The Grand Secretary's Pampered wife

When the innkeeper learned that there was a prefectural exam’s top scorer amongst the examinees staying at his inn, he immediately refunded the room fee of Xiao Liulang’s group, and also packed some free meals for them, all of which were the most expensive food and drinks, and anything the inn didn't have, he also asked the waiter to go out and buy them.

Although Feng Lin had long become a Xiucai, his grades were not the best, so naturally he hadn’t received this kind of treatment back then.

Following Xiao Liulang this time, it could be said he felt well-regarded.

It was also worth mentioning that Xiao Liulang did so well in the exam that his article was spread on the same day the list of passers was released. Naturally, there were a lot of people who came to find him, wanting to make friends with Xiao Liulang, but all of them were turned away by him.

Compared with the previous dynasty, great adjustments had been applied to the entry-level imperial examination system of this current dynasty. In the previous dynasty, after the prefectural exam was over, it would take two to three months before the examinees could take the college exam. In the current dynasty, on the other hand, the college exam was held on the second day after the list of prefectural exam passers was released.

The examinees had waited ten days for the results of the prefectural exam and within this period, most of them spent the days in fear and nervousness. Then, after seeing that they had passed the prefectural exam, before they could even have a chance to breathe, they already had to enter the next round of imperial examination.

This undoubtedly increased the pressure on the examinees.

College exam had two sessions, which were eight-part essay and classics filling respectively.

The difficulty of the classics filling was equivalent to that of the prefectural exam, and as for the eight-part essay, it was still Provincial Governor Zhuang who would draw up the topic.

Xiao Liulang had already won two top scorer seats in a row. If he became the top scorer of the college exam as well, he would win the three lower top seats.[1]

Pingcheng hadn't had a three lower top seats winner for nearly ten years, and all officials of the prefectural yamen had high hopes for Xiao Liulang. However, to everyone's surprise, Xiao Liulang's classics filling exam had been handed in blank.

There was only little difference between the scope of the college exam and the prefectural exam’s classics filling. As before, they must know three classics well to pass it, but the number of questions this time was larger and more tricky. However, that still wouldn’t make one hand in a blank paper.

Of course, in every round of examinations, one couldn’t just rule out the possibility of all sorts of unexpected situations occurring to the examinees——once, a student accidentally put some filthy thing on his exam paper, which caused the whole exam paper to be invalid.

That happened during a triennial provincial exam, meaning, three years' efforts of the examinee were just wasted.

But handing in a blank paper was still very rare.

Especially, the owner of this blank paper was Xiao Liulang, who left a deep impression on Provincial Governor Zhuang during the prefectural exam.

If Provincial Governor Zhuang remembered correctly, there were twelve examiners who had marked the papers this time, and eleven of them gave Xiao Liulang's eight-part essay an A grade.

The only one who didn't give him an A grade was Provincial Governor Zhuang.

He scored Xiao Liulang’s eight-part essay exam B.

But if one were to know that Provincial Governor Zhuang gave the rest a grade of D, one could see how commendable Xiao Liulang's performance was.

With eleven A’s, he could still be in the top ten even if he had answered the classics filling exam blindly. What he didn’t expect was for Xiao Liulang to be ranked third from the bottom.

This surprised Provincial Governor Zhuang.

Puzzled, he pulled out his exam paper, only to find that it was all blank.

Provincial Governor Zhuang then asked people to bring out Xiao Liulang’s classics filling exam papers in the prefectural exam.

If Xiao Liulang prefectural exam's classics filling was badly done, this matter might have just passed, but Xiao Liulang’s classics filling exam in the prefectural exam was perfect.

It meant that he was correct in every question.

"And it only took him half an hour to answer it!" The exam supervisor who came to deliver the examination paper exclaimed.

This exam supervisor was the one who sat directly opposite Xiao Liulang in the prefectural exam.

Since the exam papers were sealed, he didn’t know which belonged to whom when he handed the papers in. Only when Xiao Liulang's eight-part essay spread after becoming the prefectural exam’s top scorer did the exam supervisor secretly go to the inn to see what the top scorer looked like, amazed that he could actually make such an extraordinary essay. As a result, he found that the other party was the very examinee who only took half an hour to answer the classics filling and essay.

Provincial Governor Zhuang’s vision was very high.

Getting perfect scores still wasn’t worth mentioning in his eyes. However, if he took just half an hour to answer them, then that was truly amazing.

Amongst the people he knew, the only one who could do better than this examinee was the late Little Marquis of Zhao.

Provincial Governor Zhuang immediately sent someone to the inn to ask Xiao Liulang about the situation.

"I didn't hand in a blank paper." Was what Xiao Liulang said.

But if what Xiao Liulang said was true, then someone tampered with his exam paper, which was a big deal.

The management of the imperial examination papers was very strict. During this college exam, when an examinee handed in their exam paper, two exam supervisors would go to collect it together, then they would seal the examinee’s name to prevent fraud and also stamp their fingerprints at the same time to prove that it was them who took the exam paper.

Once a problem occurred in that specific exam paper, only the two of them would be questioned.

It was worth mentioning that all exam supervisors paired up by drawing lots after entering the examination compound. And just like the examinees, they couldn’t communicate with the outside once they came in until the end of the examination.

Bribing one of them might be easy, but to bribe two people at the same time was very difficult, because no one could guarantee that the two bribed people would be paired up together, let alone that they would be assigned to the examination hall where Xiao Liulang was.

In spite of this, Prefect Luo still called the two people who collected Xiao Liulang’s exam paper for questioning, and both of them expressed that there wasn’t anything suspicious about the other.

"It’s a blank paper?"

"I didn’t know. The examinees will put a blank sheet of paper on top of their exam papers before handing it in, which is also to prevent us from spying on the examinees’ handwriting."

Provincial Governor Zhuang nodded and turned to Prefect Luo, saying, "After they collected it, the name on the exam paper was sealed, right? And the seal will not be removed until all examiners have finished marking them. This makes me wonder. How did that person recognize Xiao Liulang's exam paper and successfully replace it with a blank paper?"

Prefect Luo thought for a moment and said, "There are two ways: one is when collecting the papers and the other is when marking the papers. Xiao Liulang is the prefectural exam’s top scorer, and during this college exam, he was assigned the first cell. This is the rule. Upon collection, his exam paper would be the first one collected. By tampering with it in advance at that moment, one can identify his exam paper even after it was sealed later.”

“Or, some examiners somehow got Xiao Liulang’s prefectural exam paper and recorded down Xiao Liulang's handwriting. When marking the classics filling exam this time, they recognized Xiao Liulang's exam paper according to those records.”

“Either way, this scheming hand must certainly be amongst the examiners who marked the exam papers!"

The examiners for the prefectural exam and the college exam were not the same batch of people. It was precisely to prevent someone from remembering the examinees’ handwriting, thereby affecting the judgment of the examiner.

However, there was also the possibility of some people quietly getting their hands on the prefectural exam papers. After all, the confidentiality of the exam papers would be greatly reduced after they were marked.

With the exception of Provincial Governor Zhuang, eleven examiners were taken into the hidden chamber and subjected to harsh interrogation by Prefect Luo

Under severe punishment, Prefect Luo managed to find out the culprit.

It was the examiner surnamed Wu, who had been working in the examination compound for twenty years. He was an honest old man normally and Prefect Luo originally thought that he was the least possible culprit.

Apparently, he hadn’t committed any such misdeed before, not because he was a person with high morality, but rather, the bribe was not high enough.

“That man paid me one thousand taels of silver to sabotage Xiao Liulang's exam paper. Originally, I had prepared some ink to disguise the situation that Xiao Liulang himself accidentally soiled the exam paper. I've seen this situation many times. The soiled exam papers were all treated as scrap, so no one would verify it. But before I could set to the task, Lord Wang, who was sent away by me, came back all of a sudden.”

“My hand shook in panic, and I spilled the ink on myself. Looking for another ink was too late, but I happened to have some blank exam papers at hand, so I took one and replaced his exam paper with that."

"What does the man who bribed you look like?"

"His face was covered so I didn't see clearly."

"What about his voice? How high is it?"

"I don't remember... I really don't remember!"

Prefect Luo reported the results of the interrogation to Provincial Governor Zhuang.

Generally speaking, if fraud occurred in the imperial examination, everyone's exam papers would be invalidated and they would have to retake the exam. Not only would the prefectural officials suffer a serious backlash as a result, it would also make many examinees collapse mentally.

The imperial exam had always been a combination of strength and luck. No one could guarantee that they would do better in the retake, or that other examinees wouldn’t try to take advantage of this opportunity to catch up.

Of course, for those examinees who already flunked the exam, this was undoubtedly an opportunity for nothing.

1. ↑ — I can’t find the exact english translation for this, or if there is even one. Anyway: Lower Top Seats - Entry-level Exam (County, Prefectural, College) Upper Top Seats - Provincial Exam, Metropolitan Exam, Palace Exam