Top Scholar

Chapter 357 Su Dongpo's Sacred Relics

Su Lu had heard his seniors talk about the differences between the cells—

The older buildings are better because they were built earlier and have more space, so they are tall and spacious, allowing people to stand up and move around easily. The newer buildings that were expanded later are smaller and have been built with corners cut, so they are too tall to stand up or too spacious to sit on, making people feel uncomfortable.

But old-fashioned books have their drawbacks; due to their age, they are prone to leaking. If the weather turns bad, with heavy rain outside and light rain inside, and the exam paper gets wet, it's doomed to fail and have to try again next time. So, it's necessary to bring a cover to the book, just in case.

However, the old shops near Mingyuanlou and Zhigongtang, being right under the noses of the supervisors and inspectors, were regularly repaired and generally didn't leak. If a candidate was assigned to one of these, it was like winning the lottery.

Of course, any number would do, except for the 'stinky number' right next to the outhouse. On a hot day, the outhouse would stink up in less than half a day, suffocating the nearby examinees. How could they possibly take the exam? Forget about it.

Su Lu stood at the entrance of the alley with the character "圣" on it. He saw that the alley entrance was equipped with a gate, a signal lamp, and a water tank.

He glanced back at the Mingyuan Tower, which was just a stone's throw away, and silently prayed as he went inside: 'Please, don't let it be a stinking place.'

Fortunately, the second room was his examination room, far from the outhouse at the end of the alley. Moreover, the alley was quite spacious; two people could walk side-by-side with their examination baskets, clearly a feature only found in older establishments.
'Good luck!' Su Lu breathed a sigh of relief, surveying the battlefield he would face over the next three days.

This is a small, open-plan room facing south. It's supposedly an old-fashioned unit, but it's only three feet wide and four feet deep, with an area of ​​just twelve square feet. To put it simply, that's about 1.3 square meters, barely larger than a telephone booth.

The only consolation is that the back wall is eight feet high and the front eaves are six feet high, which is still a reasonable height, so there's no need to worry about bumping your head.

And it was really dirty inside. There was thick dust everywhere, not to mention a lot of spider webs. Luckily, I listened to the advice of the older folks and brought cleaning tools.

Su Lu then took out a broom, scooped up a basin of clean water from the alley entrance, found a cotton towel to cover his mouth and nose, and began to clean up the dusty mess.

Not only him, but the other scholars in the examination room did the same. These gentlemen, who were usually waited on hand and foot and never lifted a finger, didn't care about appearances at this time. They all rolled up their sleeves and started cleaning their cells.

Fortunately, Su Lu had been working since he was a child and was quick and efficient. In the time it takes to drink a cup of tea, he had tidied up the cell to a presentable state.

He wiped the two number boards back to their original state with a rag and saw that many names were engraved on the number boards, which must have been left by the predecessors who had fought in this examination room.

The walls were also covered with poems, one of which was quite interesting. The last two characters of each line were clearly written in two different handwritings, suggesting it was written by candidates from two different exams:

Tears welled up even before I picked up my pen—no need.
Ten years of hard study—not necessarily.

If the examiner appreciates flowery writing—presumably,
Three matches, all that money spent—what's the point?

Su Lu couldn't help but smile. This must be the top student's merciless mockery of the underachiever, but unfortunately the underachiever definitely wouldn't see it.

Just then, he heard clanging and banging sounds coming from the alley. He quickly pulled out a hammer from his basket, took out three nails, and hammered them into the door frame and the wall. He then hung up the examination curtain and the roll-up bag.

As for the cell roof, he checked it while cleaning and found that the tiles on the cells were all newly replaced and shouldn't leak, so he decided not to install it for now, otherwise it would be too stuffy to sit inside.

He then laid out the examination tools, such as writing brush, inkstone, water dropper, and copper character ring, one by one on the number board.

This number board is actually the soul of the examination room. It consists of two rectangular wooden boards, with the inner one directly embedded in the wall, serving as a seat. The space underneath can also hold examination baskets, boxes, and the like.

The outer section is movable. There are two brick seams of different heights on each side of the wall. When the number board is inserted into the higher section, it becomes a table for taking exams and eating; when the number board is inserted into the lower section, it is flush with the inner section and becomes a bed.

It can be said that the space has been utilized to the fullest extent.

Having completed all the preparations, the examiner still hadn't revealed the questions. With nothing else to do, Su Lu took out the stove, set it up against the wall opposite his seat, and inserted the chimney.

He went to the alley entrance to fetch a kettle of water, and also took a few pieces of charcoal from beside the water vat, threw them into the stove, and lit it to boil the water.

He also took two glutinous rice cakes from the food basket and roasted them by the stove.

He sat on a small stool, tending to the stove and observing the glutinous rice cakes, momentarily forgetting why he had come there in the first place...

"You silly boy, you're having a great time." One of the examinees muttered as he smelled the aroma of the glutinous rice cakes, and then couldn't resist taking out his own rations and starting to eat them.

Su Lu pretended not to hear, as not whispering was an exam rule he had known since his past life.

But he never imagined in his past life that one day he would be lighting a stove in the examination hall, boiling water and baking glutinous rice cakes...

When the lid of the copper teapot clicked shut, Su Lu turned off the stove, picked up the teapot, returned to his seat, poured himself a cup of hot or cold tea, and elegantly drank the tea while eating glutinous rice cakes, feeling a sense of peace in his heart.

After finishing his meal, he wiped his hands clean, took out the brocade pen case given to him by the Prince of Shu from the examination basket, and carefully pulled out the writing brush inside.

This brush looks old; the handle is made of polished purple bamboo, warm and smooth to the touch, with an excellent feel.

The brush tip is made of short, stiff hairs, rounded and plump, with a sharp but not prickly tip, and feels soft and smooth to the touch. But these weren't the reasons that surprised Su Lu before—the real reason was that this brush had no core!

The core of the brush is shaped like a date pit and serves as the central supporting structure of the brush head.

However, this pen does not have a traditional core. Instead, the bristles are arranged into long tips, most of which are hidden inside the tube and held in place by the bristles' own cohesive force and their fit with the tube.

This technique is called "Wu Xin San Zhuo," which Su Lu had only seen in books before.

But he knew that pens made using this technique were also called Zhuge pens. This was because his ancestor, Su Dongpo, loved these pens most of all. He even wrote an essay, "On Du Junyi's Collection of Zhuge Pens," detailing his connection to the Zhuge pen—

Su Dongpo said that he had a senior named Du Junyi, who treated the famous pen maker Zhuge well when he was an official in Xuanzhou, so he often received his fine pen.

When Su Dongpo took the imperial examination, Junyi presented him with two writing brushes, and he never failed the test!
Twenty-five years later, Su Dongpo was demoted to Huangzhou. Junyi had been dead for a long time, but his son still had the pen that Su Dongpo had obtained in Xuanzhou. Su Dongpo took it and tried it out. It was still in good working order, which greatly surprised him.

Later, Du Junyi's son gave the remaining Zhuge brushes to Su Dongpo and also taught him the method of storing the brushes. The brushes were still in good working order until Su Dongpo passed away!

Unfortunately, after the fall of the Northern Song Dynasty, the Zhuge family's brush-making technique was also lost in the war, and later generations could only reminisce about Su Shi's beloved brush in legends.

But what Su Lu saw before him was an authentic Zhuge brush, and considering the identity of the person who gave it to him, his heart pounded – could this brush have been left behind by Su Dongpo?

Just then, the bell finally rang from Mingyuan Tower to signal the start of the exam. He quickly and carefully put away the Zhuge pen, placed the teapot and teacups under his seat, carefully wiped the table clean, and sat upright to wait for the questions to be released.

After a short while, it was finally the turn of the "Saint" lane. Officials distributed the examination papers to each table, and the candidates stood up, bowed, and received the papers with both hands.

After the examiners finished distributing papers in one alley, they would move on to the next, but soldiers would stay behind to keep watch and prevent the examinees from asking each other questions or spying on each other.

As for what the candidates did in their cells, once the examination curtain was hung, no one knew...

~~
When Su Lu received the ink scroll, the sun was already high in the sky.

That's considered good. I heard that in the south, in Zhejiang, because there were so many test takers, by the time everyone had been searched and entered the examination hall, and the exam papers were handed out, it was almost dark, making the first day a complete waste.

Today was a bright and sunny day, with strong sunlight shining directly into the examination cells, so Su Lu also hung up the examination curtain, which did make it a little cooler.

As he took off his suffocating robe, he looked at the questions on the scroll. There were three questions on the Four Books and twenty questions on the Five Classics, but he only needed to answer the four questions on the Five Classics.

So, in the first three days, he had to write seven articles. The time was quite ample, at least for him…

After reading the first question on the Four Books, he lay down on the table and took a nap.

I got up at two or three in the morning and have been working non-stop until now, past ten. My head is completely numb, and I need to rest and get back into the swing of things.

Moreover, Confucianism opposes afternoon naps, so Su Lu took an afternoon nap so that he wouldn't be considered a 'rotten piece of wood'.

After sleeping soundly for an hour, Su Lu was awakened by the smoke. It really startled him... The older generation had told him many stories about the fire at the examination hall, saying that many people would die every time.

Fortunately, before he fled, he lifted the curtain to take a look and found that it was noon and the scholars were cooking.

Most of the men in the household hadn't experienced hardship like him; they were all pampered and never lifted a finger, unable to even do something as simple as lighting a stove. Either they couldn't light it, or there was too much smoke, and they all ended up looking like Zhang Fei (a character from Journey to the West known for his coughing), the sounds of coughing echoing throughout the house…

Su Lu finally understood why the examination hall was always flooded. With thousands of these kinds of people together, it would be strange if it didn't flood!
The old soldier supervising the fire also looked tense, carrying a bucket of water, ready to put out the fire at any moment...

Fortunately, it ended without serious harm. It wasn't that the men had learned how to light the stove; rather, most of them had given up and retreated to their cells to eat cold food.

Su Lu was relieved. He bent down to pour half a cup of cool tea to moisten his throat, then opened the ink box, picked up the brush and began to make a draft.

He couldn't bear to use the Zhuge pen, but instead placed it aside, asking Su Dongpo to bless him with a flow of literary inspiration.

The provincial examination naturally consisted of major questions, and the three questions on the Four Books were all well-structured and respectable. Su Lu had already formed his ideas during his short rest. When he put pen to paper, it was as if he were divinely inspired. His writing possessed both the unrestrained and expansive style of Su Shi's writing and adherence to the rules of classical prose. He did not flaunt his skills, yet every word was precious. His writing appeared simple, but it contained immense power!

By dusk, he had finalized all three essays on the Four Books!
Only then did I feel my stomach rumbling. Indeed, food is essential for life; you get hungry if you skip a meal.

He put away his exam papers and stationery, took two pieces of pastry to fill his stomach, and then took a stool to the exam alley, where he set up a pot to cook meat porridge.

P.S. I've finally finished writing, and I didn't miss the three-chapter update. By the way, who remembers that the monk's original work was at least 6,000 words? So asking for a monthly vote isn't too much to ask, is it...?

(End of this chapter)