The low-key prince summons trainees from the Imperial Household Department at the start of the game.

Five days after the Spring Equinox in the twenty-third year of Yonghe.

The vermilion gates of the Imperial Examination Hall of the Ministry of Rites were solemnly closed after the final examination.

The fate of three thousand candidates was thus sealed within this high-walled, deep courtyard.

The examination room was located on the east side of the examination hall. It was a large hall with nine rooms connected together, with no windows on the four walls, and only dozens of large tallow candles for lighting.

The candles burned day and night, illuminating the entire reading room as if it were daytime.

The room contained three long desks, each with ten examiners seated on them. The exam papers were piled high on the desks, and the air was filled with the mixed smells of ink, candle wax, and strong tea.

The rules for grading examination papers in the Great Zhou Dynasty were extremely strict.

Before being sent to the marking room, all exam papers must undergo two processes: sealing and transcription.

The process of covering up the candidate's name and place of origin involves obscuring the candidate's information.

The transcription process involved a specialized transcriber rewriting the original scroll with a vermilion pen.

To prevent examiners from recognizing the candidate's handwriting.

Each paper must be reviewed by three examiners in turn, each giving a score and writing comments, then reviewed by two deputy examiners, and finally decided by the chief examiner.

Three thousand candidates, nearly ten thousand red papers, nine days and six nights of grueling work, all to be graded within half a month.

The examiners took turns on duty. When they got tired, they would lie down fully clothed in the adjacent side room and continue grading when they woke up. Almost no one could get a full three hours of sleep.

The servants responsible for delivering tea to the examination room changed batch after batch.

The tea leaves in the teapot were changed from Longjing to the strongest brick tea, but some people still started snoring on their desks while they were making their comments.

The chief examiner was Meng Yanlun, the Minister of Rites, who was 63 years old, a veteran official of three dynasties, with white hair and beard, but still in good spirits.

He was a fellow student of Grand Tutor Kong Yan and one of Kong Yan's most trusted deputies.

He was highly respected among the civil officials, serving successively as Chancellor of the Imperial Academy and Vice Minister of the Ministry of Rites. He presided over three imperial examinations and was known for his fairness and impartiality.

But what truly commanded the respect of the examiners was not the chief examiner Meng Yanlun, but the elderly man among the three deputy chief examiners who sat in the first chair on the east side.

This man's surname was Pei, his given name was Du, and he held the official position of Left Censor-in-Chief. He was the second most important figure in the civil service system of the Great Zhou Dynasty, second only to Grand Tutor Kong Yan.

If Kong Yan was the leader of the upright civil officials, he was like a large tree that had been rooted in the court for decades and whose branches and leaves were lush.

Then Pei Du is another peak among civil officials.

He was surrounded by a group of upright civil officials, but their system was completely different from that of Kong Yan, where teachers passed down their knowledge to students and had disciples all over the world.

Kong Yan cultivated his influence within the civil service system for decades, and his protégés and former officials were spread throughout the Six Ministries and Thirteen Circuits, forming the largest faction in the civil service group of the Great Zhou Dynasty.

The purists who attached themselves to Pei Du were mostly people who disapproved of certain interpersonal relationships and exchanges of benefits within Kong Yan's system.

They were not against Kong Yan's scholarship, but against his disciples' nepotism in local areas and their factionalism in the imperial court.

Pei Du himself never publicly commented on these matters.

However, when he promoted officials, he did not consider their family background or teachers, but only their character and ability. Over time, this formed a force that, while not large, was extremely resilient.

He is sixty-eight years old this year, three years older than Kong Yan, but his silver hair is neatly combed, and his thin face never shows any extra expression.

He was born into the Pei clan of Hedong, one of the top aristocratic families that had lasted for three hundred years since the founding of the Great Zhou Dynasty.

Such a background should have made him Kong Yan's most natural ally.

The scions of a distinguished family, upholding the orthodox Confucian tradition, have produced officials for generations.

But Pei Du was not the kind of person who could be recruited by any faction.

His motto was "Do not form factions, do not seek personal gain, and do not flatter superiors."

During his thirty years in office, he impeached imperial relatives and defied the late emperor's edict. He rejected Grand Commandant Zhou Jing's military expense reimbursement seventeen times, showing no respect even to Emperor Wu of Zhou.

During his twelve years as Left Censor-in-Chief, he impeached and brought down no fewer than a hundred officials, ranging from the first to the seventh rank.

Among them were Kong Yan's students, Yuwen Lie's confidants, and relatives from the Four Marquises' mansions.

When people in the imperial court mentioned Pei Du, the most common phrase they used was "both smelly and stubborn".

But this smelly and hard stone happened to be one of Emperor Wu of Zhou's most trusted ministers.

Because the emperor knew that any official in the court might form cliques for personal gain, but Pei Du was the only one who wouldn't.

However, Pei Du was not entirely alone.

A group of young censors and officials from the Six Ministries in the court spontaneously approached him out of admiration for his integrity.

These people mostly came from small or medium-sized aristocratic families or humble backgrounds. Although they were not of high rank, they held the power of censors and dared to impeach officials without fear of offending anyone.

Although their numbers are small, they are a force that no one in the court dares to ignore.

Inside the examination room, Pei Du was sitting upright in a folding chair, reviewing a vermilion scroll.

He had been watching for four hours straight, his tea had been refilled three times, and two candles had been replaced, but his back remained ramrod straight.

The examiners noticed that Vice Minister Pei had a particular habit when reviewing the papers.

Unlike other examiners who would first look at the essays and commentaries, he went straight to the policy essays.

His logic was simple: the test of calligraphy and painting skills was based on rote memorization, and as long as you didn't do too badly, you would pass.

But policy essays are a practical skill; they test a person's ability to use the wisdom of sages to solve real-world problems.

If an essay lacks substance, no matter how well it is written in classical texts, it is nothing more than the work of a bookworm.

Conversely, if one's strategic thinking is truly insightful, even if one's knowledge of classical texts and calligraphy is slightly inferior, one is still a promising talent.

The essay he held in his hand at that moment was titled "On the Abuses of Current Land Tax and the Feasibility of the Equal Tax Law".

The article begins without any unnecessary words, directly discussing the Tang Dynasty's tax system and the Great Zhou Dynasty's Single Whip Law.

The author clearly traces the evolution of the land tax system in the two dynasties, and then shifts focus to the three major problems with the current land tax system.

Each problem is accompanied by specific data and examples, explaining in detail how these problems lead to a shrinking national tax base and exacerbate the plight of the poor.

The text then devotes considerable space to detailing the equal tax scheme based on land, households, and tax rates, from the methods of land surveying to the division of tax grades.

From the evaluation mechanism for local officials to the supervisory measures to prevent powerful figures from concealing information, every aspect is meticulously documented.

It was as if this was not a policy essay, but a drafted reform program.

The article also included a brief table of the current status of land tax in the seven counties surrounding Beijing.

The table above lists basic data on land area, tax quotas, and population for each county in neat regular script, and compares them with figures from ten years ago.

The data was so detailed it looked like it had been extracted directly from the Ministry of Revenue's archives.

The article is well-organized, rigorously argued, and supported by solid data.

Pei Du almost felt as if he were reading a memorial submitted by the Ministry of Revenue, rather than reviewing examination papers.

He put down the scroll, remained silent for a moment, then picked up his pen and wrote four words at the end of the scroll: "Well-organized."

He paused after putting down his pen, then picked it up again and added a character before the four characters.

"very."

He handed the examination paper to Zhao Chongyi, the deputy chief examiner beside him.

This man, who came from the Imperial Academy and had worked with Pei Du for many years, was one of the few people in the examination room who could speak with Pei Du.