The tense imperial examination came to an end, and Wang Lang was very satisfied with the imperial examination this time.

This time the question is very difficult, most of the students answered very well, even those who failed the list, it is also a rare talent, but the number of officials is limited, if they are all admitted, it will cause redundant officials.

But Wang Lang didn't want so many talents to be scattered among the people, in this era of lack of knowledge, these people can be said to be the founders of the Xia civilization.

After thinking about it, Wang Lang made a decision, he planned to arrange these people to study in the Ministry of Industry or at the grassroots level, so that they could combine the knowledge they had learned with practice.

For example, let these people go to the shipyard to learn shipbuilding, to get to study and improve agricultural production, and even let some people specialize in the wilderness to study the mapping and mapping of the map.

In order to implement this, Wang Lang spent several days writing a plan, which he named the Discovery Project.

This plan will be to explore Shenzhou in all directions, unlike the previous expeditions, this time the people sent out are all knowledgeable talents, and the information they bring back will be much more comprehensive than those explorers who can't read a single word.

Moreover, he plans to spend some of the money from the household department to support this matter.

After the royal banquet, at the court meeting, after the discussion of the ministers, after unanimous agreement, the exploration and discovery plan was successfully passed.

When the frustrated students in the examination room were about to pack their bags and return to their hometown, a decree from the imperial court suddenly attracted their attention.

Notices were posted at the city gates, which are the most crowded places and must be used by candidates to leave the capital.

When the candidates from all over the country took over and went out of the city, they saw many students surrounded by the city gate, and they also gathered around to watch it out of curiosity.

I saw the notice read: "Exploration and discovery plan, all candidates who fail in the summer country can sign up for this task, most of the tasks in this plan are extremely difficult, please consider carefully before making a decision, all candidates who participate in this plan, when the next exam, add ten points, in the case of the same score, candidates who participate in the exploration and discovery plan are ranked high, and there is a subsidy of 30 copper coins per month, please ask the Ministry of Rites for details, the eleventh year of Taichu, March 20. "Underneath is stamped with Wang Lang's seal.

After reading the notice, the candidates were boiling, plus ten points and a subsidy of thirty copper coins per month, which was definitely a sudden surprise for them.

Not to mention the temptation of adding ten points, this thirty copper coins is not a small amount, a farmer's hard work in planting a season can almost be sold for sixty copper coins, this thing is bigger than the harvest of farming, as long as you participate in this plan, your life is basically worry-free, even if you are not an official, take so much money every month, it is enough for yourself to live a leisurely life for a lifetime.

Excited candidates flocked to the yamen of the Ministry of Rites.

Looking at the crowds of students outside the door, the officials of the Ministry of Rites felt a headache, among these departments, the Ministry of Rites can be said to be the most idle yamen before, that is, they can be busy during the imperial examination, and now their good days are over, what kind of exploration and discovery plan, Wang Lang asked the Ministry of Rites to be responsible, so they will be busy in the future.

More than a dozen officials from the Ministry of Rites patiently answered the students' questions, and most of them had no nightmare opinions on going to the shipyard, the Ministry of Industry or the countryside, and many people were interested in going to these places.

However, the number of places in these places is relatively limited, and the total number of students is just over 200, but there are nearly 1,000 students who have signed up.

Since Wang Lang had already anticipated this happening, the right to choose was left to God, and he asked the officials of the Ministry of Rites to use the method of drawing lots to distribute these people.

But the students naturally don't like this way, everyone wants to go to a relatively easy and safe place, go to the wilderness to explore, maybe one day die.

After some hesitation, some candidates decided to give up the opportunity, they could not gamble with their lives, and they thought that if they worked harder, they might not fail to excel in the next exam.

The number of candidates gathered in front of the ceremonial hall gradually decreased, and in the end there were only six or seven hundred people left.

Being able to keep these people was also unexpected by Wang Lang.

There was some small commotion in the siege of the lot, but on the whole it was relatively smooth, and before dusk, the candidates who stayed behind accepted their fate, although they envied those who were lucky enough to burst out, but this was a matter of resignation, and it was useless to envy others.

According to statistics, the number of applicants is 683 people, including 200 lucky ones, who will work in these positions for three years until the next imperial examination.

And those candidates who won the lift, when the unsuccessful candidates started training, they also went to their places of appointment in high spirits.

Wu Feng, who was at the top of the list this time, was naturally arranged by Wang Lang into the most important firearms research and development department of the Ministry of Industry, and when he saw these very thoughtful firearms for the first time in the Ministry of Industry, he suddenly felt that he had a lot to learn, and there were many people who were smarter than himself in Xia Guo.

To be able to make these weapons, I don't know how much wisdom and effort it takes.

Wu Feng sincerely admired the Xia Kingdom in his heart, and in more than ten years, from the barbarian tribe that drank blood from Rumao, he made these divine objects that he had thought of before, what a miracle at this time.

Touching the smooth cannon body and the brand-new muskets, Wu Feng's heart was surging, this will be the place where he will realize his value in the future, and this is the place where his dream begins.

At this time, in the central square of Yancheng, after the imperial examination was completely over, the construction of the bell tower began again.

And now, after several months of construction, the main body of the bell tower has begun to take shape.

The people didn't pay much attention to this place before, but when they saw the taller and taller buildings rising from the ground, people's hearts were not curious.

However, because there were heavy troops near the construction site, it was difficult for idle people to understand the situation, and this feeling made the people's hearts more curious.

This monster, which is nearly seven or eight meters tall, can be said to be the tallest man-made structure in the Xia Kingdom.

Such a tall building looks a lot like an arrow tower on the city wall, but the people also know that this thing is definitely not used as an arrow tower, after all, the arrow tower is of no use in the center of the city.

With the emergence of various speculative versions, the role of the bell tower was passed on to the gods, and some people say that this strange building was a way for the imperial court to reach the heavens, and people can see the gods only through this building in the future, and some people say that the imperial court prepared a palace to welcome the arrival of the messengers of the gods.

When these news reached Wang Lang's ears, he couldn't laugh or cry, whether it was the civilization of that world, if it wasn't a pure materialist, for unknown things, he would first think of gods and ghosts.

Wang Lang has no intention of interfering with the rumors circulating in the market, and this kind of fantasy speculation may become part of the myths and legends of the Xia Kingdom in the distant future.

If a civilization does not have myths and legends, it always feels that this civilization is incomplete.

At this time, Wang Lang's attention was mainly focused on the musket team that was about to be formed, although the musket that could be used in actual combat in the real sense had not yet been produced.

However, this did not prevent Wang Lang from forming a musket team, and in her heart she always felt that without a strong national defense force, she could not sleep very peacefully.

He intends to maintain the size of the musket team at 3,000 men, and the 100 musketeers who have been trained for a long time will be assigned as officers of this new unit.

In the future, these 3,000 musketeers will only be trained with more than 100 guns for training, even if the efficiency of this training is extremely low, but Wang Lang feels that it is worth it.

After these people can master the use of muskets proficiently, it is estimated that the new generation of muskets will also be basically studied.

When the time comes, as long as these musketeers are issued with new guns, they will become a combat-ready force capable of dealing with any war that may arise at any time.

While Wang Lang was studying the formation of the musketeers, the officials of the Ministry of Rites had already completed the arrangements for those candidates who had failed to make the list in the Discovery Program.

The more than 200 lucky people were quickly arranged to their respective work places, while the remaining 400 people were sent to the barracks in the northern suburbs of Yancheng.

They will be trained for a month in the vacant barracks of the Imperial Guards.

Most of these young students are about twenty years old, and the youngest may be sixteen years old, these people basically grew up in civilized society, and the experience of being wild as a child had little impact on their lives.

After living in Xia Country for so long, it is obviously unwise for them to rush to the wild, so training is a must.

Here they will be trained in all aspects, and during this month they will have to learn the use of weapons, the coordination of battle formations, the methods of first aid, the identification of minerals, the drawing of maps, and each of them will be able to draw two blank pamphlets, and cultivate the habit of keeping a diary.

At this time, on the school field of the barracks, after the end of the morning's military training, these students lined up in a neat line, sat cross-legged on the ground, and listened carefully to Qi Yan's explanation.

Qi Yan, as the most superb medical person in Xia Guo today, can be said to be a household name in China, and there is such a cow man who comes to teach him personally, and the students listen very seriously.

These things may save one of their lives in the future.

Qi Yan's explanation is very detailed, and even asked a student to come out to cooperate with him to play the patient, so that the students can more intuitively understand what methods to use to save themselves in case of emergency.

Not only in terms of first aid, but also to teach them to identify herbs for treating common diseases, and in order to respond to Wang Lang's call, the Daxia Medical Center took out a part of the penicillin that had been collected with great difficulty in the past few years and handed it to the more than 400 students.

With these complete preparations, although there is no guarantee that they will survive 100%, their mortality can be minimized.

In terms of military training, they are personally instructed by officers above the garrison level of the Imperial Forest Army.

Bows and arrows, spears, waist knives, crossbow arrows, these individual weapons, as long as they cooperate with each other, can have extremely strong lethality, even if it is a team of more than a dozen people, it can deal with the vast majority of beasts.

The officers not only taught them battle formation training, but even taught them how to cooperate in catching prey, after all, if they survive in the wild for a long time, they will not return to human settlements, and if they do not have hunting skills, these people are likely to starve to death outside.

After a month of intense training, the students are about to embark on an uncertain journey.

The day before leaving the barracks, the Ministry of Rites prepared a sumptuous dinner for these students.

This night, the students drank and talked happily, they knew that this trip might be a parting of life and death, and when they came back, they didn't know how many familiar figures they could see.

Before leaving, the students handed over their home letters to the Ministry of Rites, not knowing when they would be able to return to their hometowns and whether their parents who were far away from their hometowns would be able to settle down.

For their money during this time, the imperial court has already explained to the local government that they will send their money to the homes of these students on time.

The students who had no worries, a team of more than a dozen people, except behind the city gate, waved goodbye to each other, and Aizawa scattered in different directions.

This time, they mainly explored the sparsely populated western region.

Now the population of the Xia Kingdom is mainly concentrated in the eastern region of the Shenzhou Continent, and it has only been to the west outside the west when the population was gathered in recent years, and it has not set foot in the wild areas of the west for nearly ten years.

The direction of each team's exploration has been explained to them in detail.

As they went further and further west, the number of people became smaller and smaller, and after knowing that they had passed Dingbei City, each squad began to act alone.

Zhou Yu is a candidate from Guiyu City, he is only eighteen years old, and it is the first time that he has left the north and come to the southern region thousands of miles away.

In his impression, he still vaguely remembered the winter more than ten years ago, when General Zhao Jian would find their tribe and establish Guiyu City in the north.

It's just that he was still a child at that time, full of curiosity about everything, and when Angelica Fish City was established, these children were forced to study in the school palace, and later most of the people with the same skin color and hair as him moved to other places, but fortunately he did not leave his homeland.

Over the years, as he got older and older, and slowly adapted to the life of Xia Guo, he had basically forgotten the difficult life at the beginning.

After continuous study, he found that the world seemed to open a new door for him, he tried hard to absorb all the knowledge, and then heard that there was an exam, and many of those who passed the exam came to the north to be officials, these learned people came, making Guiyu City more prosperous, he vowed to become one of these officials at that time.

At the age of eighteen, he came to the long-awaited capital, but in the face of so many young talents, he still fell off the list, but he did not collapse, although this expedition mission is extremely dangerous, but as long as it is completed, it can occupy a great advantage in the next exam, this is what he wants, with so many companions, and sharp weapons, what is there to be afraid of in the wild world.

Zhou Yu's team consisted of fifteen people in total, and because of his relatively strong stature, when he was training, he became the archer of this team, and after separating from the last team, he suddenly felt a chill.

In this vast grassland, there is not a single road to the west, and there seem to be countless dangers hidden in the vast grassland.