"You?" Master Liu scoffed coldly. "You're also a candidate this year? What's your name?"
"What's it to you?" the scholar said coldly.
"What does it have to do with me? Believe me or not, I'll make sure you can't even participate in this year's imperial examination." Master Liu said sullenly.
The scholar spoke again, his tone noticeably weaker: "What bad luck! It's just a table. I'm going back to study."
"Heh." The servant spat at the scholar's retreating figure: "Who else is there? Who else is dissatisfied? State your name."
Just as Master Liu settled into his seat, he looked up and saw a plaque in the center of the teahouse.
He stared thoughtfully at the four large characters on the plaque, muttering to himself, "When things reach their worst, they begin to turn around."
"It seems our teahouse owner has some kind of conflict with the people of Qin before?"
His voice was deep and loud.
The sound drew everyone's attention.
From adversity comes prosperity?
What exactly is this thing?
When people followed his gaze and it landed on the plaque he was looking at.
Everyone laughed.
"When things reach their lowest point, they begin to turn around?"
These four characters actually have another pronunciation!
I've really learned something new.
Master Liu was unaware that he had done anything wrong.
What are these people laughing about, repeating the phrase "when things reach their worst, they turn around" that he just said?
Could it be that people from the Qin state have visited this teahouse, and there's some historical connection to it?
He asked his attendant behind him in a low voice.
The illiterate attendant shook his head helplessly: "Second Master Liu, I don't know."
"Useless thing." Old Master Liu turned his head away angrily.
He looked around at the people around him.
He pointed at the servant and roared, "Go and fetch the manager of this teahouse!"
"Yes, Master Liu."
The servant agreed, grabbed the teahouse owner by the collar, and dragged him in front of Master Liu.
"What are your orders, Master Liu?" the shopkeeper asked tremblingly.
This Master Liu is a notorious bully in the capital.
Relying on his uncle being the Grand Commandant of the court, he spent his days eating and drinking in the capital and bullying the common people.
Previously, he rarely frequented elegant places like teahouses.
This coincided with the imperial examinations.
He also came to the teahouse to show off his power when he had nothing else to do.
Pointing to the plaque, Old Man Liu asked, "You tell me, what exactly happened?"
The teahouse gets a lot of customers because of this.
The shopkeeper was busy inside and didn't notice what they had just been talking about.
Since Master Liu has asked...
He simply answered truthfully, "This signifies that after the worst comes the best, and good things will follow. The teahouse had been doing poorly before, and it just so happened that Master Wuyu happened to pass by and personally inscribed the plaque."
The teahouse owner had barely finished speaking.
Master Liu, the shopkeeper, immediately cleared his name.
An awkward silence fell over the entire teahouse, followed by a burst of wild laughter.
“If such a person is worthy of being the third-ranked scholar, I will definitely return to my hometown and burn my thousands of books.”
"He got two out of four words wrong, and yet he still has the audacity to say he won third place in the imperial examination."
"If someone who can't even read a few characters can become the third-ranked scholar, then wouldn't I be the top scholar?"
"Hahaha, I'm ashamed. I should have brought my son with me to take the exam this year. My five-year-old son can recite the Three Character Classic backwards."
"It's true what they say, having connections in the court makes it easy to get an official position!"
Listening to everyone's teasing.
Master Liu slammed his hand on the table in anger.
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