Around midevening, a small official from another class came to sell candles to the candidates. In the same way, they also carried two baskets of white wax and asked the candidates in the room one by one.

There's no need to speak, just shake your head or nod your head to communicate.

And the candidate who was intimidated by Zhao Hongrun during the day today seems to be waiting for this batch of white wax.

Finally, the little officer walked up to the examinee with the basket, and the ash in his hand shook in front of him, as if asking if the examinee needed it.

I saw that the candidate glanced at the other party and silently made a gesture.

He made an interesting gesture, with his left hand extending his index finger and his right hand spread out, as if to mean six white waxes.

Seeing this gesture, the little official seemed to understand something, and handed the other party a piece of white wax from the basket on the left, and then took out five white waxes from the other basket, and put them on the examination table one after the other.

The candidate glanced at the white wax taken from the left basket, placed it to the right of the last five candles, and then took one of the five white waxes at random, placed it in the bowl, and made a "please" gesture to the little official.

The little officer understood, took the tongue of fire from the basket, and lit the candle for the candidate.

The clerk left, and the candidate continued to sit at the examination table, as if still thinking about the question intently.

A piece of white wax can probably burn for less than half an hour, and this candidate lit the five white waxes one after another, which was just over two hours, and in a blink of an eye, it was two or three quarters of the hour, and it was almost time.

By the time it was approaching, it was already very late, and most of the candidates in the many rooms in the Confucius Temple had already curled up on the stone couch covered with straw mats to rest, covered with a dirty, thin cotton mattress that exuded a slow musty smell.

But there are also some candidates who have not fallen asleep yet, such as this candidate just now.

At this time, even the inspectors with torches rarely came here again, and most of the nearby students were resting, and it was at this time that he finally picked up the white ash that was ranked last.

There seems to be something strange about this white ash, but from the outside, it is no different from the previous five white ashes.

Here's what's weird......

"Smack."

There was a slight crisp sound, and the candidate broke the lower half of the white ash.

It turns out that the strange thing lies in the inside of the lower half of this white wax.

The examinee listened attentively, and saw that there was no movement around him, so he quickly pulled out a very thin roll of paper from the center of the lower half of the white wax, which was originally used to place the candle wick, about the thickness of the chopsticks.

He carefully spread out the roll of paper, only to see that the roll of paper grew larger and larger, and finally turned into a palm-sized piece of paper.

On the paper, someone has a mouse pen written in dense fly-headed small characters.

If you ask the rest of the candidates to take a look, I am afraid they will be exclaimed, because the answers to today's exam questions are clearly written on this piece of paper.

Seeing that no one was paying attention to the left and right, the candidate quickly copied the small words on the paper on the answer sheet, and it didn't take long for him to finish copying.

At this time, he placed the paper on the candle flame and lit it, and then quickly put it into the bowl, and broke the bottom half of the hollow candle and put it all into the bowl.

The paper quickly burned out, and there was only soft candle liquid in the bowl, and he pressed the stiff pieces of candle into the thick layer of candle liquid with a few clicks of his hand.

And when the last ash burned out, the liquid that flowed down from the candle covered the bowl with the candle liquid, forming a large thick block of cloudy and opaque ash, and all evidence was gone.

So, the candidate went to sleep on the stone couch, waiting for the examiners to come and collect the papers early tomorrow morning.

Perfect cheating, seamless.

But what he didn't expect was that above his head, on the roof of the number room, a small tile was removed, and a pair of eyes silently watched his every move.

It wasn't until the candidate lay asleep on the stone couch in an uncomfortable position that those eyes disappeared.

Soon after, the owner of those eyes quietly came to the room in the side hall of the Parents Temple, and called Zhao Hongrun, the eighth prince, who had been sleeping on the bed in a daze at this time.

Yes, the owner of those eyes is the guard Wei Jiao beside Zhao Hongrun.

And there are the rest of the sect guards, their task is to cover Wei Jiao, and it seems that they are pretending to patrol the vicinity, but in fact, they are not to let people notice Wei Jiao lying on the roof of the house.

For this reason, Wei Jiao also specially changed into a black night suit.

"Fetch me a basin of water."

Zhao Hongrun, who was waking up, yawned and said.

Even one of the guards scooped a few spoonfuls of water from the bucket in the corner of the wall into the basin.

Zhao Hongrun got up and walked to the basin and patted his cheek with his palm dipped in cold water, which made his sleepy eyes gradually become bright.

"How?" Turning around and sitting on the edge of the bed, Zhao Hongrun asked in a low voice.

I saw Wei Jiao hugging his fists, and also replied in a low voice: "As Your Highness expected, there is an article on that white wax." As he spoke, he told Zhao Hongrun everything he had witnessed, only to hear the latter's speech.

I have to say that the degree of rigor of this cheating method surprised him.

Whether it is the delivery method of the cheat sheet, or the choice of the cheating time, and the method of destroying the evidence at the end, Zhao Hongrun feels that he has lived in vain.

"It seems that this official has a set of sophisticated cheating methods......

Zhao Hongrun thought to himself.

According to his judgment, the candidate was by no means the only one who cheated in the department, and among the more than 2,600 candidates, there must have been similar incidents of fraud, but he has not yet caught it.

Judging from the method of fraud, Zhao Hongrun judged that there were many people involved in this kind of fraud. First of all, there must be someone who writes the answer, the person who writes the small print on that piece of paper, and the number is not one person. Think about it, wouldn't it be revealing if a cheating candidate wrote the same answer?

Secondly, the candle sellers who pass on the answers may be just intermediaries, but more likely they are acting on orders from above, so that their principals may be the examiners of the examination.

"What is Your Highness thinking?" Zong Wei He Miao asked curiously.

Zhao Hongrun glanced at him puzzled: "What?" ”

"The meaning of the humble position is that since you have already caught the handle, why don't your highness sue those people?"

"What about the evidence?" Zhao Hongrun asked rhetorically.

"Isn't the evidence just ......" He Miao subconsciously opened his mouth, but before he finished a sentence, he realized that the evidence of fraud in this way was destroyed on the spot, and he couldn't catch any handle at all.

"Aren't there still those little servants who divide candles?" Zong Wei Zhou Pu reminded self-consciously.

Zhao Hongrun smiled when he heard this, shook his head and said, "Don't you know what it means to abandon the car and protect the handsome?" …… Even if you catch the little ones who pass the candles, what can you do? As long as the group of officials insist that the people under their hands are secretly arbitrary, even if there are confessions from those small officials, they may not be able to bring them down, don't forget, they still have the support of the prince behind them. ”

"Isn't it okay to intercept those problematic candles?" Zong Wei Shen Yu, who had only been awake for a long time, frowned and asked.

"It can be, but this shock is not enough......" Zhao Hongrun shook his head, and then a somewhat weird smile appeared on his face, and muttered: "If you want to play, let's play bigger." ”

"......" The sect guards looked at each other, not understanding what their highness meant.

After all, it was his humerus henchman, Zhao Hongrun didn't hide it, and called the Zongwei to come closer, he told them his plan in a low voice, only to hear the Zongwei were stunned one by one, and their faces showed interest that they didn't know whether it was shock or excitement.

"Go get ready!"

"Yes!"

Without further ado, all the sect guards went separately to prepare, while Zhao Hongrun continued to go to bed, not that he was lazy, but if he didn't sleep enough at the moment, he might not be able to hold out the whole plan.

has been waiting for the sun to rise three poles, and Zhao Hongrun has woken up slowly.

The first thing he did when he woke up, he took two Zongwei to the science field, and took advantage of the convenience of the inspection to memorize the test questions of the last exam.

The last subject exam is "Chen Luo", that is, the policy question, which can be roughly divided into five categories: "case judgment", "construction", "people's livelihood", "degree support", and "Yuefu", with two case questions in each category, and only candidates are required to answer the questions in the categories that they are sure of, and the answers are not limited.

Of course, if you answer the more questions correctly, the greater the choice of future officials except under special circumstances; On the other hand, if you only answer one of the categories correctly, you will be recruited as an official of the ministry in the future unless there are special circumstances, and the choice is very small.

Other than that, there are no restrictions.

After memorizing the question, Zhao Hongrun pretended to patrol the examination room for a while, and then returned to the resting room.

At this time, the rest of the sect guards had already prepared pen, ink and paper.

I saw Zhao Hongrun thinking for a moment, and then he waved his pen on the paper for the category of "People's Livelihood" among the five types of exam questions.

In about a stick of incense, two short and superb articles were written.

He took a closer look and made some changes before putting down the brush in his hand.

"Fetch the rat."

Zong Wei next to him hurriedly handed over the mouse pen and listed the carefully cut palm-sized pieces of paper in front of him.

Seeing this, Zhao Hongrun took the mouse pen and carefully copied the article he had just written in small characters on the palm-sized piece of paper.

For several hours, he barely stopped.

You must know that it is extremely energy-consuming to write small characters with a mouse pen, not to mention that he copied dozens or hundreds of copies in one go, and at the end of writing, his right hand was so sore that he could barely lift it.

"So be it." After copying the last one, Zhao Hongrun put the mouse pen aside, and instructed Zong Wei Gao Kuo and the two of them to recruit the two people: "You two immediately take these to the Ministry of Industry, ask the craftsmen of the Ministry of Industry to imitate those white waxes, hide these papers in the white wax, and be sure to make them before dusk and hand them over to me." ”

"Understood!" Zong Wei Gao Kuo and Chong Zhao had already understood the entire plan of their Royal Highness, where could there be anything they didn't understand, so they carefully wrapped the paper in a cloth, hid it in their arms, and quietly left the Confucius Temple.

"If there are hundreds of candidates in a course who write hundreds of identical answers at the same time...... It's going to be a shocking one, hey!"

Shaking his sour right arm, Zhao Hongrun smiled maliciously.