It was nearly noon, and more than 5,000 people finally entered the examination room, and the chaotic examination room slowly quieted down, and the exam officially began.

There were ten green-robed petty officers holding a bag of test papers and began to issue papers between the numbers. The volume is placed in a sealed envelope, and the envelope is written on the number, with the Guangdong Bingxu Township Examination printed in large characters on the top, and the empty below, requiring the candidate's place of origin, origin, and names of three generations.

Open the test paper is three papers, the original township test to be three times, each three days, respectively test eight shares, poetry and strategy. But how could Zhu Hongsan have waited for such a long time, so he ordered that this year's township test be shortened to three days, and the test papers were distributed together, and the candidates could hand in the papers after answering all the questions.

Tong Yangjia opened the first volume, this is the eight shares, and it is also an important part of the imperial examination, and the eight shares are basically hopeless. However, Tong Yangjia, as a cabinet scholar, naturally knew that this year's King of Chu was mainly based on materials, so the strategy in the three volumes was the focus.

Tong Yangjia has also worked very hard at home for the past two months, and it just so happens that his father-in-law Gong Dacheng is also in Guangzhou, so he naturally pulled over to give him a tutoring course. Gong Dacheng is a real lifter, and his results that year were not low. Gong Dacheng's counseling plan for his son-in-law is to do more questions and write three eight-strand essays every day. Tong Yangjia's books have been thrown away for more than 20 years, and it is basically impossible to compare with those young people in terms of content.

The assault training is still effective, at least now Tong Yangjia is very quick to make an eight-strand essay, and the style is relatively smooth.

Tong Yangjia opened the paper and saw that the questions in this year's exam were from the Spring and Autumn Period, and he was okay, so he hurriedly started answering the questions on the straw paper. An hour later, the three-hundred-character eight-strand essay was freshly baked, and Gong Dacheng told him that the eight-strand thing should not be unconventional, and that there should be no moths with Tong Yangjia's skills, as long as it is done in a stable and upright manner, and don't let the marking officer find faults.

Tong Yangjia saw that there was no problem, and hurriedly began to copy on the scroll. Tong Yangjia's calligraphy skills are still good, and the style of the pavilion is like printing.

It was almost dark after copying, and at this time the cloud card sounded and began to collect the rolls.

After the roll is taken away, you can come out to move, go to the toilet or drink some water, but you can't talk to each other, because there are soldiers standing on the edge of each room, and there are brocade guards in the corridor to patrol back and forth, and if they are caught, they will be cleared out of the examination room.

Tong Yangjia went out to the toilet, came back and began to prepare for rest, preparing for the second game tomorrow.

The second scene relies on poetry, and this thing is the wisdom of the benevolent and the wise, and Tong Yangjia's main energy is on the third scene, strategy.

On the third day, Tong Yangjia began to test the policy theory, and after Tong Yangjia heard the cloud card, he opened the third and last test paper and saw the topic of this year's policy theory. This year's policy is divided into three sections, namely, the administration of officials, finance, and the military.

Tong Yangjia looked at the topic, it seems that the King of Chu really wants to select talents from the people. However, these three topics are difficult, and if you don't care about current affairs, you can't write an article that suits the heart of the king of Chu.

However, Tong Yangjia is not in this category, and Lao Tong has been a prefect for more than a year, and this level is still there. You can't talk much about the rule of officials, Tong Yangjia is also a vested interest class now, how can he oppose himself? The finance is very simple, according to the current general direction of the King of Chu's heavy agriculture and business, it must be no problem to write, and the final military is even more fine, Lao Tong is now in charge of the military department, and it is not a matter of holding a handle to write a policy.

These three articles are really written smoothly, and soon the three articles came out, Tong Yangjia saw that there was no problem in transcribing them on the volume, and at this point, the township test was officially completed.

Tong Yangjia stood up and handed over the papers, and then went home to celebrate without mentioning it.

The test papers were gathered by the rectifiers and sent north along the Yongdao from the number house to an independent courtyard behind the Mingyuan Building, which is the outer curtain part of the marking place. Its core building is the majestic Supreme Court, where the outer curtain officer, who is responsible for the discipline of the examination room, sits here and supervises the preliminary processing of the examination papers.

Under the supervision of the Prison Officer, the examination papers are first sent to the collection office on the east side of the public hall, where they are sorted and stacked, the number is counted, and the preliminary selection is carried out. The rest of the qualified test papers are marked with seals, and then ordered to be transferred to the sealing office on the left, and the candidates' information on the test papers are tightly pasted with thick paper...... Before the admission list is announced, no one is allowed to open it privately.

After completion, it is handed over to the largest transcription office, where more than 100 scribes transcribe the candidates' examination papers with a red pen, and if there are typos in the candidates' papers, these scribes must copy them and mark them at the top of the page.

After the transcription is completed, it will be handed over to the reading office next door, and the scribe in charge of reading will check whether the transcribed 'Zhu Scroll' is consistent with the candidate's own 'ink scroll' and whether the labeling is correct. After checking that there are no errors, they are sent to the palm scroll next to the public court, and the scribe among them will number the red scroll and the ink scroll uniformly and send it back to the public court.

The supervisor left the ink scroll to seal, and then according to the number of examiners in the inner curtain, the red scroll was divided into corresponding bundles, and this township examination was eight same examiners, so it was divided into eight bundles, and wrote 'the first bundle', 'the second bundle', until the 'eighth bundle', after the seal was marked, personally sent into the inner curtain.

The supervisor came out of the outer curtain door, went straight to the north, stopped in front of a flying rainbow bridge, the inner curtain on the opposite side had already been notified, the chief examiner and the inner supervisor came to the other end of the bridge, the two sides did not go to the bridge, but a team of sergeants, sent the test papers, and the opposite sergeant took over. The two sides exchanged salutes and went back without saying a word.

Of course, this is not because both parties are not polite, but in order to prevent collusion and fraud by examiners who undertake different tasks, it is strictly forbidden to contact each other between the front and back curtains. The back curtain courtyard, which is responsible for marking the papers, is absolutely reading the entire tribute courtyard, and no one is allowed to enter or leave except for receiving the papers.

The central building of the back curtain courtyard is Hengjian Hall, which is on a central axis with the Zhigong Hall, Mingyuan Building, Gate and Dragon Gate, which is the place where the chief examiner and the same examiner are divided into rooms to read the papers.

When the test papers are sent into the inner curtain, the examiner will lead several fellow examiners to draw lots, and the bundle of papers will be taken away.

However, you can't take the meeting room to it, and you must read the papers in the Jianheng Hall. The chief and deputy examiners sat in the hall, and the eight examiners sat on the left and right. The internal supervisor who is responsible for monitoring the marking of the papers, with a group of monitoring officers, sits next to the examiners, and monitors the examiners' marking process with wide eyes.

Under the watchful eye of the surveillance officer, the entire Jianheng Hall was quiet. Because these surveillance officers are generally served by Jinyi Wei, the custodian stares at the examiner and does not dare to have distracting thoughts. Of course, as long as the examiners do not talk to each other and do not raise their eyebrows, the monitoring officers cannot interfere with the marking of the papers.

The same examiners are all from Jinshi, under the age of forty, in the prime of life, and their eyes are very good. They must first carefully punctuate each article, and at the same time see if the article is smooth, if it stumbles and has no rhyme to speak of, it will be put aside and sentenced to death.

Only papers with smooth writing and no more than three typos are eligible to be read a second time by the same examiner. In this time, the same examiner mainly judged the merits of an article from the four aspects of 'reason, law, diction, and qi' - 'reason' is the mastery of the scriptures and the understanding of Cheng Zhu's commentary. 'Fa' is the structure of the eight-strand text. 'Ci' is the candidate's ability to organize and express words, and 'qi' is the concentration of the article's thoughts and surnames.

The measure of these four aspects is 'halal and elegant', which means that a good eight-strand essay should use concise, elegant, and smooth language to positively expound the way of Confucius and Mencius and the learning of Cheng and Zhu.

According to this criterion, the examiner judges the merits of the candidate's essay, and writes a comment on each paper, stating the reasons for whether to recommend the paper or not, and he is responsible for his own decision.

The same examiners will write down the reasons for recommending the papers that they think are qualified to be high, and hand them over to the scribes on the side, who will forward them to the chief and deputy examiners at the top, and if there are particularly outstanding ones, they will also 'highly recommend', that is, highly recommend.

In fact, the trade-off of the test paper is focused on the two examiners, which means that whether or not to admit is the final decision of the chief and deputy examiners. If the test paper recommended by the same examiner is approved by the deputy examiner, then he will write a big 'take' word in black pen on the paper, write the reason for the recommendation, and send it to the examiner.

If the examiner also approves, he will write another word 'medium', which is the middle of the match, and the reason for the selection must also be clearly stated, so as to relieve the gift department.

For the test paper that was rejected by the deputy examiner, although the examiner has the right to pull it over, but that would be too disgraceful to the deputy examiner, so the examiner will generally not exercise this power, unless he is particularly appreciative, but an article can be particularly appreciated, in the eyes of others, it is at least a good level, and it will not be taken, so this situation generally does not occur.

As for the papers recommended by the same examiner but not accepted, the chief and deputy examiners also need to add comments stating the reasons for not being admitted.

The time for marking the papers is during the day, and in the evening, when they stop to rest, then the two examiners and the internal supervisor will count the papers together, and after confirming that they are correct, they will lock the Jianheng Hall with three locks. The next morning, they came over together, and the three of them came together to unlock the lock and continue to read the papers.

Generally, the marking time is less than 20 days, and most of the time is used for the first marking. Although in the second and third sessions, the same examiner can continue to recommend. However, in the actual process, the examiner only focuses on the first game, especially the fourth book, and basically ignores the grades of the second and third games. However, this year, the king of Chu has an order that the country is in danger, and some talents must be selected, so several examiners must also carefully review the candidates' policy papers.