At night, Li Yanqing sat alone in the study and read, although at dinner in the afternoon, he told Zhou Chun and others that Yu Shen was the main examiner, and this year's imperial examination strategy is likely to be biased towards trivial matters, although this is just a joke, but Li Yanqing himself feels that it is likely to be true. Pen % fun % Pavilion www.biquge.info

Now the Great Song Dynasty is full of drawbacks, huge officials, huge army, huge financial expenditures, increasingly embarrassing taxes and monopoly income, and the people at the bottom are increasingly poor, in this case, the direction of the imperial court often has two choices, one is to stimulate the scholars' sense of distress, let the scholars care about state affairs, and make suggestions for the imperial court.

The other option, on the other hand, was to avoid all kinds of drawbacks as much as possible, and to guide the scholars to turn their attention to some inconsequential trivial matters, which is often the case with the questions of the imperial examinations.

Therefore, Li Yanqing felt that it was necessary to study Yu Shen's concept of governing the country again, and from these concepts, he might be able to guess some imperial examination questions.

Li Yanqing's luck was good, in the second purchase of a large number of books at the beginning of the year, he bought a book written by Yu Shen a collection of policy essays, because the quantity was too small, so it was not engraved, but sold in the form of a manuscript in the bookstore, he bought this book at that time for 20 yuan, now it seems that this book is very useful.

The first is Yu Shen's "On the Open Side", Li Yanqing bought this book because of this more than 1,000-word policy, in the book, Yu Shen strongly opposed the attack on the Liao State, he believed that the Liao State was already a corrupt body, serious internal strife, and the imperial power struggle was extremely cruel, such a dynasty had no threat to the Great Song Dynasty, but it could resist the rise of the new Hulu in the north, it can be said that this concept coincided with Li Yanqing, and it was also inconsistent with the vast majority of officials in the imperial court.

Li Yanqing faintly felt that Zhao Ji let Yu Shen be the main exam, which reflected the contradiction in his heart, on the one hand, he wanted to take advantage of the Liaojin War and the opportunity of the emptiness of his back to send troops to recapture the sixteen states of Youyun, but on the other hand, Zhao Ji was worried that Jin would become the second in Liao, and it was likely that this year's test questions would still involve the situation in Liaojin.

At this time, there was a knock on the door in the courtyard outside, and then the door opened, and it seemed that the magpie was talking to someone.

Li Yanqing put down the book and asked, "Magpie, who is it?" ”

Wang Gui's voice came from the courtyard, "Lao Li, it's us, we're here to find the magpie to ask for ointment, and in addition, Lao Niu has something to find you." ”

Li Yanqing got up and walked out of the door, there were only Wang Gui and Niu Gao in the courtyard, so he asked with a smile, "What about the fifth brother and Ah Tang?" Why didn't they come? ”

Wang Gui said with a smile: "Fifth brother can't leave if he wants to practice guns with Xu Ning, and Brother Tang is on patrol tonight, so the two of us are here." ”

"Come in and sit down for a while."

Li Yanqing asked the two of them to sit down in the study, and when he saw that the two of them seemed to have something on their minds, he asked with a smile: "It seems that it is not as simple as asking for ointment!" ”

Wang Gui sighed, "Tomorrow you will march to Hebei with a heavy load, and you will not be able to come back until early February, when you happened to be in the imperial examination, it is estimated that we will not see each other." ”

"Why?"

"On the second day after we came back, we set off separately to go to the selected army to fight for a year, and after a year we came back to participate in the martial arts, and everyone's future was almost decided."

At this time, the magpie walked in with a large bag of medicine and put the medicine on the table, "All the stocks are here, enough for you to use for half a year, and there is a specific recipe for preparing plasters, each of you can copy a copy and learn to prepare it yourself!" ”

"Thank you so much!" Wang Gui and Niu Gao hurriedly thanked him.

Li Yanqing pointed to the teacup, meaning that the magpie went to pour two cups of hot tea, and the magpie understood, turned around and went out.

"Have you decided where the old cow is going?" Li Yanqing asked Niu Gao.

Niu Gao shook his head, "That's why I came to you, I want to hear your opinion." ”

"But... It's not decided yet, is it too late? Li Yanqing asked a little worriedly.

"Tomorrow morning, if you don't report tomorrow morning, it will be assigned by martial arts, so I have to make the final decision tonight."

After Niu Gao finished speaking, he looked at Li Yanqing expectantly, he was indeed a little confused, and he didn't know which path he should choose?

Li Yanqing pondered for a moment and said, "Then where do you want to go yourself?" ”

"I don't know, but I want to fight, I originally wanted to choose the area south of the Yangtze River, there was a rebellion in Fangla, but then I heard that I didn't go to fight Fangla, but to garrison Hangzhou, I was not interested, and Liangshan was also sent to death, and I was not interested."

Li Yanqing said with a smile: "According to my speculation, there are three places to fight in the past two years, I will list them, you choose one yourself, one is Fang La, they are repeatedly exterminated, and it is inevitable that the imperial court will send troops to exterminate them on a large scale, and the other is the Liangshan army, I heard that Liangshan has gathered tens of thousands of troops, and its power is still increasing, it is impossible to feed so many troops in that part of Liangshan, and the Liangshan army will inevitably expand outward, but once they attack the state and plunder the county, the imperial court will also face a big war." ”

At this time, the magpie came in with three cups of hot tea, and Li Yanqing was a little thirsty, so he took two sips of the teacup.

"And what about the other one?" Wang Gui asked anxiously.

"Don't worry, just listen to me slowly."

Li Yanqing put down the teacup and smiled at the two: "There is another place that is more top-secret, the imperial court is preparing for war now, and the battlefield is in the northwest, but I can't be sure of the specific goal, either attack Western Xia, or attack Datong Mansion in Xijing, Liao State." ”

Niu Gao's eyes lit up, and he asked urgently: "Can this news be confirmed?" ”

"Probably 70% sure."

"Then I'll go to the Northwest Army!"

Niu Gao said without hesitation: "I don't want a civil war, if I want to fight, I will fight the party Tartars and Khitan Tartars, this is my wish since I was a child." ”

Li Yanqing glanced at Wang Gui, Wang Gui suddenly woke up, and hurriedly persuaded Niu Gao: "Then Lao Niu will go to Taiyuan with me, if you want to fight Western Xia and Liao, the Taiyuan army will never stand idly by, and we can take care of each other together, how boring it is to be alone, I have advised you for so long, you can go with me!" ”

Niu Gao smiled: "Don't I just want to hear Lao Li's opinion?" Since there is going to be a war in the northwest, I will go to Taiyuan. ”

The three of them chatted for a while, Wang Gui and Niu Gao got up and said goodbye, Li Yanqing has been sending them out of Taixue, looking at their distant backs, he couldn't help but feel a little lost, they grew up together, and they were going to break up in the end, I don't know when they will see each other again.

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No matter how the scholars tried to delay time, time still passed inexorably day by day, and in the blink of an eye, the imperial examination in the first year of Xuanhe finally arrived.

This is a major event that the whole Great Song Dynasty has paid attention to, the Great Song Dynasty established the country with civil officials, and almost all the famous ministers and prime ministers are from the imperial examination, so the imperial examination is the touchstone of the Great Song Dynasty talents, and it is also the cradle of the hundred officials of the Great Song Dynasty.

The 80,000 best scholars devoted themselves to this extremely cruel competition for their dream of 'being the Tian Shelang in the court and ascending to the Tianzi Hall at dusk'.

According to the law of the number of people admitted in previous sessions, the number of people admitted to the imperial examination in the Song Dynasty has gradually stabilized, and about 600 people are admitted to each imperial examination, which is equivalent to 130 people competing for a place, and the admission ratio is not too low, but it is still quite cruel.

Due to the large number of people participating in the imperial examination, the Ministry of Rites divided the imperial examination into two examination rooms, A and B, of which the Gongyuan was the main examination room, which could accommodate 10,000 people to take the examination here.

The B examination room is a temporary construction, borrowing the open space of the North Daying, the imperial court temporarily built a huge examination room with wooden boards, this set of building materials has been recycled for decades, the construction is very convenient, it has been built two months ago, surrounded by the barracks board wall, outsiders can not disturb, 70,000 candidates will decide their fate in this barracks examination room.

Different from the sectional examination of the Liberation Examination, the provincial examination will be tested for four consecutive days and three nights, and the content includes three categories: Jingyi, Policy Theory and Poetry Examination, among which the Jingyi includes the Great Scripture and the Concurrent Scripture, the Great Classic is the examination of the "Three Classics and the New Meaning", and the Concurrent Scripture is also called the Small Classic, that is, the "Analects" and "Mencius", and the content includes the Paste Sutra and the Moyi; There are two types of policy and theory, and the poetry examination is to compose poetry.

In general, the content solution test is about the same, and the difficulty is about the same, but the amount is not very large, and the time to do the questions is very tight.

But no matter the difficulty, the quantity, in fact, these are not important, the important thing is the competition and incentive, one hundred and thirty to one, even if you do it right, you may not be admitted, which involves calligraphy, papers, examination room discipline, examiner impressions and so on more than a dozen links, as long as there is a link that is slightly weaker will be ruthlessly eliminated.

Li Yanqing has been preparing for more than a year, although he is fully prepared at every node, he is still not sure, as long as he has a slight mistake in the test paper, he will be shot, Li Yanqing is really a little uneasy in his heart.

It's impossible to count on Tong Guan to help, Tong Guan's premise for using him is that he must pass the imperial examination, he can't even pass the imperial examination, how can Tong Guan still look down on him? Of course, he didn't want Tong Guan to help him cheat in the imperial examination, and he didn't want to owe Tong Guan any favors.

On the first day of the second month, at the fifth watch, Li Yanqing woke up as usual.