The Grand Secretary's Pampered wife

Lin Chengye lifted his hand and began writing.

Sitting in another cell in the back row, Feng Lin couldn't help chuckling twice after seeing the contents of the exam.

When Xiao Liulang tutored Lin Chengye, he too mostly sat in on the sidelines to listen. Lin Chengye was afraid of the strict Xiao Liulang, so he would sometimes show the exam paper to him first, then he would present it to Xiao Liulang when he saw that there was no problem.

Gradually, he was also able to recite The Book of Filial Piety from memory.

If not for the strict and impartial discipline of the examination compound, Feng Lin really wanted to hum a tune in joy.

Judging from this exam alone, the examiners' questions were nowhere near as difficult as Xiao Liulang's test questions, which difficulty was simply at a monster level.

The rest of the examinees were not as calm as the three of them. They really didn't expect that this year's exam questions would go beyond the standard. This was simply killing them ah!

However, examinees who could advance into the provincial exam had a relatively strong mentality. Despite the roaring in their hearts, they put on a bold face and started to move their brushes.

The heatwaves during this year’s early autumn were abnormally fierce. When yesterday came, the weather was already awfully hot, but today it was even more so.

The examination cell was narrow and cramped, and it wasn’t ventilated well. Shortly after the exam began, the examinees’ faces were streaming with sweat.

The daring examinees started undressing directly. Although it was detrimental to their appearance, the examination compound’s regulation had always been that as long as you don't cheat, the examiner would ignore even your shit and fart.

At noon, the sun shone fiercely above the sky, raising the temperature inside the examination cells even more. All the examinees simply felt that they were being baked on an iron plate.

Finally, one examinee fainted from heatstroke.

He was a young master from a great family and had not experienced any hardships before. Unlike students from poor families who often work in the fields, he was unable to stand the high temperature.

The exam supervisor kept an eye on him, thinking that he'd better wake up by himself, otherwise once he was carried out of the examination cell, he could never return to it.

After waiting for a while, the examinee didn’t show any signs of waking up, so the exam supervisor had to call the guards to carry him out and bring him to the physician.

As soon as the guards carried him to the gate of the examination compound, the examinee regained his consciousness. He clamored to go back to his examination cell and finish the exam, but the discipline in the examination compound would never make an exception for anyone, not even the princes.

The imperial examination had extremely high requirements for examinees in all aspects. They not only needed an excellent mentality, but also good physical quality, otherwise they simply wouldn’t be able to withstand such a high-intensity examination.

This small episode also caused great psychological pressure on the rest of the examinees. In addition, the weather was getting hotter and hotter; everyone felt that their examination cell had turned into a big stove.

The examinees who were more reserved and refused to take off their clothes at first couldn't care less about anything at this moment. Not taking off their underpants was their last respect for the examination compound!

Xiao Liulang could also feel the heat around him. If it was in the past, he might have fainted already from this high temperature. However, in the past few months, Gu Jiao had been dragging him to exercise every day, not missing even a single day. Even when he was away from home for the exam, she would tell Feng Lin to keep an eye on him.

At first, he thought everything she did was in vain, because he knew that the reason he couldn’t stand or walk like a normal person was due to the shadow at the bottom of his heart, which he couldn't get rid of.

Only now did he realize that her hard work had not been in vain. It made his body so much stronger.

After another half an hour, the temperature in the examination cells reached its peak, and two more examinees passed out. All the remaining examinees felt agitated, their minds giddy and unable to think normally.

Xiao Liulang took off his coat, but it wasn’t enough. His eyes suddenly fell on the bundle at hand.

He unfolded the bundle, took out the small green bottle that Gu Jiao had asked Feng Lin to bring, and dabbed a few drops on his temples and forehead. Suddenly, a chill spread all over his body from his forehead, and he instantly felt refreshed and alert.

The hot and dry feeling faded by a lot at this moment. He settled down and continued to answer the exam.

When the sun went down, it was no longer as hot. On this day, all the examinees were all physically paralysed. They wondered whether they were really here to take the provincial exam or to be baked by the sun.

Xiao Liulang, Feng Lin and Lin Chengye were much more relaxed than the rest of the examinees because of the magical medicine given by Gu Jiao.

During the day, everyone didn’t have much appetite to eat, but now that it was getting a bit cold, they finally remembered to fill their stomachs.

However, much to their dismay, all the dry food they brought had gone bad due to the abnormally hot weather!

A faint rancid smell rose from the examination cells, so that the exam supervisors couldn't help pinching their nose.

But soon, a burst of sweet and sour, fruity fragrance wafted over. Oranges! Peeling them could cause its fragrant juice to spill on your hands, which had an extremely refreshing smell!

GuluGulu~

The stomach of some examinees couldn’t help but let out a rumbling noise.

Then everyone started drooling. Those oranges were just too fragrant ah, that sour and sweet scent...

As Xiao Liulang ate an orange, he took out another piece of jerky and a piece of pancake. The pancake and jerky was cooked without any moisture so it hadn’t gone bad. The pickles were also not spoiled.

He took his time eating.

The smell of meat mixed with the aroma of pickles pervaded the examination compound, making all other examinees feel even more devastated.

They already had enough torment from the difficult exam and awfully hot weather during the day. Did you really have to bring such delicious food in the examination compound and make them feel envious on top of that?

Are you sure you’re here for the exam?

Who would bring such a sumptuous meal during the provincial exam?

If talking to one another wasn’t forbidden in the examination compound, all the examinees wanted to yell: "Brother, give me just one bite, and wherever you go in the future, I'll have your back!”

Misfortunes seldom came alone. How could mosquitoes be missing at night in such hot weather?

Xiao Liulang, Feng Lin and Lin Chengye, who had the protection of the essential balm, slept comfortably. On the other hand, the rest of the examinees ended up playing with mosquitoes all night, so when they walked out of the examination cells the next morning, dark circles could be seen under their eyes.

Fortunately, on the day they exited the examination compound, it rained heavily in the provincial capital, and the weather finally turned cold.

On the eleventh day, the examinees re-entered the examination compound.

The second exam was an argumentative essay based on the Five Classics. The required word count wasn’t high, as long as it wasn’t less than 300 words. In previous years, the topics were mainly about people's livelihood and official career, such as world industry and commerce, water conservation through mulberry farming, division of responsibilities amongst the six ministries and so on.

[T/N: The Five Classics consists of the Book of Odes, Book of Documents, Book of Changes, Book of Rites, and The Spring and Autumn Annals.]

This year, however, the topic was "The Merits and Drawbacks of Cutting Off the Vassals", which directly stupefied every examinee.

This was such a weighty and sensitive topic. Just which examiner wasn’t afraid of death?

In the State of Zhao, the test questions in the provincial exam every year were formulated by the cabinet, and then submitted to the emperor for review. Only when the emperor gave his approval would the test questions inside the box which was sealed with wax be sent to the various provincial capitals.

The test questions uniformly distributed by the imperial court were all the same, and because the possibility of some man-made or accidental situations, such as the leakage of test questions or destruction of question sheets, couldn't be ruled out, the imperial court often prepared eight topics.

During the exam period, the chief examiners would randomly select the topic in public and whatever they drew was whatever the topic would be. So far, there had been no precedent that all provincial capitals had drawn the same topics.

Unfortunately, the chief examiner assigned to this provincial capital this year selected the most difficult topic.

Among this group of examinees, there were students like Xiao Liulang who was taking the provincial exam for the first time, and others who had been taking it for most of their lives and already had gray hair.

Anyone who had taken the provincial exam many times could see that this year's topic wasn’t simple, it didn’t follow the standard pattern...

Over the years, the marking officers had their own preferences, and examinees would try their best to cater to the preferences of the marking officers when answering the topic, which was why every year, people would spend a lot of money to inquire about the origins and backgrounds of the marking officers.

But the problem was, the removal of vassals wasn’t an ordinary livelihood issue. The marking officers’ preference alone wasn’t enough to determine a result, rather, it mainly depended on the attitude of the imperial court.

If the imperial court advocated the abolition of vassals, then the marking officers could never give a high score to an exam paper that expressed opposition to the act, otherwise wouldn't that be the same as the marking officer openly expressing his disapproval of the court and the Emperor?

From the case of the imperial court recruiting the Lin Family, the examinees could get a general understanding of the court's attitude towards its vassals. Cutting off the vassals within ten years was absolutely impossible.

To be on the safe side, the vast majority of the examinees chose to cater to the trend of the imperial court. Quoting from the classics, they wrote down the merits and drawbacks of cutting off the vassals in flowery rhetoric, and vigorously advocated the pacification policy of the imperial court at present days.

In a certain examination cell, Xiao Liulang did not hesitate to raise his brush and write down— Cutting off the vassals is an imperative matter!