"Sure enough, gold always shines!"

After Luo Cheng read Ma Zhou's test papers, he was also full of praise. Whether it is the mastery and understanding of the scriptures in the Moyi part of the scriptures, or the familiar grasp of the history, or the current affairs and policies, or the judgment of cases, they are all very qualified. Even his handwriting is very good, and it can be seen that there is still a lot of improvement compared to the previous generation of He Jin when he wrote the chapter.

"Father, is Ma Zhou so powerful?"

"It's a talent."

"Can the father arrange Ma Zhou to the East Palace?" The prince asked.

"Hahaha, you are smart, but it is estimated that Ma Zhou may not be willing to go to the East Palace."

"Why?"

Luo Cheng smiled and checked his homework for the prince, and said, "A young man like Ma Zhou is talented and young, so he is talented and proud, especially with the enthusiasm to do great things, and your East Palace is not really in charge of anything now, so in the eyes of people like them, he can only be regarded as an idle yamen, and he can't do anything, and accompanying the prince to study is undoubtedly not what he wants." ”

"But I am the prince, the future son of heaven, and sooner or later I will be in charge." The prince was a little unconvinced.

"Well, sooner or later, you'll have to take care of things, but it's not now after all. However, I also appreciate Ma Zhou's impulsiveness, if it is an ordinary scholar, if you invite him, he will definitely be very happy to come to the East Palace, stay in the East Palace for one or two decades, and he will be able to soar to the sky in the future. But Ma Zhouno, he didn't want to wait that long, he just wanted to do something practical now. I hope that the people admitted to the imperial examination are all such young and passionate scholars. ”

Luo Cheng continued to look at the prince's homework, and couldn't help frowning.

"Prince, you don't read this book very carefully."

The prince was honest immediately.

"Father, my son is studying very hard."

"When you read a book, you have to understand it with your heart, not memorize it by rote. I'll ask you a simple question, why do you say we are called Han Chinese? ”

"Father, the Han people are because of the Han Dynasty."

"Then you say, the two Han Dynasty have been dead for hundreds of years, and then there are Wei, Jin and other countries, but the surrounding Hu people call us Han more than others?"

Now the prince couldn't answer.

Before Liu Bang established the Han Dynasty, the Zhou Dynasty ruled the world for more than 800 years, and the king of Zhou was the co-lord of the world, but since the beginning of the Spring and Autumn Period, the princes began to fight against each other, and the co-lord of the king of Zhou was actually unable to restrain and govern the princes. Therefore, at that time, in fact, the people of the world at that time had begun to be called the Chu people, the Qin people, the Jin people, the Song people, the Qi people, etc., all of which were called vassal states.

Until Qin and the Six Kingdoms unified the world, everyone in the world was called the Qin people.

It is a pity that Qin II died, and then the Han Dynasty, before and after the Han Dynasty for hundreds of years in the world, the title of the Han people is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, although the Han Dynasty died, but the Han people are still continuing, Han has become another synonym for our Chinese people, and even more common mainstream than Huaxia. ”

"Therefore, although my father and I established the Great Qin Empire, we are both Qin and Han."

"Oh, I see."

"Then the father asks you again, do you know why the dynasty established by Liu Bang is called Han?".

"I know this, because after Liu Bang and Xiang Yu destroyed Qin, they were divided into Han kings by Xiang Yu, the overlord of Chu."

"Then why do you say you are the king of Han?"

"Because his fief is in Hanzhong."

"What is the name of Hanzhong?"

"There's Han water there."

Luo Cheng smiled, "It seems that you are not bad at geography, so I ask you again, where does the name of Hanshui come from?" ”

Now the prince couldn't answer.

"I tell you that the Han of Han Water originally means the Han of the Xinghan, and the Xinghan refers to the Milky Way in the sky. The ancients called the big river that originated in Hanzhong, flowed through Xiangyang, and finally joined the Yangtze River as Hanshui, because the ancients thought that this river was very similar to the Milky Way in the sky, so the river was named after the Milky Way. ”

"Of course, there is another distant legend, it is said that the people who lived in the ancient Han Shui generation, in fact, they came from the Milky Way in the sky a long, long time ago, and have lived here for generations, in order to prevent future generations from forgetting their ancestral hometown, so the river of this new hometown was named Han Shui."

"Father, are they immortals? From the Milky Way in the sky? ”

Luo Cheng smiled, "Maybe, have you read the Classic of Mountains and Seas?" ”

"I've read a little, but the teacher said that the Classic of Mountains and Seas is just an absurd book of ambiguities."

"Wrong, the Classic of Mountains and Seas is not a book of strange things, this is a history book, a geography book, and many of the records on it just have a password and need to be interpreted. It records the history of our ancient times, where we came from, what we experienced, and where we walked. ”

"Father, isn't the Classic of Mountains and Seas a mythical story?"

"Prince, you have to remember that mythology is actually our past history, many places recorded in the Classic of Mountains and Seas exist, and many magical monsters are actually just some beasts outside the Central Plains, in fact, the world is very big, and there are no wonders."

Put away the prince's homework, and Luo Cheng returned it to the prince.

"You see, reading books has to be like this, you have to think differently and learn to draw inferences from others, not just rote memorization. If you have doubts, whether it is right or wrong, you must take the initiative to raise them, and even, it is better to believe in books than to have no books. ”

"Recently, my father intends to build a large zoo and a botanical garden in Luoyang City, and to get all kinds of birds, beasts, and plants from all over the world. Then, it is regularly open to the people of Luoyang to watch, so that they can understand the size of the world and the wonder of the world. ”

"For example, the Pixiu in Shudi, the ostrich in Tiaozhi, the white bear in the Arctic, the giant python in Jiaozhou, the elephant in Yunnan and so on."

The prince listened with longing.

The palace examination was held soon.

The emperor personally interviewed the tributes in the Xuanzheng Palace, and the palace examination did not paste the scriptures and ink meanings, nor did there be any history, geography and arithmetic, only a question about current affairs, and a case of doubt, and the examination time was one day.

The emperor selects nine marking officers to assist in the reading, and the reading is circulated in turn, and after reading, five symbols such as circles and crosses are added to the back of the volume, and finally the volume is ranked according to the number of circles.

In the end, the ten volumes with the most circles were handed over to the emperor, and the emperor selected the top three, such as Yuanlang, Bangyan, and Tanhua.

The palace examination only determines the ranking, does not eliminate the tributes, and all the tributes after the palace examination are Jinshi.

All Jinshi are divided into three classes, the first class only selects three, for the Jinshi and the first, the second class 30 people, for the Jinshi background, the third class 197 people, for the same Jinshi background.

Ma Zhou attacked the Confucian robe and flew hard.

The topic of the current policy is only about 200 words, and they are asked to make a 3,000-word policy theory, and the topic is not about the current situation of locust extermination and disaster prevention, but about taxes and frontiers. To link the tax system of the imperial court with the frontier, it is not easy to say something, about 3,000 words.

But Ma Zhou began to answer questions and discuss without thinking.

The second question is a judgment question, this case is a homicide case, and the murder case involves the property case of the division of the family, which can be described as a case within a case. Fortunately, Ma Zhou devoted himself to the study of legal judgments and many typical cases, and in the face of the materials and evidence given in this case, he quickly made a judgment.

After the Ministry of Rites exam, after Ma Zhou won the Huiyuan, he did not spend all day in the banquet like most of the other tributes in the examination, and after he finished the exam, he went directly to a clean place in the mountains of Beibi to study before the list was released.

He didn't come back until the day before the temple exam.

These days of Qing Xiu reading have made his mind still clear and his thinking still quick.

The exam time was only halfway through, and Ma Zhou had already answered and checked the transcription of the test papers.

Luo Cheng sat in the hall, his eyes swept back and forth among the two hundred and thirty tributes, these tributes selected from the 100,000 scholars in the world were indeed dignified, the older ones were in their forties, the younger ones were also in their early twenties, and there were no teenage prodigies or white-haired old Confucians.

Everyone looks good, and they meet the conditions of body and word judgment.

Luo Cheng also saw that Ma Zhou had finished answering the question early.

He smiled and said to Fang Xuanling and Wei Zheng, who were also in the hall today, "I think Ma Zhou thinks this exam question is too easy." ”

Wei Zheng said, "This son is a little too sharp, I'm afraid it's easy to break." ”

"Just cherish more, young man, wouldn't you be dead without sharpness?" Luo Cheng said with a smile. "I think that since Ma Zhou finished answering so early, it would be better to add another defense interview, which is also in line with the words in the famous body and sentence."

Fang Xuanling and the others were a little surprised, the content of the imperial examination was decided after several discussions.

"Originally, there was no palace examination for the imperial examination, nor did there be a county examination, a county examination, a road examination, etc., but now there is no such thing, and now I want to add another interview and defense, which is okay."

When the emperor said this, the ministers naturally had no objections.

At dusk, the tributes handed in their papers together.

Feng Lishi stepped forward and announced to the scholars that he would take an additional oral defense and accept questions from the emperor and the eight examiners.

The plea is not limited to their current policy arguments and doubtful judgments.

When some of the tribute scholars heard this, they couldn't help but have a big head, and this kind of interview must be easy to be nervous, especially if they didn't know what questions the emperor and the examiners would ask.

Of course, Ma Zhou was still very calm.

"The Holy Men have decreed that the church will be the first to come forward to defend themselves, and all the tributes will be heard in the temple."

This is the public defense, and some people are more nervous.

Ma Zhou got up and stood up, crossed his hands and saluted back, and stepped forward.

"Ma Zhou, I ask you, what is Huaxia and what is barbarian?" As soon as the emperor came up, he directly asked a big question about the Huayi debate, which was a major topic that had been debated for thousands of years, and all dynasties and generations had different ideological mainstreams.

Ma Zhou thought for a while and replied, "Replying to the sage, the student thinks that the Huayi debate cannot be based solely on blood or region!" ”

"The people of the four Yi have long been retranslated, and the benevolence, righteousness and faithfulness of China are admired, although they are out of a foreign land, they can gallop in China, and I don't call them Yi."

"And the people of China have long been stubborn and kingly, forgetting benevolence, righteousness and faithfulness, although they are from China, they are in China, and I am not called Hua."

"How can it not stop the name of Hua, and the name of Yiyi? Those who have their hearts in their names, and those who have their hearts in their names are those who know how to abandon benevolence and righteousness and are faithful to China, that is, they are the ones who are destroyed by China, and they do not wait for the invasion of the four empires. Siyi is introverted, happy with my benevolence, righteousness and faithfulness, and is willing to be a human, isn't it for the glory of Siyi? Those who remember my words, the name of the person is not the name, and the name of Hua is not as good as the name of the person. ”

Ma Zhoulang raised his voice and replied confidently, and the emperor nodded again and again when he listened.