Chapter 79: Dream
Chapter 79: Dream
After dinner, Gu Jiao cleaned up the house, went to the west room to tuck in Little Jing Kong, and then went back to her own room to sleep.
The last time Gu Jiao had a foreseeing dream was two months ago, and she hadn’t dreamt again since then.
Unexpectedly, she dreamt again that night.
It was just that her dream wasn’t about Xiao Liulang, but “herself”.
She dreamt that she had become the daughter of the Marquis Gu Estate. She met Gu Jinyu in the Hot Spring Villa, and returned to the capital with Gu Jinyu.
She lived in a luxurious and richly ornamented courtyard. Every day, more than a dozen servants waited upon her, and the family she had never met before loved her dearly.
People respectfully called her Young Miss Gu, however it didn’t last long.
Gu Jinyu’s beauty could overturn a state, she was also gentle and graceful, well-educated and reasonable.
On the other hand, she had a disfigured face and a vulgar manner; she was also illiterate, and clumsy in speech.
Being in such a stark contrast with Gu Jinyu, she became a complete joke.
Everyone was saying that the Gu Family brought back a wild girl from the countryside.
People began to laugh at her, young misses began to alienate her, and even the family members who once loved her seemed to have no idea how to face her anymore.
In order to keep what should have belonged to her, she resorted to doing some bad things under the instigation of people with ill intentions, which caused everyone to be extremely disappointed in her.
Finally, she was sent to another village outside the capital, where she felt depressed and heartbroken every day, and eventually died of illness one cold winter.
When Gu Jiao woke up, she wondered why she had such a dream.
When she dreamt about things related to Xiao Liulang, she believed that those things would certainly happen, but now that it was about her, she didn’t think the same.
No other reason, it was just that the “her” in the dream wasn’t her at all.
She was neither ignorant and incompetent nor clumsy in speech.
She didn’t care what other people thought of her. It was impossible for her to envy Gu Jinyu, so she would never be instigated by anyone. She would never use those stupid tricks against Gu Jinyu.
If she really had the mind to kill someone, she would do it much cleaner than simply wiping the floor.
As for being depressed and heartbroken without the love of family members, that was even more ridiculous.
So, why did she have this outrageous dream? Had she lost her mind or something?
Meanwhile, Xiao Liulang and Feng Lin’s carriage finally arrived at the prefectural capital, Pingcheng, after a long journey of several days.
Their arrival wasn’t too early. The nearby inns around the examination venue were already full, so they settled for the second best and chose an inn one street away.
The price of two taels of silver per room was simply exorbitant.
But they could do nothing about it. Who told the examinees to reside nearby while waiting for the exam to start? They could only pay the amount.
Once the prefectural exam was over and the first batch of examinees who failed to get in the list left, the price would drop by half, and once the college exam was over, the price would drop by another half.
Feng Lin and the coachman ravenously ate something bad on their way, so that they almost couldn’t continue their journey. Fortunately, there was the diarrhea medicine prepared by Gu Jiao.
Xiao Liulang was fine, except that he somewhat felt unaccustomed when sleeping every night.
Two days later, the prefectural exam began.
The prefectural exam was held in Pingcheng’s examination compound. At the hour of maoshi(5-7 am), the examinees entered the compound to finally take the exam.
Different from the county exam, which issued an examination document, the prefectural exam granted each examinee a tablet made of fishbone, which the local office called the examination token. It had the examinee’s name, examination hall and cell number on it.
There were four examination halls in the examination compound of Pingcheng. The best examination hall was where the county exam’s top scorers from various places took their exam, and they were also ranked by their scores. Xiao Liulang was among them.
The examination halls were divided into numerous smaller examination cells, one for each person. The place was small, but there was a desk, a cushion and a narrow wooden bed.
Examinees were not allowed to bring in anything except the examination token. The brush, ink, paper and inkstone of the examinees were uniformly distributed by the people of the examination compound. In addition, three meals a day and quilts for the night were also delivered by special personnel.
If the examinee was tired, they could rest at any time. As long as they did not cheat, did not violate the discipline of the examination hall, no one would interfere even if they just slept for four days and four nights.
In the prefectural exam, there wasn’t anything like settling the exam with one round. Examinees must finish all three exams obediently, and they were not allowed to leave the examination hall except when going to the latrine, in which they would be led by an appointed personnel.
Apart from that, once you left, you could no longer return to the examination hall no matter what the situation.
The first exam was ‘classics filling’. [T/N: Like a fill in the blank type of test.]
This classics filling of the prefectural exam required one to know more than three classics well. The Classic of Filial Piety and The Analects of Confucius were mandatory, and as for the remaining, examinees could choose either The Book of Songs or the Rites of Zhou. According to the specified passage, they must answer from memory.
This might seem simple, but it was important to know that aside from The Classic of Filial Piety, which had only 2,369 words, the other three books combined contained more than 90,000 words. Even if the Rites of Zhou, which had the largest number of words, were to be removed, there were still more than 50,000 words in total. It could be seen that the amount of memorization needed was huge.
The amount of questions in this ‘classics filling’ were also very large, and they should finish answering all of it in the afternoon at the earliest. Generally speaking, it wasn’t until dusk that some papers were handed in one after another.
After only half an hour of writing, Xiao Liulang stopped and went to bed.
His exam paper was covered by a white paper, which was pressed with an inkstone.
The exam supervisor was stupefied.
This… Was he done already?
No, that was impossible. No one could finish answering this exam so quickly!
Not unless you could recite those classics backwards, then you could indeed answer without the need to think and recall.
But this wasn’t something an average genius could do. Who did he think he was? The young Chief of the Imperial Academy—— the Little Marquis of Zhao — or something?
The exam supervisor felt that he probably couldn’t answer it, so he simply gave up writing down answers.
He was still at least a county exam’s top scorer, this was really a disgrace to their county town!
After the exam, a special personnel came over to collect the examination papers. First they sealed the examinee’s name, and then put it in a special box. Even the exam supervisor couldn’t see the examination papers while this process was being done. By the time he saw the papers, the names had already been sealed, so he didn’t know which examination paper belonged to which examinee.
Perhaps the impression that Xiao Liulang left on the exam supervisor during the first exam was too deep, the supervisor paid special attention to him in the next two exams.
The second exam was essay writing, it tested the examinees’ ability in poetry and prose. The wording and writing restrictions were not major; it could be said this was the easiest of the three exams.
Xiao Liulang did it for only half an hour again before covering himself up and going to bed.
You… Could you not give up so easily? This essay writing was very simple! Could you not even write this? How did you become a county exam’s top scorer exactly? Could it be the others examinees in your place this year were extremely stupid?!
The last exam was an eight-part essay, which lasted for two days, making its difficulty apparent.
Especially this time, it was Provincial Governor Zhuang from the capital who personally gave out the topic. Provincial Governor Zhuang picked two irrelevant passages from The Analects of Confucius—— poor without flattery, rich without arrogance; and, sensitive to matters but cautious in words, and let the examinees use these together as the ‘Opening’ of the eight-part essay to solve the topic.
Within a quarter of an hour, two examinees collapsed under too much pressure.
They were carried out, and their exams were invalidated.
The exam supervisor cursed under his breath. Such a difficult exam, and yet you didn’t give this grandpa here something to say about!
He thought Xiao Liulang would give up and go to bed in less than half an hour again this time, but instead, he had been sitting there motionless for a long time.
“‘Poor without flattery, rich without arrogance, sensitive to matters but cautious in words’, why did Teacher Zhuang arrange such a difficult assignment ah!? Ah Heng, do it for me!”
The young girl’s bright and beautiful smile flashed through his mind very vividly, as if it was just yesterday.