In addition to cultivation, Yi Jiuxiao and Wan Shufang also communicated a lot, and the two talked about their ideals and futures, and as a result, they had the same ambitions, both of them were interested in joining the army. It's a pity that although Yi Jiuxiao is quite accomplished in martial arts practice, because he has no spiritual root, in the army controlled by cultivators, the road to military service is very slim.

Wan Shufang imagined asking his father for help, with his father's influence in the army, it would not be difficult to help Yi Jiuxiao, but Yi Jiuxiao didn't want to borrow this relationship, he liked to rely on his own strength to achieve his ideals. Wan Shu's crazy second uncle Wan Tianjiang's spiritual root is not good, his cultivation speed is slow, and he barely builds the fourth layer of the foundation in his forties, but he is a scholar with literature, and now he has achieved the rank of the fourth rank of the military department, and his achievements are not much worse than that of the eldest brother Wan Tianfeng, a Jindan monk.

Yi Jiuxiao read a lot of books in his previous life, and he can be regarded as a well-educated person, and he believes that he can succeed in literature. It was learned from Wan Shufang's mouth that Qi State, like the Great Song Dynasty, also adopted the scientific examination system, which was divided into three levels of county examination, state examination, and national examination, and was selected at all levels. After passing the county examination, they are called scholars, after passing the state examination, they are called big scholars, and after passing the general examination, they become bachelors.

The scientific examination of the Great Song Dynasty implements two levels of examinations: the release test and the provincial test. The provincial examination is equivalent to the preliminary examination, which is presided over by the state and county, and the candidates are qualified to participate in the provincial examination through the examination. As for the palace examination, it is usually not degraded, only ranked.

There are also differences in the examination subjects, the subjects of the Qi State Examination are divided into poetry and scripture, poetry is to examine the reader's literary skills, and the strategy of the reader to govern the world. This is somewhat different from the Great Song Dynasty Imperial Examination, the Song people light poetry and emphasis on scripture and righteousness, strategy, although the subjects of the Great Song Dynasty examination have been repeatedly changed, but there are four subjects that are almost compulsory: poetry, scripture and righteousness, theory, and strategy.

Although there are not many people reading in Kaizhou Wanjia, as a family, there are still a lot of books, there are many books in Wan Shufang's study, and there are subsets of scriptures and histories, but Wan Shufania is keen on cultivating truth and does not like to read, these books are idle aside, but Yi Jiuxiao often borrows some to read in his room.

The population of Qi is far larger than that of the Song Dynasty, because the wind of cultivation prevails, from the official to the people are addicted to practice, so there are not many readers, and the relevant classics of the corresponding subset of scriptures and history are not rich, and its content and quality are much worse than those of the Great Song Dynasty, and several dynasties before the Great Song Dynasty, such as the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period and the Tang Dynasty are all periods of great literary development.

Reading the history and reading the puzzled, Yi Jiuxiao found that the history of the Qi State was actually the same as that of the Great Song Dynasty, this part of the history was before the Xia Dynasty, in which the records of the Three Emperors and Five Emperors, the legends about the mountains and seas, were actually very similar to the records in the history books of the Great Song Dynasty, but it was different since the Xia Dynasty, specifically, there was no record of the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties and later dynasties in the history books of the Qi Kingdom.

Yi Jiuxiao was well-read in his previous life, he was a Confucian general, if he didn't go to the army, it shouldn't be a problem to take the Jinshi exam, so now he is also familiar with reading, and he is self-taught without a teacher, and he can even draw inferences from one another. "Chasing fame should be early, don't wait for the young man's head to be white", fifteen-year-old Yi Jiuxiao decided to take the county exam in the fall.

The jurisdiction of the capital of Kaiju is Kaesong County, and Kaesong County is actually in the city of Kaiju. Yi Jiuxiao's county exam was held in Kaicheng County, and he had to register before the exam, but he didn't have to register in person, and he had his own Wanfu steward handle it on his behalf. According to the usual practice, the Kaesong County Examination Institute needs to strictly review Yi Jiuxiao's examination qualifications, because it is recommended by Wanfu, and the procedures are much simpler.

The examination is scheduled to be held from the sixth day of the ninth month to the seventh day of the first month, and lasts for two days. There is still nearly half a year before the exam, and Yi Jiuxiao's cultivation leisure is all spent reading. After cultivating the Open Heaven Sutra, he felt that his memory had improved greatly, and those books, after reading them once, he had a deep impression, almost to the extent that he could never forget them.

Under the influence of Yi Jiuxiao, Wan Shufang also began to read, but the books he read were different, not a subset of scriptures and history prepared for the imperial examination, but the art of war. Qi and the surrounding countries have had many military strategists in history, so there are many books on the art of war.

Time slipped away quietly in the sound of teenagers reading, and in a blink of an eye, it was autumn, and the county exam was imminent. Yi Jiuxiao came to the examination room in Kaicheng County accompanied by Wan Shufang, the examination room is in the southwest of Kaizhou City, the entire Kaizhou City stretches for hundreds of miles, and it is dozens of miles away from Wanfu to the examination room, so he can only rush over in advance to find a place to live.

The examination room can be described as a sea of people, tens of thousands of candidates for the exam, plus the accompanying personnel, so that the examination room area suddenly became prosperous, all the hotels and inns are overcrowded, fortunately, Wanjia has a reservation in advance, and the best inn near the examination room has three upper rooms. It's no wonder that there are more than 10 million people in the entire Kaizhou City, and there are really not many candidates in 10,000 places, if it weren't for Qi Guo's emphasis on cultivation and light study, the number would be even more.

There are so many candidates, and how many people are in the final exam, in fact, there are only more than 100 people, which can really be said to be one in a hundred, so the competition in the exam is quite fierce, and even a little miserable. Almost all the candidates had cold faces and hurried expressions.

The examination room is set up in the examination hall, which can accommodate more than 10,000 exams at the same time, and the scale can be imagined. There are 600 rooms in the whole examination room, each room can seat 20 candidates, one person and one table, plagiarism and talking are not allowed during the exam, even if it is convenient to go to the toilet, there are also invigilators accompanying and monitoring, which is quite strict.

On the first day of the poetry test, the examination time starts from the time of the day and ends at noon, a total of two hours, and it is required to make a poem and a poem. The poem gives the subject matter and asks to describe the winter snow. Fu does not give a specific theme, but requires a harmonious rhyme and a staggered sentence structure.

There are many poems in Dongxue's memory, including Liu Zongyuan's "Jiang Xue", Cen Shen's "Bai Xue Ge Sends the Military Judge to Return to Beijing", Han Yu's "Left Move to Languan to Show Nephew Sun Xiang" and so on.

If Yi Jiuxiao writes it himself, it will be almost difficult to surpass these predecessors, so it is better to learn from it, anyway, it is not in common with the culture of the Great Song Dynasty, so it is not plagiarism. So I wrote the title on the paper: Jiang Xue, followed by four lines of poetry: Thousands of mountains and birds fly away, and thousands of people disappear. Lonely boat, fishing alone in the cold river and snow.

Yi Jiuxiao is not good at writing, after all, he was mainly in the army in his previous life, but fortunately, he has read many excellent works of his predecessors and can recite a lot. Among them, You Heng's "Parrot Fu" has a small number of words, and he remembers it most clearly, so he borrowed the full text of "Parrot Fu" and made slight modifications: But the spirit birds of the Western Regions are quite natural and strange...... Longlong's grace in the past, it will last for a long time.

The two-hour exam, Yi Jiuxiao took one hour to finish, in order not to behave abruptly, he still insisted on handing in the paper after a few people in the examination room handed in the paper. There are usually two kinds of people who submit the paper in advance, one is basically not able to do it, and they have no way to start when they get the topic, and they are speechless when they put pen to paper, so it is better to go out and do something, and the other is too good at doing it, writing a thousand words, and doing it in one go.

On the second day, the time of the examination is the same as that of the first day, which is also two hours. The concept of governing the country and governing the world of the scholars who are mainly examined by the study gives a theme about "suppressing theft", that is, how to reduce and prevent thieves, the profession of thieves is in any country, and it is also one of the most troublesome things for officials and the public.

Yi Jiuxiao is a human being, and he has relatively rich experience in governing the world, and he has also participated in the anti-theft many times in the process of joining the army, and has a lot of experience and experience, so he did not learn from his predecessors, and spent more than an hour to create an article, and successfully handed over the paper.

The list was released a month later, Yi Jiuxiao and Wan Shufang came to the Kaesong County Examination Institute together, there is a huge list of candidates on the square of the examination institute, on which the list of candidates is pasted, candidates look for their names on a series of lists, those with names are in the exam, and those without names are unlisted.

When the two arrived, the square was already crowded, almost most of the candidates would come to watch the rankings, and some boring people were also mixed in to make a judgment. There were all kinds of beings at the scene, some were dancing happily, and some were beating their chests and crying bitterly.

The crowded flow of people pushed the two of them to the front of the list stage, only to see that the list of those who passed the exam was densely written on the list, there were about more than 100 people, Yi Jiuxiao and Wan Shufang were both successful cultivators, and they could see the list at a glance, but Yi Jiuxiao's name was not among them, and both of them gasped and looked at each other.

Yi Jiuxiao is still full of confidence in this exam, the poems are all borrowed from the masterpieces of his predecessors, and the scriptures are also familiar topics, with the literary level of the Great Song Dynasty, there is no reason not to be successful in the Qi Kingdom. Wan Shufang actually didn't know how Yi Jiuxiao did in the exam, but he had a trust in Yi Jiuxiao from the bottom of his heart, and in the three years he got along with Yi Jiuxiao, he felt that Yi Jiuxiao was calm and had excellent ability, so he also firmly believed that Yi Jiuxiao could pass the exam.

At this moment, a voice sounded on the other side of the table: "Brother Liu, come and take a look at this year's top list, have you heard of this top Yi Jiuxiao?"

Could it be that there is a list on the other side, the two followed the sound to the side of the list table, and sure enough, there was. But I saw that there were three big characters written on it, "Kui Shou Bang", and there were three lines of smaller words below: Yi Jiuxiao for the first place, Zhu Chen for the second place, and Shanhui for the third place.

The young man known as Brother Liu also came to the top of the list, and said to the young man who called him just now: "Brother Ke, I know that Zhu Chen and Shanhui have been talented since they were children, and as for Yi Jiuxiao, this is the first time I have heard of it, and I don't know what the way it is. ”