Chapter 79 Dreaming
After dinner, Gu Jiao tidied up the house, went to the west room to cover Xiao Jingkong with a blanket, and then went back to her room to sleep.
Two months had passed since Gu Jiao last had a dream, and she hadn't had one since.
Unexpectedly, she had another dream that night.
But what she dreamed of wasn't Xiao Liulang, but "herself".
She dreamt that she became the daughter of the Gu family, met Gu Jinyu at the hot spring resort, and returned to the capital with Gu Jinyu.
She moved into a magnificent mansion with carved beams and painted rafters, where she was served by more than a dozen servants every day, and was also loved by family members she had never met.
The servants respectfully called her Miss Gu, but her good fortune didn't last long.
Gu Jinyu is stunningly beautiful, quiet and elegant, well-educated and reasonable, and has an exceptional way of speaking.
In contrast, she was unattractive, uncouth, illiterate, and clumsy in speech.
Compared to Gu Jinyu, she became a complete joke.
Everyone's saying that the Gu family brought back a wild girl from the countryside.
The servants began to mock her, the young ladies began to distance themselves from her, and even her family, who had once doted on her, seemed unsure how to face her.
In an attempt to reclaim what was rightfully hers, she did some unethical things under the instigation of malicious individuals, causing everyone to become utterly disappointed in her.
Finally, she was sent to a villa outside the capital, where she lived a life of melancholy and heartbreak, eventually dying of illness in a cold winter.
When Gu Jiao woke up, she was puzzled as to why she had such a dream.
When she dreamed about things related to Xiao Liulang, she knew those things would happen, but it didn't apply to her own life.
Not for any other reason than that the "she" in my dream wasn't her at all.
She was neither ignorant nor tongue-tied.
She wouldn't care what others thought of her, wouldn't be jealous of Gu Jinyu, wouldn't be instigated by others, and certainly wouldn't use those incredibly stupid tricks on Gu Jinyu.
When she really wants to kill someone, she can do it more thoroughly than cleaning the floor.
As for being heartbroken because one doesn't receive love from their family, that's even more absurd.
So, why did she have such a fantastical dream? Did she lose her mind?
Meanwhile, Xiao Liulang and Feng Lin's carriage finally arrived at Pingcheng, the prefectural city, after several days of long journey.
They arrived late, and all the inns near the examination hall were full, so they opted for an inn just across the street.
Two taels of silver for a room? That's outrageous!
But there was nothing they could do; the candidates were all waiting for accommodation, so they had no choice but to obediently pay up.
After the prefectural examination ends and the first batch of unsuccessful candidates leave, the price will drop by half. After the provincial examination ends, the price will drop by half again.
Feng Lin and the driver ate something unclean while on the road, and both got so upset that they almost couldn't continue their journey. Fortunately, Gu Jiao had prepared some diarrhea medicine.
Xiao Liulang is doing well, but he feels a little uneasy every night when he falls asleep.
Two days later, the prefectural examination began.
The prefectural examination was held at the Pingcheng Examination Hall, and candidates entered the hall at 5:15 AM.
Unlike the examination documents for the county examination, the prefectural examination issued each candidate an examination card made of fish bones, which the prefectural government called an examination guide. The card contained the candidate's name, examination booth, and seat number.
The Imperial Examination Hall in Pingcheng had four examination booths. The booths with the character "甲" (first-class) were mostly for the top-ranked candidates from various counties and those who ranked highly. Xiao Liulang was among them.
The large examination hall was divided into numerous smaller examination rooms, one for each person. The room was not large, but it contained a desk, a cushion, and a narrow wooden bed.
Candidates were not allowed to bring anything in except for the examination materials. The candidates' writing implements, paper, and inkstones were provided by the examination hall. In addition, three meals a day and a quilt for the night were also delivered by special personnel.
If candidates are tired, they can rest at any time. As long as they do not cheat or violate the examination rules, no one will interfere even if they sleep in there for four days and four nights.
The prefectural examination did not have a single decisive test, so candidates had to complete all three sessions. Except for going to the toilet, when they could leave the examination room under the guidance of a designated person, they were not allowed to leave the examination room at other times.
Once you leave, you cannot return to the examination room under any circumstances.
The first session was on calligraphy.
The candidates for the prefectural examination were required to be familiar with at least three classics. The Classic of Filial Piety and the Analects were mandatory. For the remaining classic, candidates could choose between the Book of Poetry and the Rites of Zhou and recite a designated passage from memory.
This may seem simple, but it is important to know that apart from the Classic of Filial Piety, which has only 2,369 characters, the other three books together have more than 90,000 characters. Even if we remove the Rites of Zhou, which has the most characters, there are still more than 50,000 characters. The amount of memorization is enormous.
The number of questions in the postscript was also very large, and it would take at least until the afternoon to finish writing. Usually, people would start handing in their papers around dusk.
Xiao Liulang only wrote for half an hour before stopping to go to sleep.
His exam paper was covered under a sheet of white paper and weighed down with an inkstone.
The proctors were dumbfounded.
Is this... all the answers?
No, that's impossible, no one could answer that quickly!
Unless one can recite these classics backwards and write without thinking, it is impossible to write anything.
This is something no ordinary genius could do. Who does he think he is? The former young master of the Imperial Academy—the young Marquis of Zhaodu?
The proctor figured he probably couldn't answer the question, so he simply gave up and stopped writing.
He was the top scholar in the county examination, what a disgrace to their county!
After the exam, a designated person would collect the papers, cover the names with the paper cover, and then put them into a special box. Even the invigilators could not see the papers. By the time they saw them, the names had already been covered up, so they couldn't tell which paper belonged to which student.
Perhaps because Xiao Liulang made such a deep impression on the examiners in the first round, the examiners paid extra attention to him in the next two rounds as well.
The second essay section tested the candidates' writing skills, with few restrictions on wording and style, making it the easiest of the three sections.
Xiao Liulang finished his work in half an hour and then went to sleep.
Can you please stop being so self-deprecating? Essays are so simple! Can't you even write one? How did you manage to top the county exam? Are all the candidates in your year so hopeless?!
The final exam was on the eight-legged essay, and it lasted for two days, which shows how difficult it was.
This time, in particular, Governor Zhuang from the capital personally set the questions. Governor Zhuang took two seemingly unrelated sentences from the Analects—"Be poor but not obsequious, be rich but not arrogant, be quick in action but cautious in speech"—and asked the candidates to put them together to solve the problem.
Within fifteen minutes, two candidates collapsed from the pressure.
They were carried out, and the exam was cancelled.
The proctor cursed under his breath, "Damn it, why don't you just leave me alone with these difficult questions!"
He thought Xiao Liulang would give up and go to sleep in less than half an hour, but to his surprise, he just sat there motionless.
"'Be poor but not obsequious, rich but not arrogant, diligent in action but cautious in speech'—why did Mr. Zhuang assign such difficult homework? Ah Heng, can you do it for me?"
The girl's bright smile flashed through my mind, vivid and clear, as if it were yesterday.
(End of this chapter)
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