The sage was determined to die.

The first round of testing went by quickly.

Ji Bai remained silent throughout the entire conversation, while the mother-in-law remained completely silent.

She has now completely mastered cracking sunflower seeds with her front teeth; she can peel a whole sunflower seed kernel by simply pressing her upper and lower lips together.

Watching Ji Bai get through with all the green lights, she complained, "There's only one Wenxin. No matter how hard they try, in the end they're just making wedding dresses for one person."

"The more people you let pass through now, the greater their hopes will be, and the greater their eventual disappointment will be. Isn't that even more cruel to them?"

Ji Bai finished writing the last comment.

Then he turned to the old woman he had been talking to and replied, "Isn't this better?"

The mother-in-law, during a heart-to-heart talk: "..."

That kid is a devil.

The elimination rate in the first round was not high; only half of the participants were eliminated.

Ji Bai grants permission to anyone who can express even a little bit of their own subjective opinion, even to racists like Chen Ji who think, "Are commoners and scholars the same race? Why should they be put together?"

However, Ji Bai also noticed it.

Many people didn't actually have their own opinions. The scholars from Chen and Chu who came to participate in the assessment had already given up on competing because they thought about having to compete with the prince and Chen Ji.

After all, no matter how hard they try, how can they compare to royalty...

Ji Bai is choosing the questions for the second round of exams.

The more I looked, the more I realized how incredibly kind he was.

Among a host of brutal test questions, such as "You can pass the level by committing suicide a hundred times in the illusion" and "Saints cannot be emotional; you can pass the level by repeatedly killing your family members a hundred times in the illusion," Ji Bai chose the most civilized one.

"I've really gone to great lengths," he thought.

……

"Where is this place?"

When Chu Xi opened his eyes again, he found himself dressed in a scholar's robe. A painting was hanging in front of him, and a thin, sallow-faced, suspicious person who appeared to be his subordinate was beside him.

He looked up at the painting, which was familiar to him. It was a meticulously painted depiction of the legendary scholar who, during a famine, used his literary talent to expand his body tens of thousands of times, then cut off pieces of his own flesh to relieve the disaster victims, and finally achieved enlightenment and became a saint.

He glanced at his suspicious subordinate beside him. From the subordinate, he learned that a famine was raging in the area, and he was the only scholar there. The function of his literary talent was to make his body expand countless times...

"Could this test be that I'm supposed to learn from this sage?"

Chu Xi wasn't stupid, but having been a prince since childhood, he hadn't exactly treated human life like dirt, let alone as worthless. Now, he was being asked to sacrifice for the common people...

"The exam questions at the mountain of books are truly insane."

Chu Xi's features scrunched up as he looked at his thin, sallow-faced subordinate, feeling as if the other man's saliva was practically dripping onto him.

He closed his eyes, gritted his teeth, and his older brother's face flashed through his mind. In the end, he sighed reluctantly.

"Never mind, my brother is probably already in the next round by now."

As soon as he finished speaking, he suddenly activated his literary mind, and his body instantly broke through the old roof, expanding countless times in size.

……

"He's quite different from what I imagined; that's pretty much the standard answer."

Ji Bai, observing Chu Xi's actions from behind the scenes, offered his comments.

Grandma Tanxin suddenly stopped eating melon seeds, narrowed her eyes slightly, and said, "I've forgotten how many years I've been a guard in the Puppet Forest, but in recent years, the literary world of the Puppet Forest has basically been monopolized by the people of Chu."

"It wasn't like this a long time ago, but in recent years, no scholar from the Puppet Forest has ever obtained the literary talent of a scholar from another country."

She paused, glanced at Ji Bai, and then said, "This year might be different."

Ji Bai knew, of course, that the State of Chu had developed quite rapidly in recent years, completely swallowing up smaller states and fawning over the five great families, attacking wherever it was told and paying the most tribute every year, just like a docile dog.

"I'm afraid the barking dog doesn't bite," Ji Bai suddenly said.

……

In the second round of assessment.

After listening to his subordinate's words, Chu Ze realized that this round of assessment was to use the portrait of the sage as a clue to solve the problem of famine.

Chu Ze frowned slightly and pondered, "Even that blockhead Axi could guess that this level can be passed by imitating the actions of a saint and cutting off his own flesh to offer to the disaster victims."

"It's just being cut into your flesh, what's the difference between that and not paying any price at all?"

Why is the assessment at the "Book Mountain" so lenient?

Chu Ze felt something was wrong the more he thought about it. He was not satisfied with his performance in the previous round of assessment, but he did not expect to advance to the second round of assessment so smoothly.

"Since I didn't directly obtain the Literary Heart and instead have to continue participating in the assessment, it means that I'm not the only one who has entered the second round. Fools like Chen Ji only care about the lives of scholars and don't care about the lives of ordinary people. They certainly won't make the same choice as me."

Chu Ze's eyes flickered, and he said, "Doesn't that mean that a question should have many answers?"

Thinking of this, he suddenly activated his literary mind, expanding his body countless times. Then he extended a finger to dredge the river and irrigate the farmland, and exhaled a breath that killed countless locusts.

Chu Ze did not stop there. He extended his reach for thousands of miles, reaching into the mountains to seize large quantities of wild birds and fruits for the starving people to eat.

The starving people all knelt down and prayed, calling for the saint to return.

"If starving people eat the flesh of saints, they will lose their reverence for saints."

Chu Ze looked down at them and said, "Only by making good use of Wenxin to help them can we help them not only survive the famine but also achieve long-term development."

Chu Ze believed he had delivered a satisfactory answer.

……

Ji Bai wrote "Excellent" on the exam paper.

"This guy is something else," he thought to himself. "He's exactly the same as me."

The system's feedback was also very rapid.

The panel displayed a four-word comment: 【Superior Consumables】

Chu Ze's only concern was that although this problem-solving method was perfect, it was very slow to take effect. On the contrary, someone else solved the problem at the fastest speed.

In the second round of assessment.

Chen Ji completely ignored the portrait of the sage in front of him. After impatiently listening to his subordinate's rambling, he picked at his ear with his little finger and said:

"The assessment is just about solving a famine? That's way too easy."

As soon as he finished speaking, he took a deep breath and swelled his body to the size of a mountain, becoming so majestic that it reached the sky.

Chen Ji looked down at the starving people on the ground and felt that they were as insignificant as ants.

Then he took huge strides, covering one piece of land after another.

In just a few breaths, he trampled all the disaster victims to death.

"When people are gone, the famine will naturally disappear."

Chen Ji felt the surging power within his body and realized that this was the essence of a literary scholar, truly different from ordinary people.

"Ah, there are actually people as intelligent as me in this world," he said.