My Wife is Unbeatable in the Whole World, Touch Me If You Dare!-Chapter 296 - 173: The Fortune-Telling Old Man’s Prediction_2
These words that might affect Li Nuo's mood, she did not express them but simply said, "I won't disturb you anymore, you should prepare well for tomorrow's exam..."
When she left, she ran into two figures head-on.
Song Jiaren was holding Mumu's hand, and their eyes met, but in the next moment, they parted ways, and there was no conversation exchanged even when Li Anning had left.
Yet, when Song Jiaren entered the room, she turned back for a glance at Li Nuo sitting in the courtyard.
Her eyes seemed to be making a decision...
Song Yu failed in the Book Department, and the next morning, Li Nuo arrived at the Examination Hall alone.
The Imperial Examination lived up to its name, Li Nuo remembered that during the spring exams, after the Book Department phase, more than half of the candidates were eliminated, but in the Imperial Examination's Book Department, less than one quarter were weeded out.
This one quarter were probably like Song Yu, who relied on connections and silver to enter the Four Great Academy.
Those who managed to enter the Four Great Academy on their own were already the cream of the crop from the spring exam screenings and would not be so easily eliminated.
As everyone waited at the entrance of the Examination Hall, they whispered among themselves.
"In a single Examination Hall, to have three excellent calligraphy papers is unprecedented."
"The Painting Department also saw a genius, they say even the examiners feel inferior."
"And with Composition, there's actually an excellent score, when it's always been stingy with such high praises."
"The brisk spring breeze carries my proud horse hooves, in one day I've seen all of Chang'an's flowers... Damn, this poem is written so well, why can't I write like this!"
...
With the doors of the Examination Hall opening, the candidates filed in and settled into their respective examination rooms.
Today was the second day of the Imperial Examination, with two subjects to be taken.
Just like the spring exams, scholars needed to complete the Mathematics and Ritual Department papers within one day.
Almost everyone chose to do Mathematics first because this subject required a clear head, and if they waited until the afternoon, they would likely become hazy and make mistakes.
Li Nuo also chose to tackle Mathematics first.
Although there were still twenty questions similar in type, the difficulty of these questions in the Imperial Examination was significantly higher than the spring exam.
Take equations for an example, the spring exam tested on two variables, but the first question in the Imperial Examination was on five variables, a completely different level in terms of computational effort.
For those who were careless, a single wrong number could render the problem unsolvable, and it would be hard to detect even upon review.
Li Nuo relied solely on himself for Mathematics, first working out the calculations on scratch paper and only after verifying they were correct would he transcribe them onto the formal test paper.
As time trickled away, when Li Nuo reached the last two questions, he glanced at them and was slightly startled.
It wasn't that these two questions were too difficult, but rather...
These two questions, weren't they the ones he had given his wife to stump those four elderly gentlemen?
One was a variant of the General Drinking Horse problem, a step up in difficulty.
The other was an optimal strategy problem.
Although they weren't the original questions, they belonged to the same category.
Mr. Chen had mentioned that, to select talents in Mathematics, there would be a slight change in the questions for this session of the Imperial Examination. It referred to these two questions.
To say they were difficult, these two questions could not be considered as such, and the process to solve them wasn't complicated either, but one had to have the right approach. Merely knowing the Nine Numbers by rote probably wouldn't crack these questions.
In Mathematics, answering ten out of twenty questions correctly is required to obtain a valid score.
Thereafter, each additional correct answer would raise the grade, with all twenty solved correctly deemed excellent, and each error deducting a level.
After finishing these two questions, Li Nuo rested for a while and then opened the envelope containing the Ritual Department's exam questions.
This subject wasn't too difficult for him; he lit up the portraits of Zheng Zhi and the Minister of Rites and began writing without hesitation.
By the time Li Nuo finished the two questions in the Ritual Department, most examinees in the First Examination Hall were still working on Mathematics.
Who knew how many stared blankly at the last two questions of Mathematics, utterly clueless.
The two questions were related to military formations.
One was about watering cavalry horses, and the other was about provisioning forage, seemingly practical but these were problems they had not studied before, leaving them completely at a loss on how to begin solving.
After pondering for some time, they still had no clue and had to put it aside to start on the Ritual Department questions.
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Those two questions, they couldn't do, and neither might others.
In a particular examination room at that moment, Zhou Yu looked at the two questions with surprise.
Although his teachers hadn't discussed these with him, one of them was similar to what he had heard Brother Li discuss at the Song Residence, and he faintly remembered how to tackle such a problem...
He quickly solved the problem that he knew.
Another one, without any ideas, he skipped immediately and took out the questions from the Ritual Department.
His gaze fell upon the piece of paper he had taken out of the envelope; Zhou Yu first felt a surge of joy, followed by a moment of stunned confusion. The next moment, goosebumps covered his body, and he felt a tingling sensation on his scalp...
Two months ago, he had seen a fortune-telling old man outside his home.
The old man was accompanied by a granddaughter, and seeing the pitiful pair, he gave them one ingot of silver.
After accepting the silver, the old man insisted on reading his fortune.
Zhou Yu had never believed in such things, but he was in a good mood at the time and let the old man give it a try.
The old man randomly pinched his fingers and told him he would become a Prime Minister in the future.
Zhou Yu almost laughed out loud. His father, a fifth-rank Minister of Transportation, had not even passed the Advanced Scholar examination, and he was supposed to become a Prime Minister? Ridiculous!
Considering the old man had given him a good laugh, he rewarded the old man with another ingot of silver.
Then the old man wanted to read his fortune again.
At the time, Zhou Yu did not think much of it and jokingly said if he really had the ability, he should predict which questions would appear in this year's Imperial Examination for the Ritual Department.
There was too much content in the Five Rites for Zhou Yu to have reviewed thoroughly.
However, surprisingly, the fortune-telling old man seemed to really know the Five Rites. He pinched his fingers again at random and told him five types of ceremonies, specifically:
Auspicious Ceremony: Worshiping the Ancestor of Agriculture.
Guest Ceremony: Reception of the king.
Military Ceremony: Archery.
Fine Ceremony: Princess Marrying.
Funeral Rites: Imperial Prince's Mourning and Condolence.
Inside the Examination Hall, Zhou Yu looked down again to find that the questions on the Imperial Examination Ritual Department paper were exactly as the old man had predicted.
There were hundreds of ceremonies within the Five Rites.
The Auspicious Ceremony included Worshiping the Five Emperors, Worship Hundred Gods, Sacrifice to the Great Society, Worship Five Mountains, Four Towns, Sacrifice to the Four Seas, Four Rivers...;
For the Guest Ceremony, the ritual regulations varied for different kings and envoys from various countries;
Fine Ceremony included Rituals of Drinking and Eating, Marriage, Coronation, Guest Shooting, Entertainment Banquets, Lard and Millet Rituals, and Celebratory Rites;
Military Ceremony contained expeditions, hunting, and so on. Funeral Rites were even more elaborate, not to mention the differences within the Imperial Family, even dividing to each official rank, the rituals for funerals were different, and the details could drive one mad.
Each ritual had different procedures and regulations; it was impossible to memorize them all. However, most of the processes were the same within the same type of ceremony, and answering these would at least secure a B grade in the Ritual Department.
But to aim for a higher score would require ten, twenty, or even a hundred times more effort.
Naturally, this was a losing proposition.
In this examination, scoring below a B was not so easy, and scoring above an A was equally challenging.
Sometimes, it was more about luck.
Zhou Yu was lucky. The exams covered the content he had memorized.
He didn't know why, but after returning home that day, he spent several days as if possessed, memorizing precisely those five ceremonies dictated by the old man...
Now looking back, he found it inexplicably odd.
What was more terrifying was,
That was two months ago. At that time, the examiners for the Imperial Examination had not yet been determined, nor had the questions for the Ritual Department.
Let alone the old man not being an examiner, even if he had been, he would not have directly set these five questions. They would have been randomly drawn from hundreds of ceremonies...
He had managed to predict the examination questions two months in advance!
A storm raged in Zhou Yu's heart, and he even forgot that he was in the midst of the Imperial Examination hall. When he thought of the old man's face again, he felt a chill...
At this moment,
Outside the Examination Hall.
Housekeeper Wu leaned against the carriage, with a foxtail grass in his mouth, suddenly recalling something.
The fortune-telling old man had said before that the young master had several other predestined marital connections.
At that time, he was dismissive.
But now, thinking back, if the young master became a top scholar in the Six Arts like his father, he might really have to marry a Princess, wouldn't that exactly fulfill the old man's prophecy...
