Top Scholar

Chapter 112 Mistakes in and out
Moreover, Magistrate Lu was not only frugal in his meals, but his official robes and sedan chair were also old, with nothing new inside or out, which naturally earned him high praise from the scholars.

"Very well, although Magistrate Lu is a junior official, he is still a scholar who practices self-discipline and restraint at heart!"

"Seeing is believing, the rumors are so unbelievable!"

Little did people know that it was because Magistrate Lu was superstitious. He believed that the sedan chair carried fortune, and the official robes carried fortune, so they couldn't be changed; if they were, they would have to start accumulating official luck all over again. As a result, he had been accumulating luck for eleven years, but hadn't achieved any great success…

Only Li, the centurion of Tucheng, was secretly puzzled. "Last night, Magistrate Lu was really ruthless. He ordered a lamb leg and a dog leg, and also drank half a jin of ten-year-aged Erlangtan liquor..."

Why is it on again today? Is this what they call "singing the song of the mountain when you come to the mountain"—coming to the academy means you have to act like a scholar?

That must be it, I'm truly impressed!
Li Baihu finally completed his mental reconstruction, and his evaluation of Magistrate Lu was significantly elevated.

Only the servant knew that his master's old ailment had flared up again, and he needed to eat a light diet to avoid getting a sore throat; he also had to try to limit his food intake to avoid putting extra strain on his lower body...

~~
After lunch, Magistrate Lu intended to take his usual afternoon nap.

He suddenly remembered that he was in the academy, and taking a nap would be looked down upon. To avoid being called a blockhead, Magistrate Lu had his servant brew a cup of extremely strong and bitter tea, which he drank with a frown before shakily making his way to the main hall.

Inside the hall, Headmaster Zhu and his entourage had been waiting for quite some time.

Seeing this, Magistrate Lu secretly rejoiced. If he had taken a nap and made everyone wait outside, it would have been a laughing stock. So he mustered his spirits, cupped his hands to the crowd, and said, "Thank you all for waiting."

"You've worked hard, sir," the gentlemen said respectfully. After spending half a day with him, they couldn't help but feel a deep respect for Magistrate Lu.

The attendant placed a hollow cushion on the armchair and helped Magistrate Lu sit down slowly.

The servant brought tea again, and everyone chatted for a while. Qian Shanzhang, who had once been Magistrate Lu's advisor, acted as a mediator, and the atmosphere quickly became relaxed. As soon as Magistrate Lu relaxed, he involuntarily let out a big yawn.

"Ah...ha..."

“Your Excellency must be exhausted from your journey. Would you like to rest for a while?” Zhu Liu said kindly.

But Magistrate Lu was too traumatized and believed that they would laugh at him behind his back, so he waved his hand and said, "It's alright. When I'm busy, I don't sleep for three days and three nights. What is a little travel fatigue?"

"Your Excellency is truly working tirelessly day and night!" Qian Huai-ren said with a grateful expression. In fact, he knew that Magistrate Lu needed to sleep for six hours straight every day, eating three full meals and taking two naps.

Magistrate Lu gave him a grateful look, coughed, and said, "Then let's begin the examination."

"Please, Your Excellency, set the question," said Zhu Shanzhang, bowing respectfully.

But he knew without asking that it must be a test of literary skills. Composing poems and couplets and playing fancy tricks were the privilege of officials who came from the proper examination system. For an official like Magistrate Lu, who came from a less prestigious background, he was too busy trying to get by, let alone play any tricks.
Sure enough, Magistrate Lu took out three envelopes from his sleeve and said in a deep voice: "There is no better way to examine students' academic performance than through the imperial examinations. I have set a topic for each of the three schools, and after the headmaster instructs them to write their essays, I will personally review the papers and reward those who excel."

"Yes." Headmaster Zhu took the envelope and saw that it had three characters written on it: "Upper, Middle, Lower." He then handed it to Qian Huai-ren, Supervisor Chen, and Mr. Zhu, saying, "Thank you for your help in supervising the exams."

"Yes, ma'am." The three men took the envelope and left.

~~
Qian Huai-ren took the envelope with the character 'Shang' on it and went to the Shangzhai.

The upper hall has only twenty students, all of whom live in one classroom.

After the students bowed respectfully, Qian Huai-ren took out the question from the envelope and looked at it:
'Do not hesitate to correct your mistakes.'

This is a simple question from the Four Books, and it's the most common single-page question, the kind that's no longer tested in the evening study sessions.

Qian Huai-ren couldn't help but frown slightly, thinking to himself, how could it be so simple? He knew the level of Magistrate Lu; although he was only a junior supervisor, his knowledge was genuine.

Because this was not the later era, at that time only students were eligible to donate to the Imperial Academy; ordinary people couldn't do it even if they had money.

The purpose of a scholar purchasing an official post was to be able to become an official after completing their studies in prison. Unfortunately, the current dynasty did not have the convenience of directly purchasing an official post like some later dynasties.

So while those who passed the imperial examinations could laugh at him, ordinary students really had no right to do so...

Qian Huai-ren had a gut feeling that there was something wrong here, but based on his experience in government offices, he pondered for a moment and then casually announced the question.

"You're making us do this kind of question?" The students were dumbfounded.

"Be humble! Be humble!" Qian Huai-ren slammed his hand on the table and scolded, "Magistrate Lu wants to test your attitude towards scholarship. Does that mean you can skip even the simplest questions in the county examination?!"

"Yes, we understand." The students had no choice but to admit their mistakes and lower their heads to answer the questions.

Meanwhile, there was also an uproar in the lower dining hall.

"You're making us do this kind of question?" The students were equally astonished.

But their reactions were completely opposite to those of their seniors, because they were presented with a challenging problem—

'As for the nature of a person, Confucius said: 'Clever words and a flattering appearance.'

The "cut-and-paste" question involves taking unrelated sentences from the scriptures and piecing them together to form a question, testing the candidate's ability to integrate and interpret the meaning of the scriptures.

For example, in this question, the first half of the sentence comes from the Analects, "Filial piety and brotherly love are the foundation of benevolence," which is the core viewpoint of Youzi that "filial piety and brotherly love are the root of benevolence." The second half comes from another passage, "Confucius said: 'Clever words and an ingratiating appearance are seldom associated with benevolence.'" At first glance, they seem unrelated, requiring test takers to use their knowledge to connect and integrate the two parts. There are also many rules in between that are quite different from the complete question.

Moreover, as Qiu Jun, a famous minister of this dynasty, said in his "Supplement to the Extended Meaning of the Great Learning": "In recent years, when questions are set at the beginning of the year, they often forcibly cut off the punctuation, breaking the meaning of the classics, connecting things that should not be connected, and cutting things off that should not be cut off." Therefore, the academies do not teach students to cut and connect questions during the first two years of the foundation-building stage.

However, because the Grand Master Academy frequently tested students with questions involving truncated phrases during the examinations to prevent them from copying Cheng Wen's essays, the academy had to explain these questions to students in their final year.

Therefore, this question should have been set for those in the upper-level study hall, not for the novices in the lower-level study hall.

Master Zhu also sensed something was wrong and said to his disciples, "Please wait a moment."

After saying that, he took the question to the upper study. As soon as he saw the question that Qian Huai-ren had written on the white cardboard, he knew what was going on.

He hurriedly handed the questions in his hand to Dean Qian.

Qian Huai-ren immediately understood; the county magistrate must have been confused and mixed up the topics for the upper and lower vegetarian meals.

Mr. Zhu whispered, "Hurry up and change it."

"..." Qian Shanzhang pondered for a moment, then shook his head and said, "It cannot be exchanged."

"Why?" Mr. Zhu asked, puzzled.

"Is this question wrong?" Qian Huai-ren asked softly, pointing to the question on the whiteboard.

"Too easy," Mr. Zhu said.

"Is it wrong to be too simple?" Qian Huai-ren asked again.

"No," Master Zhu shook his head and said, "But the questions for the next meal were too difficult; the disciples still don't know how to do them."

“Then teach them,” Qian Huai-ren said in a low voice. “Perhaps the county magistrate and the headmaster have the same idea and are deliberately increasing the difficulty so that they can select the best of the best.”

"Is it necessary to be so stubborn?" Mr. Zhu said speechlessly, "Isn't it better to be realistic?"

When Ban Gu praised Liu De, the Prince of Hejian, for his "love of learning and antiquity, and his pragmatism," he coined this term...

"No, Lao Zhu," Qian Huai-ren said, even more speechless, "Did we invite him here to test our disciples?"

"Do we still need him to take the teaching exam?" Mr. Zhu said, somewhat understanding.

“Right? Our goal is to please him and make him think more highly of our academy so that more of our students can pass the county exam!” Qian Huai-ren said, “We can clearly let our students do this question, but we’re going to make him unhappy and lose face. Do you think he’ll have a good impression of us?”

"So we have to help him smooth things over?" Mr. Zhu said.

“That’s right.” Headmaster Qian nodded and said, “It’s not difficult to smooth things over, and Magistrate Lu will appreciate it.”

"I understand." Mr. Zhu was convinced. Although Professor Qian's scholarship wasn't great, he understood these intricacies perfectly.

~~
Master Zhu then took the questions back to the lower study and addressed his disciples:

"I asked Dean Qian, and this is the topic."

“We don’t know how to do it, sir,” the disciples cried out.

"I'll teach you now." Mr. Zhu then explained the rules and methods of solving the puzzle to his students in a simple and clear way.

"Go ahead and do it." Finally, he added to relieve the students' stress, "Anyway, it won't affect your points, so just consider it a harmless experiment."

"Yes." After listening, the disciples had no choice but to begin solving the problem.

Su Lu recalled what Mr. Zhang had said: solving a problem is like solving a riddle, especially a problem involving connecting two sentences. As long as you can connect the two sentences so that they are both logical and can expound the teachings of Confucius and Mencius, the problem is solved. The rest is to proceed step by step to solve the problem, develop the argument, and begin the discussion.

Fortunately, the question leaves a connection between the two sentences, namely "benevolence," so that students who are new to this subject are not completely stumped.

However, this connection alone is not enough to establish a unified logic for the context. This is because the first "benevolence" refers to filial piety towards parents and obedience to elder brothers as the foundation of benevolence; while the second "benevolence" refers to the fact that those who are eloquent, pretentious, and kind rarely have a benevolent heart.

Untrained students would likely be completely baffled. Although Su Lu hadn't been trained in solving cross-cutting problems, he had practiced with countless more complex types of problems and quickly grasped the key to this one—you have to solve it backwards!

Let's look at the second sentence first. It clearly says, "Those who are not sincere are rarely benevolent." The key word besides "benevolence" is "sincerity."

Connecting this keyword to the preceding text, we can see that the behavior of being filial to parents and obedient to elder brothers stems from inner sincerity. Therefore, the previous sentence can be interpreted as "sincerity is the foundation of benevolence!"
Sincerity is the foundation of benevolence; without sincerity, one rarely attains benevolence!
Having successfully solved the problem, the rest fell into place. In less than half an hour, Su Lu finished writing the entire article. After skillfully checking, revising, and transcribing it, he silently began the countdown:
"Three, two, one..."

Sure enough, the retractable clapperboard rang out...

This is not a boring game, but a way to train yourself to manage your time.

This is very important in exams when there are no clocks to keep track of time.

P.S. Four updates in ten days? I've finally paid off my debts, but everyone's subscriptions have already reached 12000... so I need to keep updating like crazy!! Please vote and subscribe!!
(End of this chapter)