Chapter 173 The defeated forces suffered heavy losses.
On the day the anthology was published, the sky over Yanjing was clear and blue.
The vermilion gates of the examination hall slowly opened, and candidates from all over the country, holding their examination certificates, filed in one after another. Their faces showed either a determined spirit of determination or a hint of trepidation, but most of them were filled with the exhilaration of finally being able to realize their ambitions after more than a decade of hard study.
The gate slammed shut. The brass lock fell, shutting out the approaching storm.
For three consecutive days, the examination hall was completely silent, with only the occasional sound of a clapper striking the ground, signaling the relentless passage of time.
Yue Yining did not relax her vigilance for the past three days. She remained at the princess's residence, constantly receiving news from all sides. The inspections showed everything was normal; their people found nothing amiss, and the selection process proceeded smoothly.
On the evening of the third day, the gates of the examination hall opened again, and candidates poured out like a tide. Some were full of vigor, while others sighed with regret; the myriad aspects of human nature were on full display.
Soon, a series of procedures, including anonymizing, transcribing, and grading, were carried out under strict supervision, proceeding in an orderly and methodical manner.
During a break from grading papers, Zhou Congyi also sent someone to explain the situation to Yue Yining: "The situation is peaceful inside and out, the exam questions are fine, everything is going smoothly, or it was just a false alarm."
Yue Yining folded the letter, walked to the window as dusk settled, and let out a sigh of relief, her tense mind from the past few days finally relaxing.
Xie Qingyu appeared behind her without her noticing, and gently draped a cloak over her shoulders.
"You've been working so hard these past few days, you even have dark circles under your eyes." Xie Qingyu raised her hand and gently rubbed under her eyes. "Why don't you get some rest early today?"
Yue Yining smiled and said, "Mm."
The anthology concluded smoothly, and she should have been relieved. However, this tranquility reminded her of the fierce, sunny days before a storm, and it made her uneasy.
Her worries came true two days before the results were released.
Initially, it was just a few very subtle ripples. Yue Yining's spies reported that some gossip had begun to circulate in the city, saying that some candidates had discussed with others before the exam that this year's policy essay would definitely include "new policies on canal transport" and "border reforms," and they spoke with great certainty.
Predicting exam questions is commonplace, but this time the rumors seem to have a specific target in mind.
Yue Yining immediately became alert and ordered people to strictly control the spread of rumors and trace their source. The rumors spread like wildfire in spring nights, and as soon as they appeared, they spread rapidly, gradually developing into specific claims: a poor student named Zhang Wenyuan had received guidance from a master before the exam, and his predictions of the questions were extremely accurate.
Bad news followed one after another. Just one day later, an imperial edict was officially issued, causing an uproar: the emperor, grateful for the merit of Yingtian Gate in protecting the country and its people, specially appointed Venerable Qiu Wuzhu as the National Preceptor, with a rank equivalent to the Three Dukes, to participate in the deliberation of state affairs.
The imperial decree caused a stir throughout the court and the country.
The imperial edict was posted outside the palace gates, and the scholars who gathered around discussed it animatedly.
Some believe that the Venerable Qiu's Taoist skills are profound, and although receiving such great favor seems abrupt, it is well-deserved.
Those who adhered to ancient etiquette and customs were greatly dissatisfied with this, criticizing it as a departure from ancestral rules. They argued that it was utterly absurd for the emperor to elevate a celestial master who had never been involved in politics to the position of national advisor, second only to the emperor.
Even more unscrupulous individuals, having heard from somewhere that Qiu Wuzhu was young and beautiful, secretly thought that she must have had an affair with the emperor to have received such an exception from him.
With the imperial edict issued, the first prophecy of destiny calculated by the newly appointed Imperial Preceptor Qiu Wuzhu also began to circulate.
He claimed that the literary stars were dim, and that the path to selecting virtuous officials might be tarnished. He said that this year's selection of officials would be plagued by treacherous individuals who would abuse their power, leak exam questions, and cause chaos in the nation.
With the results of the anthology about to be released, this prophecy struck like a thunderbolt.
In an instant, everyone in Yanjing focused their attention on this, and the air was filled with the oppressive atmosphere of an impending storm.
On the morning of the day the results were released, before dawn, a series of urgent knocks on the door startled Yue Yining awake.
She hurriedly put on her clothes and got up, went to the corridor, and saw a maid leading a spy covered in dew walking quickly in from afar. Her heart sank.
"What happened?"
"Lord Yue, something terrible has happened!" The spy's expression was grave. "Last night, the Censorate submitted a memorial to the palace, impeaching Lord Cui and Lady Zhou for leaking exam questions and cheating!"
"Rumors of leaked exam questions have been circulating for a long time. To quell the rumors, the Ministry of Rites interrogated the candidate Zhang Wenyuan and found a book of exam preparation materials in his residence. The content of the book was highly consistent with the examination direction of this year's civil service exam! Zhang Wenyuan could not withstand the torture and confessed that the materials came from a scholar named Li Mao. According to investigations, Li Mao is a retainer of a distant cousin of Lord Cui!"
Yue Yining felt a chill run from her feet to the top of her head. She forced herself to calm down and asked in a very fast voice, "Where is Li Mao? And who is Cui Yan's distant cousin?"
“Miss, Lord Cui’s cousin was old and caught a cold at the end of winter. He passed away a month ago. As for Li Mao…” the spy lowered his head, “when the news came, he had already disappeared and his whereabouts are unknown.”
"Disappeared?" Yue Yining's pupils contracted slightly. "Such swift action!"
This is clearly an attempt to silence witnesses, cut off all leads, and solidify the impeachment!
"The memorial mentioned that the Ministry of Justice had reviewed old files and discovered an old case from several years ago involving that distant nephew, which was also about Wenxuan accepting bribes. Although it was not confirmed, there was a record, and he was a habitual offender. Based on this, the group of senior officials from powerful families submitted a memorial, saying that Lord Cui was not strict in managing his family and was indulging his relatives, and that Lord Zhou and other cooperating officials were not doing a good job in supervision and could not escape blame!"
Yue Yining suddenly stood up. "Prepare the carriage! I need to go to the palace immediately!"
The Imperial Palace, the Imperial Study.
Behind the sandalwood desk, the emperor, dressed in ordinary clothes, showed no emotion, only a deep, melancholy undercurrent in his eyes.
He listened as Yue Yining meticulously explained, pointing out the suspicious circumstances surrounding Li Mao's disappearance, the unreliability of Zhang Wenyuan's flimsy testimony, the far-fetched connections to the old case, and the rigorous nature of the Wenxuan process itself.
"Your Majesty, the exam questions were kept perfectly safe, and the officials who set the questions were kept in complete isolation. The leaks were merely speculative guesses; how could they be considered evidence of cheating? It is malicious slander by someone who wants to use the Imperial Advisor's prophecy to carry out factional attacks and eliminate dissidents!"
"I implore Your Majesty to investigate thoroughly and not let loyal and virtuous people suffer injustice!"
The emperor remained silent for a moment; the imperial study was so quiet that the dripping of the water clock could be heard.
He slowly spoke: "I understand what Your Excellency has said."
"However, the Imperial Advisor made a prior prophecy, and Heaven also gave warnings. Now, this has indeed happened, involving a wide range of people. Although the old case is distant, it is not without reason. If I turn a blind eye to this, where will I place the opinions of the scholars of the world?"
His gaze swept past Yue Yining and looked out the window: "Since I am the Son of Heaven, I am the one who governs the people on behalf of Heaven. Since the signs of Heaven's mandate have already appeared, we must obey them. This is no longer a simple case of corruption, but concerns the court, and even more so whether I respect Heaven and my ancestors."
Yue Yining's heart sank little by little.
The emperor withdrew his gaze: "I did not say that I would convict them on this matter. However, since things have come to this point, for the sake of fairness, Cui Yan, Zhou Congyi, and others must temporarily recuse themselves from suspicion, be suspended from their duties pending investigation, and cooperate with the three judicial departments in their investigation."
"If they are proven innocent, I will naturally clear their names."
Wei Tianxuan had made up his mind, and Yue Yining knew that there was no point in arguing any further.
The ethereal yet incredibly heavy destiny pressed down on her shoulders once more, forcing her to kowtow heavily, her voice lowered: "...Yes, Your Majesty, I take my leave."
Yue Yining did not give up. If she were to sit idly by and wait for death, she would only face certain death. Upon returning to her residence, she immediately mustered her spirits, organized the known progress of the case, and carefully reviewed it from beginning to end, grasping the key points.
She wrote several letters and sent them urgently to the residences of several senior officials who were on good terms with the Qingliu faction and were known for their integrity in the court. She explained the pros and cons, asked them to submit a memorial to protect Cui and Zhou, and questioned the loopholes in the case.
Once this matter was settled, she dispatched even more people to search for the whereabouts of the key witness, Li Mao, determined to find him alive or dead. Meanwhile, another group secretly investigated Zhang Wenyuan's background and social connections, trying to find clues that he had been used by someone.
The first two days were extremely agonizing, but fortunately, the joint trial by the three judicial departments did not turn out in one direction. Due to the reasoned arguments of Yue Yining's officials, the focus of the interrogation was initially on the suspicious points regarding Li Mao's disappearance and Zhang Wenyuan's testimony, and progress was slow.
On the fifth day, the situation suddenly changed.
The men sent to find Li Mao reported that they had discovered a male corpse, with blurred features, resembling Li Mao, in a mass grave outside the city. Upon examination, the deceased was confirmed to be Li Mao, and the time of death was estimated to be the night before the incident, clearly indicating he had been silenced.
This most important lead has been completely cut off.
The tide of the joint trial by the three judicial departments suddenly turned, and the interrogation reached a stalemate. As was customary, they could only summon several scholars who had had contact with Li Mao before the examination for questioning.
Li Mao's close friends had already been summoned once, but the group now being recruited from a wider pool mostly had little contact with him, and some even had almost no recollection of him.
However, someone in particular revealed a crucial clue.
This person is Xie Yueshuang, the eldest daughter of the Xie family.
Xie Yueshuang behaved very cooperatively in court. She recalled a gathering of scholars before the exam, where she had seen Li Mao from afar. Under repeated questioning from the interrogating officials, she seemed to remember something and spoke hesitantly:
As the gathering was about to end that day, she passed by the waterside pavilion and overheard people inside drinking and chatting with Li Mao and others.
In the midst of their drinking and revelry, the man slurred that this year's policy proposals would focus on "the Grand Canal" and "the border regions," repeating this several times incoherently. Li Mao repeatedly pressed him for an explanation, asking why he was so certain, but the man offered no reason. Instead, he made a bet with several people present, speaking arrogantly and with an air of absolute certainty.
Xie Yueshuang said, "At the time, I only felt that this person was arrogant and self-satisfied, and talked nonsense when drunk, so I didn't think anything was wrong. But after the case was exposed, I heard that the examination syllabus that was seized was precisely focused on these two things, and I also learned that Li Mao died strangely, so I made the connection to this case."
This clue invigorated everyone present. The three departments immediately followed Xie Yueshuang's description and found the scholar who had been talking to Li Mao with great confidence. When they interrogated him, the man was trembling and clearly had something to hide.
When Yue Yining received the news, the scholar named Zhou Yi could no longer withstand the pressure of interrogation and confessed everything.
Zhou Yi was a distant relative of Zhou Congyi, separated by five degrees of kinship. He confessed that before Zhou Congyi was placed in quarantine at the Imperial Examination Hall, he happened to see her at a banquet celebrating the birthday of an elder in the clan. He overheard her chatting with the younger generation who were about to participate in the civil service examination. Zhou Congyi mentioned some of the key points of the examinations in recent years, as well as the content that was unlikely to be tested this year, which he happened to remember.
Zhou Yi was ambitious and eager for success. When he attended a literary gathering, he saw that everyone was discussing the direction of this year's literary selection. Intending to show off, he borrowed what he had heard from Zhou Congyi that day and spoke at length.
The result was a chorus of doubts from the crowd.
He then vaguely realized that he had remembered it backwards, but Zhou Yi was afraid of losing face, so he stubbornly insisted on his point and acted as if he were absolutely certain.
Zhou Yi never imagined that his seemingly accidental reversal of the question would actually lead him to the correct answer on the exam.
Upon hearing that Li Mao was dead, everyone who had been in contact with him was summoned one by one, and Zhou Yi was terrified.
Zhou Yi looked mournful, while the officials who interrogated him all had strange expressions after hearing this absurd story.
Zhou Yi's testimony connected the whole incident and provided a reasonable explanation for this cheating case: neither Zhou Congyi nor Cui Yan leaked the exam questions, but Cui Yan's cousin, in Cui Yan's name, fabricated false exam questions and leaked them to Li Mao for personal gain.
Li Mao thought the questions were obscure and was initially skeptical about their authenticity until he drank with Zhou Congyi's cousin and unexpectedly received confirmation. Only then did he feel at ease enough to sell the exam questions in large quantities.
Zhang Wenyuan was the least discreet of his customers. After the selection of essays, he boasted everywhere that he had predicted the policy essay questions correctly, which led to rumors.
That's what makes the whole thing so lamentable.
The question setter was not Zhou Congyi alone. The policy essay question, being the key one, was jointly drafted by a group of civil officials from the examination hall. Moreover, Zhou Congyi's casual remarks at that time were not meant to predict the question, but rather to lead people to avoid it, so they could not be considered a leak at all.
Who could have imagined that her words would be overheard and twisted, told to someone with ulterior motives, turning a negative into a positive, thus leading to this cheating scandal involving leaked exam questions.
It seemed like it was destined.
The prophecy of the new imperial advisor was perfectly fulfilled in such a subtle way.
Despite Yue Yining's strong rebuttal, pointing out that Xie Yueshuang's testimony was an isolated case, there was a solid and credible chain of logic before them. The attitudes of the three judicial departments and the emperor had already shifted, making their rebuttal pale and powerless.
The situation took a sharp turn for the worse, like a dam bursting.
The powerful ministers and officials from prominent families submitted a series of memorials, and impeachments flooded the emperor's desk like snowflakes. Public opinion, guided by certain individuals, completely shifted in favor of the Qingliu faction.
The charges of "a hen crowing at dawn" and "leaking exam questions and cheating" seem to be an indisputable fact. Even if this case of leaking exam questions and cheating is more like a misunderstanding, Cui Yan and Zhou Congyi are still guilty of dereliction of duty. Anyone who obtained this essential information from Li Mao will face the punishment of having their essay scores invalidated.
Calls for punishment of the officials responsible for this year's civil service examinations to set things right also dominated the court.
Yue Yining contacted all parties in an attempt to make a final effort.
The emperor's decision came quickly.
In the imperial edict, the emperor, citing the need to quell public discontent and restore order, made the following ruling:
Chief Examiner Cui Yan, as the chief examiner, bears the overall responsibility. He has failed to manage his family strictly. He is hereby dismissed from his post as Vice Chancellor, but retains the title of Grand Secretary of the Chongwen Hall and is to retire in peace.
Deputy Chief Examiner Zhou Congyi failed to avoid suspicion and to be cautious in her words and actions, which led to trouble. She was dismissed from her current position and transferred to the Inner Study of the Palace as an instructor of female officials.
The co-organizing officials, including Shen Liude and Qiu Yuebai, were all held responsible for negligence and were demoted to positions in subordinate counties of Beijing. They left Beijing to take up their posts three days later.
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Author's Note: Master and Ningning are adversaries, and Master is very powerful. But don't worry, Ningning is the smartest character in the story; just trust her.
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