric problem made him stunned:
Sides with lengths of three, four, five inches, five, twelve, thirteen inches... can all form a triangle. Please describe the relationship between the three sides of a triangle and give the lengths of the three sides that can form a triangle.

Fan Zeng felt that he could not figure out the relationship between the three sides of a triangle at the moment, so he decisively chose to skip this question, but he could not stop and skipped all the way to the last question.

Seeing that he had no more questions to skip, Fan Zeng did not continue answering the questions, but thought about a question: Why did the Emperor of Qin set up mathematics as a subject in the imperial examination? What was the purpose of this mathematics test?
Mathematics is indeed useful, but what we learn in normal times is enough. What is the use of understanding the relationship between the three sides of a triangle? What is the use of knowing the pattern of adding one to eighty, one hundred, and two hundred?
Can you govern the country well? Can you fight a good war? Can you make the country peaceful and the people prosperous?

Mathematics can neither be used for food nor for clothing, and it still cannot make the country strong, the army strong, or the agriculture strong. It is enough to learn a little bit of practical knowledge. There is no need to understand it in depth. It is meaningless and worthless. Ultimately, governing a country depends on promoting agriculture, reassuring the people, and strengthening the military.

Not only Fan Zeng thought so, but many other people who referred to him also thought so.

Fortunately, it was not yet the time when Confucianism became dominant and even the six arts of a gentleman began to be abandoned, otherwise he would have written a letter to the First Emperor long ago.

To govern a country, one must rely on the words of sages. Only by following the teachings of sages can the four barbarians be submissive and the world be at peace, rather than relying on mathematics. Your Majesty is abandoning the great way and pursuing the small way, which will bring disaster.

On the contrary, the Mohists, Taoists and the alchemists who came to consult were more excited, especially the Mohist disciples. "Brother, all those useless things I learned before can finally come in handy today."

The person who asked the question was Li Nian. Could it be that Li Nian is also a member of the Mohist school?

It's not impossible. Li Nian is also good at making things, just like their Mohist school.

Although Fan Zeng felt that mathematics was rather abstract and not very practical and not worth studying in depth, he understood a little bit about it. What he could see, the Qin Emperor could probably see as well. However, the Qin Emperor set up the mathematics exam anyway, which must have had a profound meaning.

Moreover, the person who asked the question was Li Nian, so the possibility that it contained some meaning that he had not yet understood was even greater.

Thinking of this, Fan Zeng looked again at the questions he had skipped.

It’s just that if you don’t study the subject of mathematics, you won’t be able to do it. Even if you read the test paper to pieces and stare at it until it becomes a flower, you still won’t be able to do it.

If a person can jump from being a math poor student to a top math genius overnight, it is probably because he is cheating. We need to carefully investigate whether he is cheating or has a system in his mind.

Fan Zeng glanced at the middle-aged man sitting on his right, who was still writing. This made him have some guesses about the middle-aged man's identity.

Could this person be a disciple of the Mohist school?
Moreover, the name of this person's name is "Chu". Could he be a disciple of Chu Mo?
Thinking of this, Fan Zeng felt mixed emotions. Chu Mo had also abandoned Chu and was going to surrender to the Qin Dynasty?
Of course, it is very likely that he, like him, had never betrayed the State of Chu, but had only come to Xianyang to take part in this big exam, but this still made Fan Zeng feel a little uncomfortable. After all, the State of Chu was gone, and the former Chu people were like the birds flying in the forest. When the disaster came to an end, they all flew away and looked for new places to live.

To this day, when can we expect the great cause of restoring Chu? Who can take up the banner of restoring Chu?

When the Xiang clan was still around, Fan Zeng believed that the ones who would restore Chu should be the Xiang clan.

Although the State of Chu was defeated that year, the Xiang clan still retained a strong strength. They only needed to wait for the right opportunity to raise the banner of anti-Qin and restore the State of Chu.

But the Qin Emperor was cunning. He knew that there was a natural saint with double pupils in the Xiang family, so he eliminated the Xiang family in advance and strangled them in the cradle.

Feeling Fan Zeng's gaze, the middle-aged man thought that Fan Zeng, who was suspected to be a fellow villager from the State of Chu, wanted to see his answer sheet. He frowned and turned to look at Fan Zeng, but saw that Fan Zeng did not look at his answer sheet. Instead, he seemed to have discovered his identity.

As if to acknowledge Fan Zeng's guess, the middle-aged man nodded at Fan Zeng.

At this moment, a scolding came from the front: "You have already passed the policy test, but you still don't know the rules of this exam? Before the exam, I also told you once that you are not allowed to peek at other people's exam papers, and you are not allowed to let others peek at your exam papers."

"I'm talking about you, number 23, and number 33. What are you two doing?"

"I just saw No. 23 looking around, and now I see it again. Are you from the same hometown as No. 33? Do you want him to copy the answers for you?"

"I'm warning you now. If you do it again, your exam results will be invalidated!"

Fan Zeng and the middle-aged man: "..."

The two wanted to explain that they communicated with each other through eye contact and did not want to copy the answers, but they found it difficult to explain and so they just endured it silently.

It would be really funny if it was really treated as cheating by copying answers.

This was the Xianyang exam, the first time Qin held such an exam, and it would definitely be recorded in history books. If they were considered cheaters in the exam, it would definitely be recorded and passed down to future generations...

Fan Zeng was still okay, but the middle-aged man was a well-known figure in Chu Mo. If it was spread out, Chu Mo was caught cheating in the Xianyang exam and his math score was abolished. He would definitely become a laughing stock in the world: Do you know? Chu Mo cheated with others and was caught in Xianyang!

Thinking of that situation, the middle-aged man felt that he would just slit his throat. Anyway, he didn't have the face to lead all the disciples of Chu Mo anymore.

Fan Zeng also sat upright, not daring to look around anymore. He also did not want to be recorded in the history books as: Fan Zeng, a native of Chu, had no talent in the Xianyang examination and found it difficult to answer the test questions. He wanted to peek at other examinees, but was discovered and his results were discarded.

Fan Zeng also has to save his face!

(End of this chapter)