Chapter 79: Dreaming 79
After dinner, Gu Jiao tidied up the house and made the bed in the western room for Xiao Jingkong. Then, she went back to her room to sleep.
Two months had passed since her last dream, and Gu Jiao hadn’t had any dreams since then.
Unexpectedly, that night, she had another dream.
But this time, she didn’t dream about Xiao Liulang, but about “herself”.
She dreamed that she became the daughter of the Gu Residence, met Gu Jinyu from Wenquan Villa, and returned to the Capital City with him.
She moved into a mansion with intricate carvings and paintings. Every day, more than a dozen servants waited on her, and unfamiliar family members cared for her deeply.
The servants respectfully called her Miss Gu, but the good times didn’t last.
Gu Jinyu was devastatingly beautiful, serene and elegant, knowledgeable and eloquent.
In contrast, she was scarred, coarse, illiterate, and spoke awkwardly.
Next to Gu Jinyu’s strong contrast, she became an utter laughingstock.
Everyone was saying that the Gu Family had brought home a rustic country girl.
The servants began to ridicule her, the ladies started to distance themselves from her, even the family members who once loved her seemed unsure of how to face her.
In order to reclaim what should have been hers, she did some terrible things under someone else’s instigation, causing everyone to be thoroughly disappointed in her.
In the end, she was sent to a villa outside the Capital City, where she spent her days in deep melancholy, and then died from illness in a cold winter.
Upon waking up, Gu Jiao wondered why she would have such a dream.
When she dreamed about matters related to Xiao Liulang, she understood that those were events that were going to happen, but it wasn’t the case when it involved herself.
Not because of anything else, but because the “her” in the dream was simply not her.
She was not unlearned, nor did she have a dull tongue.
She wouldn’t care about what others thought of her, wouldn’t envy Gu Jinyu, wouldn’t be instigated by others, and definitely wouldn’t use those incredibly stupid tactics against Gu Jinyu.
If she really wanted to kill someone, she would do it cleanly.
As for being heartbroken because she wasn’t loved by her family, that was even more ridiculous.
So, why would she have such a wild dream? Had she gone mad?
Meanwhile, after several days of long-distance travel, Xiao Liulang and Fen Lin’s carriage finally arrived at the Prefecture City of Pingcheng.
They didn’t arrive early. The inns around the Exam Site were all filled, so they had to settle for one a street away.
Two taels of silver for a room, the price was extortionate.
But there was nothing to be done about it. After all, all the candidates were waiting for a place to stay. They could only obediently pay the silver.
When the Prefecture Exam ended, the price would drop by half as the first group of examinees who did not pass left. When the College Examination ended, the price would drop by half again.
Fen Lin and the coachman had eaten some unclean food on the road, which gave them a stomachache and almost prevented them from continuing their journey. Luckily, they had diarrhea medicine prepared by Gu Jiao.
Xiao Liulang was fine, except that he had some problems getting used to sleeping every night.
Two days later, the Prefecture Exam began.
The Prefecture Exam was held at the Imperial College in Pingcheng, with candidates brought into the venue with their examination passes at the fourth quarter of the hour.
Unlike the written papers of the County Examination, the Prefecture Examination issued fishbone examination passes, or examination reminders, to each candidate. These cards displayed the candidate’s name, examination booth, and seat number.
There were four main examination halls in the Imperial College of Pingcheng, with the candidates who had ranked first in their respective County Examinations and those who had ranked near the top assigned to the Examination Hall marked with the letter “A”. Xiao Liulang was among them.
Each large examination hall was divided into countless small examination rooms, each accommodating one person. The room was not large but was equipped with a desk, a straw cushion, and a narrow wooden bed.
Other than the examination pass, candidates were not allowed to bring anything else into the examination room. The necessary stationery was provided by the Imperial College, with meals and bedding delivered by specialized staff.
Candidates could rest whenever they felt tired, as long as they didn’t cheat or violate the examination rules. Even if they chose to sleep for four days and nights, no one would interfere.
The Prefecture Examination didn’t have a situation where one’s performance in one section would determine everything, so all the candidates had to complete all three sections dutifully. Apart from going to the restroom under supervision, candidates were not allowed to leave their rooms at any other time.
Once they left, regardless of the circumstances, they could not return to the examination hall.
The first section was the Scripture Recitation Challenge.
The requirement for the Prefecture Examination was to be proficient in at least three scriptures. The “Classic of Filial Piety” and “Analects of Confucius” were compulsory, while candidates could choose one more from either the “Book of Songs” or “Rites of Zhou” to recite silently from a specified passage.
This seemed simple, but you should know that aside from the “Classic of Filial Piety”, which had only 2,369 characters, the other three books contained over ninety thousand characters. Even if you excluded the “Rites of Zhou”, which had the most characters, there were still over fifty thousand characters, making the memorization workload enormous.
The volume of the scripture recitation challenge was also very large. Even the fastest candidates would have to write until the afternoon, with most people only managing to hand in their papers gradually at dusk.
However, Xiao Liulang stopped writing and went to sleep after half an hour.
His test paper was covered with a blank piece of paper and weighed down with the ink slab.
The invigilators were stunned.
Could it be… he finished?
No, that’s impossible. No one could finish that fast!
Unless they could recite the few scriptures backwards and forwards, allowing them to write without thinking.
This was not something ordinary geniuses could achieve. Who did he think he was? The young sacrificial wine— the young lord of Zhaodu?
The invigilators thought that he most likely couldn’t answer it, so he simply gave up instead.
And he was a County Examination Scholar, what a disgrace to their county!
After the examination, a designated person came to collect the papers. Each paper was first sealed with a surname, then put into a special box. Even the invigilators couldn’t see the examination papers. When they finally saw the papers, the names were already sealed, so they didn’t know which paper belonged to which candidate.
Perhaps because Xiao Liulang had left a deep impression on the invigilators during the first section of the examination, they paid special attention to him during the next two sections.
The second section was a miscellany, testing the candidates’ rhetorical abilities. There were few restrictions on wording and composition, making it the most relaxed out of the three sections.
Xiao Liulang again finished in half an hour and went to sleep after covering his paper.
Could you… at least not give up so easily? The miscellany is so simple! You can’t even write that? How did you top the County Examination? Are all the candidates this year unmotivated?!
The last section was the eight-legged essay, which spanned two days, showing its difficulty.
The prefect from the Capital City personally set the question, which was exceptionally tough. He presented two unrelated sentences from the “Analects of Confucius”— “humble in poverty, unarrogant in wealth; diligent in affairs and guarded in discourse”, and asked the candidates to connect them together and answer the questions.
Within quarter of an hour, two candidates couldn’t stand the pressure and passed out.
They were carried out, and this section of their examination was invalidated.
The invigilator cursed inwardly, with such a difficult question, your dad shouldn’t have called that!
He thought that Xiao Liulang would undoubtedly give up and go to sleep within half an hour again, but to his surprise, Xiao Liulang continued to sit still without moving.
“‘Humble in poverty, unarrogant in wealth, diligent in affairs and guarded in discourse’. Why did Mr. Zhuang set such a difficult task? Ahen, can you help me with it?”
The girl’s radiant smile flashed across his mind, clear as day, as if it were yesterday.