Chapter 162 Spring Examination Begins
Regardless of the imperial examination, for Li Nuo, he first has to deal with the spring examination at the beginning of next month.
There is less than a month left before the spring exams, and as Li Anning said, he can no longer indulge in love affairs.
Li Nuo asked his wife to go back to the Song family first.
He planned to study hard before the exam. His photographic memory could only allow him to remember the contents of the book. He needed to work harder on how to understand and apply it.
Time flies and half a month has passed.
Li Anning walked out of the Ministry of Justice with an expression of extreme disappointment on his face.
It has been half a month, and he hasn't come to the Ministry of Justice once. Even if he has no other options, he can at least comfort her, right?
She went to the Song Mansion and found that Li Nuo was not there.
After inquiring, I learned that Song Jiaren had returned half a month ago, but Li Nuo had been staying at the Li family.
She came to the Li Mansion, and Butler Wu took her into a courtyard.
In the courtyard, two maids from the Li residence were cleaning and whispering to each other.
"Young Master has been studying so hard in the past half month, from morning till night..."
"I heard that the young master seems to be taking the imperial examination."
"Don't they say that it takes ten years of hard study to pass the imperial examination? Young Master has only been well for more than half a year. Can he pass the exam?"
"I don't know. I heard the imperial examination is very difficult..."
…
Li Anning walked to the door and saw the figure sitting behind the desk, reading a book seriously. All the anger in his heart suddenly disappeared.
Even though she knew that he couldn't change the outcome, she still felt touched.
Li Nuo looked up and asked in surprise, "Why are you here?"
Li Anning walked into the room and said calmly, "Is it not okay to come and see you?"
She looked at the scattered books on the table and asked, "How are your preparations going? Are you confident?"
Li Nuo asked: "What kind of certainty do you mean?"
Li An Ning rolled his eyes at him and said, "Of course it's the chance of passing the imperial examination. Is it the chance of passing the imperial examination like your father?"
Li Nuo thought for a moment and said, "About 70 or 80 percent."
Of course, he was 100% sure of passing the imperial examination.
He doesn't have the ability to be the top scorer in six subjects at the moment.
But it’s okay. There is still more than a month before the imperial examination, and he still has a lot of room for improvement. He has already made some arrangements in advance.
Li Anning looked at Li Nuo, and at this moment, he actually felt a little hope in his heart.
What if... he can really be the top scorer in six subjects like his father?
But soon, she shook her head in self-mockery and threw this unrealistic idea out of her mind.
At worst, I can just leave.
Anyway, she would never marry someone she didn't like!
…
There are no years in the book. Time passes quickly and it is February in a blink of an eye.
On the first day of February, the spring exam officially begins.
In previous years’ spring exams, only two to three thousand people participated in the entire Gyeonggi Province.
The spring examination is the same as the imperial examination, and all six arts are tested. Although the difficulty is much lower than the imperial examination, each subject must be rated B or above.
Even if you pass the spring exam, there is no guarantee that you will be admitted.
This reform of the imperial examination system cut off the possibility of entering the academy through other channels, and the number of candidates registering for the spring examination increased sharply, reaching more than 10,000, several times that of previous years.
All candidates are divided into different examination halls.
Chang'an, an examination hall.
Li Nuo sat in a small examination room with several test papers in front of him.
The spring examination is the same as the imperial examination, with the first day being the literary examination.
The book subject is divided into four parts.
Calligraphy, painting, law, and articles.
The time starts from Chenshi in the morning and ends at Xushi in the evening.
It's about 7 am to 7 pm, a total of twelve hours, to complete four small subjects.
Candidates can choose which subject to write first and which one to write later according to the situation.
Generally speaking, most candidates will choose calligraphy.
This subject is the simplest and takes the least time. You only need to write a calligraphy piece of less than 100 words. If you are fast, it can be completed in a quarter of an hour.
The content of calligraphy is unified, but there is no restriction on the style of writing.
The calligraphy test in this spring exam was a passage from the Sixteen Classics, which consisted of approximately seventy characters.
Li Nuo picked up the pen, and with a thought, the portrait of Gu Yanran on the code was lit up.
He thought for a moment, then started writing quickly, with his pen gliding like a dragon, completing the whole thing in one go.
During this period, Xiao Gu has not made much progress in other calligraphy styles, so he can only use the hairpin-flowered small regular script.
Putting the completed calligraphy paper on the other side to dry, Li Nuo opened another piece of rice paper.
Painting in the calligraphy field is generally based on assigned themes.
The painting topic for this spring exam is "Clouds roll and unroll, mountains and rivers are endless", and the requirement is to use ink painting techniques.
Compared with color ink painting, ink painting is much easier. Li Nuo lit up Han Zhuo's portrait, thought for a moment, and then began to paint.
Han Zhuo is better at painting figures, but his landscape paintings are also good.
It took Li Nuo more than an hour to paint this picture.
After finishing the painting, he took out a few cakes from the food box he brought with him to fill his stomach.
Time is limited, and I have to answer questions about laws and articles in the afternoon.
After a short rest, Li Nuo opened the law test paper.
The format of the law test paper is very simple, with a total of twenty questions. Each question is an actual case, and the candidates need to make an accurate judgment based on the "Daxia Law".
This requires an extremely good understanding of the Daxia Code. The sentence cannot be too lenient, nor too heavy, and certainly not too wrong.
These were a piece of cake for Li Nuo. He had the entire Daxia Law Book in his mind, so there was no way he could make any mistakes in this subject.
Even so, it took him a long time to finish these twenty questions.
After finishing the law test paper, Li Nuo didn't dare to take a break and immediately opened the last test paper.
This test paper tests essay writing.
The first question in the exam is a poem or an essay.
"It's late."
The title only has two words, there is no limit on the style or number of words, and candidates can express themselves freely.
Dusk means evening. The meaning of the topic is very simple. Li Nuo quickly searched for poems about dusk in his mind and wrote down four lines quickly without much thought.
I felt uncomfortable in the evening, so I drove to the ancient plain.
The sunset is beautiful, but it is near dusk.
The types of questions that follow are very diverse, covering politics, economy, system, military, law, and history. They test your accumulated knowledge and basically select a passage from the Sixteen Classics. Candidates are asked to interpret the meaning and give their own opinions.
During this month, Li Nuo not only memorized the "Sixteen Classics" by heart, but also read through some popular and unpopular translations. Answering these questions was undoubtedly a piece of cake for him.
The essay topics in the spring exam are much simpler than those in the imperial examination. As long as you have a solid foundation, you can basically answer them.
About an hour in advance, Li Nuo finished answering the questions.
There is no need to check again. Even if there is a mistake in writing, he cannot change it.
If the test paper is dirty and appears to have been marked, it will affect the final assessment.
He sorted out the test papers, folded them, placed them on the table in the examination room, and then walked out of the examination room.
When I left the examination hall, my wife and Mu'er were already waiting by the carriage.
After the written examination, the test papers of all candidates will be marked first.
In order to save resources, candidates with scores below B will be eliminated directly and will not have to take part in subsequent tests.
The imperial court had already summoned the examiners, and after the first exam was over, the examination hall was closed and the papers were marked intensively.
They need to mark all the test papers within one day and announce the list of candidates who have passed this subject.
The workload for this matter is not small, and teachers from various major academies have been seconded here in advance.
It was late at night, but the lights in the examination hall were still brightly lit.
The test papers of each subject are classified into different categories and marked by dedicated people.
"The handwriting is as bad as dog's crawling. Such people are here to make up the numbers. Even if it's the spring exam, not everyone can be admitted. C!"
"It's just a spring exam, not an imperial examination. Don't take it so seriously."
"Stop talking so much, and review it quickly. The sooner you finish, the sooner you can go back..."
In a room, several examiners were marking papers and chatting at the same time.
The calligraphy test paper is the easiest to mark. Basically, you can draw a conclusion just by taking a look at it.
It took three examiners less than one night to mark two thousand test papers.
Although the three of them were not masters in calligraphy, they were all quite accomplished. Even in the imperial examination papers, not many of them could catch their eyes. It was really a torture for them to look at the calligraphy papers of the spring examination.
At a certain moment, an examiner picked up a test paper, looked at it with a strange look, and said softly: "Hey, this test paper is not bad..."
He finally saw a good piece of paper in a pile of waste paper. His eyes lit up and even his mood improved.
But soon, a strange expression appeared on his face.
This word is good...
But why is it the small calligraphy with hairpin flowers?
Which grown man is practicing calligraphy with hairpin flowers?
This kind of handwriting is usually practiced by women and is also known as "female style".
If a man writes in small calligraphy with flower-shaped characters, he will be laughed at if he tells others about it.
But if you appreciate it from a purely calligraphy perspective, this piece of calligraphy is really well written.
It is soft, beautiful, graceful and elegant, and it is really pleasing to the eye. After looking at garbage for a long time, not only his eyes are purified, but also his soul is cleansed.
He was extremely curious, wondering who could write such wonderful hairpin-flowered small calligraphy?
However, for the sake of fairness, the test papers for the spring examinations and the imperial examinations only have numbers but no names. Only after the results are compiled can we know who wrote the test paper.
He handed the test paper to the other two and said, "Take a look at this test paper. It's quite interesting."
A person next to me had just put down a test paper graded C. I took it casually, glanced at it casually, and couldn't look away anymore.
He held the test paper in both hands, put it in front of his eyes, and studied it for a long time. He stroked the short beard on his chin and exclaimed: "What a beautiful hairpin-shaped calligraphy. Could it be that there is a woman among the candidates?"
Another person was also attracted by his voice. He came over to take a look and made the same exclamation as him.
Candidates will be carefully checked before entering the examination hall. It is naturally impossible for women to sneak in. What is unexpected is that there is actually a man who can write such beautiful hairpin-shaped small characters.
The examiner who first discovered the test paper looked at the two of them and asked, "What do you think the score for this test paper should be?"
“Excellent!”
“It’s absolutely perfect!”
The imperial examination generally had nine levels, but above A was another level called Excellent.
Only when there is nothing wrong with an exam paper or your performance in the exam can you get an excellent evaluation.
"That's what I meant."
The examiner nodded, wrote the word "excellent" on the test paper with a red pen, and then put it aside.
At this time, in another room in the examination hall, an examiner admired the painting in his hand and exclaimed: "I didn't expect that there would be someone with such superb painting skills in the spring examination. Even if it is a formal imperial examination, this person's painting can compete for a high ranking. This painting should be ranked first..."
Not long after, similar exclamations were heard in two other marking rooms.
"There is no mistake in the law. This is a good seedling of the legalists!"
"A good poem, and the meaning of the classics is also very well remembered. The excellence may be controversial, but it is worthy of an A!"
…
At this moment, Li Nuo had no idea what was happening in the examination hall.
After taking exams for a whole day, he was already exhausted and fell asleep early.
In his dream, he was the top scorer in six subjects, and His Majesty married Princess An Ning to him as promised. He held his wife's hand with his left hand and hugged An Ning with his right hand - and then he was awakened by the cold.
Li Nuo turned his head to take a look, silently let go of his wife's hand, turned over and continued to sleep.
at the same time.
Princess Palace.
Li Anning was lying on a large and gorgeous bed, hugging the quilt tightly. I don't know what she was dreaming about, but a happy smile appeared on her face...
(End of this chapter)
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
