Misty Rain of the Old Times

Chapter 116 Foresight
On the day of the exam, Chen Xuan and his friends were woken up in the middle of the night to prevent them from being late and missing the exam. For this reason, Xiao Cai and the others did not sleep all night and were even more nervous than Chen Xuan and his friends who were about to take the exam.

In fact, they are not young anymore. They are already grown up at the age of fourteen or fifteen. They have good figures due to practicing martial arts. Xiao Cai is playful and cute, and Xiao Ye is quiet and gentle.

Probably because Gao's family had good food, these girls, who were only fourteen or fifteen years old, were already relatively outstanding in some aspects, especially Xiao Cai, who was a bit childish.

At this age, ordinary people have already started talking about marriage, and many have even married and had children. It's simply a sin.

Here, a girl is considered an adult when she reaches Tiankui and can have children. Ordinary families don't care so much. Daughters are a loss-making commodity and marrying them off early can save food. Although there are many parents who love their children, most of them are like this.

Chen Xuan and Gao Jingming both have internal strength, so they can be full of energy even if they don't sleep all night, let alone being woken up in the middle of the night.

The entire Gao family compound was brightly lit and bustling with people. If you didn't know, you would think something big had happened.

"Have you prepared the Master's pens? Prepare two more."

"And there are ink sticks, get two more, and the water for grinding ink is essential. Where's the blessing spring I prayed for at the temple yesterday?"

"Paper, paper...you can't bring this."

After washing up, Gao Jingming looked at the two people busying around, but he was quite calm and said: "Why are you in a hurry? Haven't you been ready for a long time? Besides, it's still early now."

"Oh, Master, this is a big deal. Check again to make sure you don't miss anything. Once you enter the examination room, you won't have the chance to make up for it."

Forget it, let them be.

The young master had two personal maids busying around, so Chen Xuan had to prepare by himself. In fact, it was his job to help Gao Jingming prepare for the exam, but they couldn't help even if they took the initiative.

The rules of the examination room were explained many times by the teachers when we were in school. We could only bring pens, ink, inkstones, water and food. Nothing else was allowed to be brought in to prevent cheating. Once we were caught cheating, we would be disqualified from the imperial examination permanently, and the consequences would be very serious.

Also, don't make noise and disturb others... Anyway, these are all old stuff.

After checking again and again to make sure there was nothing missing, Chen Xuan and his team had breakfast and then set off for the examination room.

Mrs. Gao and Butler He personally sent him to the examination hall, which showed how seriously they took the matter. On the way, they only told him to do well in the exam and didn't say too much to create pressure.

Chen Xuan and his companions went to the examination hall by ox cart, which probably implied that they hoped they would be steady.

The examination venue is located in Yang County, not far away.

They had already gotten up early, but when they arrived outside the examination hall, it was already crowded with people in the middle of the night, and vehicles could not squeeze in at all. At this time, the Gao family's cards were useless.

Under the light, there were many yamen runners and soldiers maintaining order. Chen Xuan also keenly discovered that many places even had crossbowmen deployed. It was conceivable what the consequences would be if someone disrupted the exam at this time. In serious cases, it would not be surprising if the entire family was executed.

To enter the examination room, one must first pass an inspection and no one except the candidates is allowed to approach. Chen Xuan and his friends can only say goodbye to the people from the Gao family who are seeing them off and go to queue up.

Several long queues had formed outside the examination hall under the eager gazes of countless people. After a quick look, Chen Xuan was surprised to find that there were more than a thousand candidates already queuing up, and more were pouring in from all directions. The number of candidates must be several thousand, right?
It should be noted that this time the Tongsheng examination will only select a maximum of twenty people, which is truly like a huge army crossing a single-plank bridge.

In fact, it is normal to have so many people. After all, there are tens of thousands of households in Guangyang County, and there is only one examination hall under its jurisdiction. People from all over the country who want to take the imperial examination will come here.

Moreover, the candidates were not just people of Chen Xuan's age group, most of them were adults, who had obviously studied for many years and still wanted to give it a try. After so many years, it was normal that there were so many people taking the imperial examination this time.

Among them, Chen Xuan also saw some familiar faces. In addition to a few who he had seen in Yushan School, Gao Jingming's second brother, Zhou Lin and others were also among them.

Then there were the doctors who used to work in medical clinics, the storytellers in restaurants, the street vendors, and even the jianghu people who were obviously skilled in martial arts...

My goodness, during the imperial examination, all kinds of monsters and demons came out.

But it's normal. Any boy from a good family with a clean background and someone to guarantee him is eligible to take the imperial examination. Who wouldn't want to try his luck at turning his fate around? Even if he passed the examination and became a student, he couldn't become an official, but many invisible benefits were enough to attract people. For example, how much trouble could he save by being exempted from the three services?

"A Xuan, I'll go in first. Work hard and let's try to make the list together." When it was Chen Xuan and the others' turn, Gao Jingming did not forget to cheer them up, because once they entered the examination room, there would be no chance for communication.

"Okay, let's try to be on the list together," Chen Xuan nodded seriously.

No one paid attention to their conversation, because everyone came with the mentality of passing the exam, but some "old men" who had taken the exam many times were almost numb. Is it so easy to pass the imperial examination?
The entrance inspection to the examination room is carried out in a closed single room with about ten candidates. Otherwise, the workload would be too heavy. When would it be possible to finish with so many candidates?
But they were checked very carefully, and everything they brought was checked by professionals. Even the food they brought was carefully checked, and even the steamed buns had to be broken open.

And everyone has to take off all their clothes and their buttocks will be spread open for you to see. There's no way around it, that's the rule, just bear with it.

There were several adults in the same group as Chen Xuan. They clenched their teeth and closed their eyes tightly to endure such humiliation. It was useless to grit their teeth, they had to open their mouths to see.

The key is that you can't hold a grudge because the inspectors have their faces covered and can't tell the difference between men and women. I guess they are afraid that these scholars will take revenge in the future.

Chen Xuan was fine. Not to mention his bone age was only nine years old. In his previous life, he'd gone to the hospital for a skin surgery to get a health certificate. Where hadn't he been exposed? Pi Yanzi had even been exposed by the visa-free sex, so her sense of shame wasn't as strong as others...

After passing the inspection successfully and packing up, I passed through two doors guarded by soldiers and finally entered the examination room.

The examination room was actually open-air, on a huge training ground, with a table every two meters, and there were thousands of them!
In fact, this is the place where the soldiers of Yang County usually train. Chen Xuan knew about it and even came here with Gao Jingming. It was temporarily used as an examination hall. It was normal to think about it. If a special examination hall for thousands of people was built and only used once or twice in two or three years, it would not be very meaningful and would be a waste of time and money.

But what if it rains or blows in this open-air examination hall... I think they have already considered this problem, and they have specially chosen good weather, with a bright moon and sparse stars, and no sign of rain at all.

According to his exam number, Chen Xuan arrived at his seat early, number over 1,000. After sitting down, he waited silently for the exam to begin. The sky was already turning pale.

There were soldiers standing every ten meters in the examination room, so no one was whispering even before the examination started. An invisible pressure enveloped the entire room.

Gao Jingming was more than a hundred meters away in front of him on the left, so naturally there was no way for him to communicate. Transmitting sound into secret was a method only available to those at the innate level. Even if he knew how to do it, he wouldn't dare to try it rashly. Who knew if there were any experts watching around the examination room?

This Tongsheng exam only lasted five hours, almost a full day, so many candidates brought food with them; they couldn't go hungry. Of course, you could turn in your paper early, but how confident would that be? It would be bad if you left the examiner with the impression of a lunatic. And who wouldn't want to do well? One day felt like it wasn't enough time for almost everyone.

The sun rises and the closing bell rings. Those who are late will have to wait until next time.

A moment later, the bell for distributing the examination papers rang again. Ox carts pulled piles of examination papers and distributed them. I received three examination papers, each of which was nearly one meter long.

There is no draft paper. Answers are written directly on the test paper. As an experienced gentleman said, this is called "setting the final word with no regrets". It's just like life. Where can we get so many chances to start over?
So you need to think twice before you act, because once your notes are on paper, they cannot be changed.

Although this seems like a deliberate trap, that's the rule.

I have the test paper in hand, but the order to start the exam has not yet come, so I can only check whether there are any errors or omissions so that I can replace them in time.

There were one hundred questions distributed on three test papers. Chen Xuan glanced through them. The first twenty or thirty questions were fill-in-the-blank questions, which required rote memorization. The next ten or twenty questions were questions that required making sentences and explaining the meaning. Then there were about ten judgment questions, followed by about ten sentence segmentation questions, then some arithmetic questions, and finally some exposition questions.

After reading it, Chen Xuan had a rough idea in his mind. The questions in the front were easy points, and the difficulty came in the back, which was full of traps.

A total of one hundred questions involved astronomy, geography, farming, water conservancy, marching, warfare and even weddings and funerals, which were cleverly presented in the form of questions, almost covering the six arts of a gentleman, namely rites, music, calligraphy, mathematics, archery and charioteering.

Weddings and funerals involve rituals, and different occasions require different ritual instruments. Marching and fighting involve archery and charioteering. Farming and water conservancy involve numbers. Numbers are not just simple calculations; in ancient times, they also included factors such as fate and weather.

Anyway, the exam is still difficult. Even if Chen Xuan thinks he has studied well, he is not sure that he can make the list. There are only ten or twenty people selected from thousands of people, and most of them have studied for more than ten years.

I can only try my best.

However, with his vision, Chen Xuan discovered something interesting between the lines of the test paper, that is, the content almost bound the scholars within certain rules and regulations, and the words loyalty, filial piety, benevolence and righteousness can be said to be silent and ineffective.

In this regard, he could only say that those in power were truly far-sighted. Why? Because if the scholars were well-behaved, the country would be stable. Which would cause more harm: a smart person doing bad things or a reckless person doing bad things?
Throughout history, how many peasant uprisings have succeeded?
The test papers were almost checked, and with three drum beats of "dong dong dong", the exam officially began.

Originally, drum sounds were mostly used on battlefields, but isn't this exam the equivalent of a battlefield for scholars...

(End of this chapter)