After Yun Xi left the capital, Xi Yao ordered to strictly abide by the palace ban, and even the family members of the palace concubines were exempted from entering the palace for the first and fifteenth days of each month according to the custom, and there were strict restrictions on eunuchs leaving the palace, which was even stricter than the last time Yun Xi went to the palace. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 info After all, Yun Xi ordered the crown prince to supervise the country at that time, but handed over the jade seal to her for safekeeping, and she also had to take Wen Yuan to the Qianqing Palace for imperial affairs.

But there is one thing that Xiyao really can't give up, on the eve of Yunxi's official departure from Beijing, before she strictly abides by the palace ban, she sent someone back to her mother's house, and said to her father Xue Ning: "Dad, you must urge your younger brother to study, in a few days it will be the county exam, and there will be the government exam of Yingtianfu later, you must pass." ”

Yes, when she was pregnant and Yun Xi left Beijing, what she could still remember was that her younger brother Xue Xiyang participated in the imperial examination.

In these years, there are no certain rules for the promotion of civil and military officials, and if ordinary people can't pass the Jinshi and Raise people, they can become officials when they go to Guozijian; As long as Yun Xi is willing to be promoted, it is possible to be a high-ranking official such as Jiuqing.

But Xue Xiyang has a special identity, as a relative of Zhengbajing'er, it is just a military general, if he can't be born in the right way as a civil official, he will inevitably have the irony of being fortunate to enter; Xiyao resolutely made Xue Xiyang a civil official, so Xue Xiyang had to take the imperial examination, at least to be admitted to the imperial court as an official.

Xue Ning knew his daughter's thoughts, but he smiled bitterly at this time and said to Zhiyi who sent out to deliver the message: "Please report back to the queen, I naturally won't let Xi Yang slack off." However, now that he has worked very hard, if I persecute him again, he will not be able to bear it. ”

Xuan Yang is indeed working very hard now. He has a very deep relationship with Xiyao and Xiyi, and has always wanted to show his ability in the foreign court like his father and eldest brother, so as not to let outsiders ridicule them that the Xue family is 'just a relative'; Xiyao persuaded him to be a civil official and not a military general, so he has been working very hard recently, only asking for the county examination and the government examination to be able to pass the college examination next year and become a showman.

Xue Xiyang is still sure whether he can be admitted to Xiucai, which is not too difficult; But after that, I don't know if I can pass the township test.

On August 25, the day after Yunxi officially left Beijing, Shangyuan County and Jiangning County, which were attached to the capital, held a county examination at the same time under the auspices of the county order.

The six-level imperial examination of the Ming and Qing dynasties, the three-level township examination, the meeting examination, and the palace examination, whether it is the time, the content of the examination, the person in charge of the examination, the admission quota, etc., have certain rules; However, for the first three levels of examinations, the rules of the county examination, the government examination and the hospital examination are much looser, except for the rules of the examiner and the scope of the questions, there are no other rules, and even the examination time is chosen by the examiner himself. The two magistrates probably met too much, and they felt that there was nothing to do on this day, so they agreed to hold the exam on this day.

Without further ado, as soon as dawn was in the morning, many people gathered at the gates of the county schools in the two counties. Especially those who live outside the city are afraid that they will be too late, so they will enter the city and wait when the city gate is opened.

At the beginning of Shen Shichu, the temporarily transferred patrol police opened the gate of Jiangning County School and began to roll call and maintain order. As for the search, there are other people in charge, and there is a group of officials of the Ministry of Rites who are responsible for all the search and inspection work from the county examination to the general examination.

Hearing the roll call, hundreds of people gathered at the gate of the county school rushed forward, for fear that they would not hear their names and delay the exam. The patrol officer was armed with a baton to maintain order, and it was not easy to keep the scene from becoming chaotic.

The roll call person was taking the roll call step by step, and after a while, he heard this person say: "Xue Xiyang, the military household of the guard!" ”

Xue Xiyang immediately squeezed to the front and went up to be searched.

Ordinary people didn't react much when they heard this name, but the police, officials of the Ministry of Rites, and Jiangning County officials present were all relieved: This must be His Majesty's legitimate brother-in-law!

This time is not the end of the Ming Dynasty, even the top civil and military officials will not offend their relatives, let alone their little people. Although the officials who searched the inspection appeared to be meticulous on the surface, they were actually waterproof.

Liu Fengyu, a patrol officer who was maintaining order on the side, secretly wondered: "I heard that Xue Gongzi didn't apply for the household registration of Shangyuan County, and he wants to take the county test in Shangyuan County?" How did you come to Jiangning to take the county exam? ’

Xue Xiyang participated in the county examination for the first time, and he didn't know that these people who searched and inspected were released from the water, thinking that he had always searched like this, and he still wondered in his heart: "I heard that the imperial examination search has always been the most hated by scholars, why do I think it's nothing?" ’

After passing the search, he walked into the county school, looked inside, and saw Yue Zhongmian, the commander of Jiangning County, sitting on a temporary platform behind the gate.

The reason why the Xue family had planned to let Xue Xiyang take the exam in Shangyuan County, but suddenly transferred him to Jiangning County, was because of the person who served as the county commander. Shangyuan County ordered Li Guan to be a person with a bad reputation now, and the Xue family was very worried that Li Guan would admit Xue Xiyang when his articles were not enough to pass the exam, which would make his reputation controversial, so they urgently transferred Xue Xiyang's exam location to Jiangning County before the exam.

If you look to the right, you can see that the seats in the examination room are temporarily located in the open air. It is the crisp autumn weather, and the weather is neither hot nor cold, so the open-air exam is not uncomfortable, and it saves money compared to building an examination booth.

The test paper he had received earlier had an exam number on it, and he followed it to find his seat.

Putting down the examination basket and putting on the answer sheet and pen and ink inkstone, although Xue Xiyang did not pin his hopes of changing his fate on the imperial examination like ordinary candidates, his heartbeat was still not free and the Lord sped up a little.

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes to recuperate quietly, relieving his nervousness.

The sound of the three-way drum sounded, and Xue Xiyang woke up from his meditation and opened his eyes. The 'policeman' who has the county government office in charge of the clerk (the establishment is counted in the patrol police) holds a sign and walks back and forth in the examination room, and the sign is the exam question for this county examination.

The county school only examines two questions and four books, and because it is the first pass of the imperial examination, as long as the county order or the county magistrate is not psychopathic, there will be no deliberate difficult problems. It's very common to get these two questions today.

After Xue Xiyang saw the question, he took out a piece of good rice paper he had prepared and typed a draft, and then wrote it on the test paper without adding any dots.

Around noon, Xue Xiyang finished writing two articles, carefully checked for typos, and got up to hand in the paper.

But when he walked to the examiner's seat, he looked up and saw that the person in front of him was not Yue Zhongmian, the county magistrate he saw this morning, but a person wearing a seven-rank official uniform.

Xue Xiyang couldn't help but ask: "What did the county magistrate do?" ”

The seven-rank civil official in front of him also replied casually: "Yue County Ling suddenly had a high fever and had to go back to rest, so he handed over the matter of the county examination papers to this official." ”

If a candidate who came to take the exam heard their conversation, he would inevitably be dumbfounded and suspect Xue Xiyang of cheating: one candidate actually asked what the original marker was doing, and the new marker answered very honestly. If a candidate exposes this matter, no matter how well Xue Xiyang's article is written, it is impossible to be admitted in the next few years, and this marking officer will inevitably be dismissed.

The two parties also discovered the problem immediately after the answer. Zhou Yuan, the county Cheng who replaced Yue Zhongmian as the marking officer, immediately broke out in a cold sweat on his forehead. He stretched out his left hand to wipe the sweat from his forehead, looked left and right, and said secretly in his heart: "Fortunately, no one handed in the file at the same time as Xue Xiyang, and the people around him did not have officials from the county government, they were all just policemen, otherwise the officials who had become officials with great difficulty would have been gone." It's dangerous, it's dangerous. These policemen are all from the guard, even if they don't care about me, they don't dare to offend Xue Xiyang. ’

Xue Xiyang was also shocked into a cold sweat, usually when he saw officials of this grade at home, he always had something to say, but he said it casually today, but fortunately it was not heard by others.

He handed in the papers, walked out of the county school, and immediately took out a handkerchief to wipe his sweat after getting into his own carriage.

And Zhou Yuan looked at Xue Xiyang's scroll in front of him, pondered for a moment, made up his mind, and wrote his assessment on it.

……

……

The practice of the county test and the prefectural test is that the results will be released on the third day after the exam. In the early morning of 22 August, there was a crowd of people outside the county yamen, and two or three hundred people had gathered to wait for the county test list. Xue Xiyang could have asked his subordinates to come to the list instead of him, but he still came by himself.

The sun had just risen, the gate of the county government was opened, and two rows of policemen walked out of the instrument gate, one of whom held the list in his hand, walked to the wall in the gate of the county government, and pasted the list on the wall.

Everyone rushed up to the front of the wall, and countless eager eyes shot towards the county test list as if they had seen countless money.

Xue Xiyang also looked over and saw three words written at the top of the list: Xue Xiyang.

'Got it?' Or did you hit the head? Xue Xiyang was knocked down by a huge surprise. Although this is only the smallest first on the road to the imperial examination, and the name is far inferior to the following Xie Yuan, Hui Yuan, and champion, but it is also the first in any case.

After congratulating each other with the same Chinese-style students around him, Xue Xiyang left the gate of the county government with a smile on his face and went home to report the good news.

He didn't notice that countless people who didn't look like scholars at all also rushed out of the county office after seeing the name of the head of the case.

……

……

"Queen Mother, Concubine Hui, Xue Gongzi passed the exam, and also won the case." A little eunuch said with a smile on his face.

"Great, it's a blessing." After Xiyao heard that Xue Xiyang was hit, she patted her chest and said, Xiyi is about the same. After hearing that he was also hit by the case, he was even more happy, and he didn't know what to say.

After a while, Xi Yao came back to her senses, picked up a bracelet beside her casually and said, "This palace rewards you with this." ”

At a glance, the eunuch knew that it was carved from the finest jade, and it was priceless. He hurriedly knelt down and said, "The slave is just a messenger, how dare he get such a heavy reward." ”

"This palace rewards you, you will accept it, there is nothing wrong with it." Xi Yao said.

The eunuch accepted it.

After he stepped back, Xiyao said to Xiyi: "I just hope that Yang'er can make persistent efforts and pass the government exam." ”