"I heard that His Highness the Fifth Prince came to visit me, and I felt so happy." Before Qi Dan's carriage had stopped, there was already someone waiting in front of the door - the person who came was about sixty years old, with gray temples and a long beard.
He has a dignified appearance and a brilliant look, with two cloud-patterned white jade rings on his waist, and a Guhong brocade fan in his hand. It is Yang Qingzheng who is offering wine at the Imperial Academy.
Before the people here landed, a voice came out of the car curtain: "Yang Jijiu is really hospitable. Today I came to visit unexpectedly, and I was afraid that Yang Jijiu would be offended, so I prepared a small gift and asked Yang Jijiu to accept it."
"Your Highness is so polite. You are here and why are you bringing any gifts?" Yang Qingzheng stroked his long beard and shook his head with a smile.
The person who got out of the car first was not Qi Dan, but an ordinary-looking man in his prime. He held a valuable wooden box in front of Yang Jijiu in both hands, and Yang Jijiu was about to send someone to take it.
"A small gift", but accidentally met the eyes of the man opposite.
When he saw this person's face clearly, Yang Qingzheng's expression changed suddenly and his smile disappeared, and Qi Dan happened to say: "Yang Jijiu, I also brought a friend here... He is also an old acquaintance of you! Jushan
, why don’t you pay your respects to the Lord Jijiu soon?”
"Your Highness... what does this mean?" Yang Qingzheng raised his eyebrows. Since Qi Dan could dig out this person and bring him in front of him, he must know what happened to him. Although this person is not famous,
But Yang Qingzheng has a very good memory, and he just remembers his last name.
"As you said... Since we are all here, why don't you invite us to sit in your house?" Qi Dan parroted, looking at Yang Qingzheng with a smile, but there was a hint of teasing in his eyes.
The official position of offering wine in the Imperial College may not be big or small, but it is a very important position.
First, let’s talk about the concept of the Imperial College—it’s very simple. It is the highest academic institution in the Sheng Kingdom and a stepping stone for scholars to become officials. Its status is higher than that of the Shanhe Academy.
No certificate is required to enter Shanhe University. As long as you pass the government examination, you can enter the government school. After graduating from the government school, you must either stay in the government school or participate in the imperial examination of that year. However, you can skip the "rural examination" in the normal imperial examination system and go directly from the "huihui examination".
At the beginning of the "Examination", it was somewhat advantageous, but considering that the prefectural examination in Shanhe Prefecture is more difficult than the provincial examination, and the "special talents" trained here, it is understandable. And the graduates admitted to the Imperial College
They are roughly divided into two categories, namely "Gongsheng" and "Yinsheng" - the former are talents from places such as counties, counties and other places who have excellent academic performance and are selected to study in the Imperial College, while the latter are able to enter the Imperial Academy through their father's Yin and Zuyin.
Supervisors. The former is further subdivided into those who failed the examination and wanted to continue their studies, which are called "jujian"; and those who have not participated in the provincial examination but have excellent qualifications are called "gongjian";
Those who have been officials for generations rely on the "Yin Jian" who rely on the family's remaining shadow, and the "Ring Jian" who donate money to the Imperial College or other government agencies. Of course, if it can be further subdivided, we will not go into details here.
In short, they are repeat students, fresh graduates, the second generation of officials and the second generation of rich people. In the Imperial College, the Yin Jian has the highest status, followed by the Ju Jian, and the Gong Jian and the Regular Jian are at the bottom. However, in recent years, the status of merchants has been
As the tide rises, all boats are lifted, and the regular prison guards have a vague sense of suppressing the tribute supervisors. Even some of the lower-ranked supervisors do not dare to compete with them. Although the supervisors are already qualified to be officials, those who have not yet taken office are certainly not as good as them.
There is a jingling sound in my pocket now.
By the way, before the opening of Shanhe Prefecture, the Imperial College only recruited students who were "officials of the eighth rank or above within three generations." However, during the reign of the late emperor more than 20 years ago, Li Zhanchun, who was over 40 years old, defied all opinions and risked his life.
After admonition opened up Shanhe Mansion and Shanhe Academy, the Imperial College was able to provide a second way for poor disciples to study in Beijing. Even so, Li Zhanchun still offended many officials and officials, after all, they allowed those low-ranking people to discuss things with them.
——It’s okay if you win, but it’s embarrassing if you lose.
Let’s talk about the position of the Imperial College’s Jijiu—the officer in charge of the Imperial College is, to put it simply, the principal. The Imperial College’s Jijiu is not only in charge of teaching the students, but also in charge of the teachers. He also has considerable say in the imperial examinations—the examiner
The chief examiner is the Minister of the Ministry of Personnel, followed by the Minister of the Ministry of Rites and the Imperial College's Jijiujiu. Most of the other examiners and invigilators are from the Ministry of Officials and the Ministry of Rites. To avoid suspicion, doctors and assistant teachers from the Imperial Academy are not allowed to be examined. This has been the case since the founding of the Sheng Kingdom.
However, despite this, the opinions of the Imperial College on offering wine are also a decisive factor in determining whether a candidate succeeds in the exam and whether he or she is ranked high or low.
Let's go back and talk about our Yang Qingzheng and Yang Jijiu. He was a fierce man back then - he won two yuan in a row in the imperial examination. Although he failed to get the top prize in the final palace examination, he achieved the rare feat of "won three yuan in a row".
It was a strange move, but it was only two steps away. "Tanhua", one of the three tripods. When he went to the temple to meet the saint, he was dressed as he is today - holding a brocade folding fan and wearing two jade rings on his waist, which means that he
Winning two yuan in a row, he was the best among all the heroes, eclipsing all the Jinshi in the same hall. His swipe of the hand was so cool and his responses were so wild that even the late emperor praised him, so he was given the title of "Jinfan Tanhua", and for a while
He was unparalleled in the limelight, and his reputation even overshadowed the number one scholar at that time. Since he entered the imperial court and became an official, he has devoted himself to giving lectures in the Imperial College - this is his cleverness. At that time, the arrogance of the emperor was just a matter of course.
This is a way to publicize oneself and intimidate opponents. After becoming an official, of course, one must protect oneself wisely and have both sides. There is not much room for promotion in the Imperial College. In the end, one will only be a fourth-grade sacrificial wine, let alone the Zhongshu Province.
, compared with the departments such as the Sixth Department, which are so popular and famous for a while, even the Zhan Shifu of the East Palace Prince has a better future than this one, so those with superior qualifications are unwilling to come, and those with inferior qualifications cannot come. Yang Qingzheng can work here.
He will drink wine until he dies; secondly, many officials’ children have to study in the Imperial College, which is a link for Yang Qingzheng, which is good for him to make friends with those high-ranking families. Anyway, his position does not conflict with them, even if he can’t make friends.
It's good that he won't have any grudges, but after he and they were on the same front, those officials who were originally at the same level as him had to fawn over him to "train" his heirs. Those who passed the scientific examination for the third time were counted as the examiner's disciples, and he
If his disciples become successful later, they will inevitably "honor" their "mentor".
After all, the oil and water involved is really huge.
Yang Qingzheng is neither "clean" nor "upright". During his years in office, he has practiced favoritism and cheated, leaking examination questions, which has enabled some sons of high-ranking officials with mediocre qualifications to achieve quite dazzling results.
What he is best at is "building publicity", creating a "Jie Yuan", "Hui Yuan" or even "Liang Yuan" by missing questions or cheating, and writing big books or even making up stories that reflect the student's intelligence.
He spread the anecdotes vigorously, and demonstrated his ability to teach effectively and discern people with circumstantial details, further gaining fame for himself. He also gave this method an interesting name - "Win at the starting point". And even if
If the student's true nature is revealed and his performance is poor in the imperial examination, he can also use the excuse of "being frightened in front of the emperor" or "being good at writing but not good at talking" as an excuse. Anyway, the title of Jinshi is already guaranteed, and any higher position is just a matter of appearance.
It looks better. Anyway, these powerful and wealthy dandies have plenty of ways to get promoted.
And his method of cheating is also very interesting - in order to prevent cheating, the examination room also has its own set of systems, such as covering the candidate's name with a cover paper or a dog-eared corner, numbering it in red, and then the transcription officer will copy it with a red pen.
, called "Zhujuan", all examiners only read the Zhujuan, the deputy examiner will mark the word "take" on the favorite Zhujuan and then send it to the chief examiner. If the examiner also likes the paper, he will mark it with "中文"
", and these successful red scrolls will be retrieved and unsealed according to the red number before the list is released, and the corresponding black scrolls will be recorded, and finally the list will be written. This triple insurance does increase the difficulty of fraud, but as the saying goes, there are
As a countermeasure, Yang Qingzheng came up with the following strategies as soon as he hit his head - the first is to miss the questions. As the imperial wine minister, even if he is avoiding suspicion, he still has a certain degree of say in setting the test questions. The second is that the transcription officer is also a human being. Bribery
The transcriber just asked them to make marks on the red scroll. The third step was to secretly change the scroll when the results were released. Yang Qingzheng himself was a master of calligraphy, and he could easily copy other people's handwriting.
However, these three methods have their drawbacks. The number of missed questions cannot be leaked. After all, at least a dozen people are required to submit the paper each time; not everyone dares to do this. Moreover, not everyone dares to do this.
The number of transcribers is only much greater than that of question writers and marking officers, so it is impossible for everyone to be there; as for secretly changing papers to change the rankings - to be honest, just think about it, at best it is just in the college examination.
For rural use, if you are caught doing this under the eyes of the emperor, even if you are punished for the crime of deceiving the emperor, losing your head will be considered a light thing.
After all, Yang Qingzheng was a talented man who had won the second prize in a row. After studying cheating for several years, he finally came up with an extremely complicated method that consumed a huge amount of manpower and energy but was extremely safe. In the words of one of his playboy disciples, "
My master is really too stable." - Before the exam begins, Yang Qingzheng will give each student who goes through the back door a different "secret recipe", and he will keep a copy of the secret recipe to avoid forgetting how to identify it. Of course, as mentioned above
Yang Qingzheng has a very good memory, so he basically has no need for these copies. These secret recipes record some very recognizable writing methods, such as "the first character of the hand starts with the character "what", and the second character of the second column is written
"What", "what" is written as the sixth character in the third column...and so on, until the last character ends with "what" or "how to arrange and use imaginary characters such as "zhi,hu", "ye", "yan", "zai", "ye", "欤", etc.
Or you can combine the two and use other writing methods to identify whose paper it is. This method is a bit tiring, but it can't stand "he gave too much", so Yang Qingzheng can only bite the bullet and grade the paper.
, and this kind of cumbersome password was also named "Copycat Code" by his disciples. After discovering that this method was indeed effective, in order to reduce the workload of himself and his accomplices, he even inadvertently
He invented the prototype of punctuation marks...that is, he asked candidates to put a dot at the end of each sentence to indicate sentence reading, two dots to express exclamation, and three dots to express doubt...
Today's prosperous country has gradually popularized this kind of punctuation mark. It is a lot more convenient, but the consumption of paper has also increased... Many literati who pretend to be mysterious even use one word for each symbol, and everyone at that time
Calling this "spotting ink" means that this person has read all the books in the dog's belly. He only has a little bit of culture, so he can only use this method to show his appearance.
No matter how the history books of later generations evaluate Yang Qingzheng and his actions in his life, but for this alone...he can be regarded as famous in history.
All in all, he has done a lot of such things. Even if there is something that makes the Holy Emperor suspicious, he will just let it go. He will not look at the monk's face or the Buddha's face. The Emperor must also make certain compromises with the powerful ministers and nobles to give them a taste of the sweetness.
Only by hammering it properly can he better maintain his position. The emperor can gain the support of his ministers, the officials' children can gain a prominent reputation, and Yang Qingzheng himself can get a lot of "gifts" from it. This kind of win-win situation for all three parties only needs to
If you don't do it too much, no one will expose it.
But as is the case in this world...if you win, you lose. The winners of these three parties get both fame and fortune, and the only losers are Xin Xin and the poor family.
The poor families were all trying to get into Shanhe Mansion, which made Yang Qingzheng feel particularly unhappy. After all, there were far more children from poor families than the powerful clans in this world. These people took the name of their old enemy Li Zhanchun to life.
He was raised above himself - why is he said to be an old enemy? Because Li Zhanchun achieved the first and only example of "three yuan in a row" in the prosperous country six years before Yang Qingzheng's reign. His "two yuan" will inevitably be
He was compared to the former, and later Li Mastiff even gave him the nickname "Gong Mastiff" because the late emperor was on his deathbed and dying.
They are also the relatives of the late Emperor Jinkou Yuyan. Compared with the "Gong Mastiff", "Jinshan Tanhua" can only be said to be weak.
However, the current emperor Qi Changgeng's attitude towards Li Mastiff has always been tepid. Although he made him the crown prince's tutor, Qi Changgeng felt resentful because Li Mastiff opposed His Majesty's frequent changes in tax laws. Moreover, Qi Changgeng did not care about Shanhe University.
He was not as supportive as the Imperial College, and even felt increasingly unhappy, which made Yang Qingzheng secretly proud.
Of course, not all poor families choose Shanhe Academy. For example, the one in front of me has chosen it secretly - Ji Jushan was originally the Jieyuan of Haigong County. To further advance his career, he also relied on his identity as Jieyuan, so he did not join Shanhe Academy.
Instead, he entered the Imperial College. Logically speaking, although Jie Yuan’s identity is not unique in the Imperial College, he is still one of the best, but he... It’s okay to say that he had bad luck. The year he took part in the examination was exactly the same year.
When Qi Changgeng was about to take the first general examination, those relatives, officials, and merchants who helped Qi Changgeng rise to power also had to ask for some favors from His Majesty, right? So that year, he was abruptly denied his qualification as a Jinshi.
…
Of course Ji Jushan was dissatisfied with this. He had to know that his grades were always counted from the top, so after trying every possible means to inquire, he finally learned that his place had been replaced by someone else, so he ran away in anger...
Some people may ask if he is not Jieyuan? But it should be noted that it is difficult to find an expert with three yuan and two yuan. There are many Jieyuan in his twenties and teenagers. He, a Jieyuan who is nearly thirty years old, is just that.
Come on, chicken ribs are as tasteless as chicken ribs - although a county can only have one Jieyuan every three years, a chicken can only have one Jie Yuan in its lifetime...
Some people may also ask him, can’t he wait another three years to take the exam or just become a minor official? It’s better than having no name and no status. You know, for such a high-minded and arrogant person, he can’t wait.
He felt that he couldn't hold his head up, and being a small official didn't suit his needs. He felt that he was underachieving, and if he was so frustrated, he felt that his face was shameless. In addition, he couldn't stand up to those high-ranking officials, so he just ran away and went home.
Maybe he can still leave a reputation for integrity in the capital.
In fact, no one cared about a person like him at all... As mentioned before, a plaque dropped from a restaurant in Beijing could kill a high-ranking person, let alone him, so he did it at the county magistrate's house.
After being a hangout for several years, he came back to see if things could turn around. After all, his hometown of Haigong County was next to Haiyin County, so they were almost inseparable.
Then someone may ask again, why did he come back to the capital now that he has made up his mind to be noble? Isn't this a slap in the face? Then let's start from the beginning - a person who does not think that he is a poor family
So for those who did not join the Shanhe Mansion but were severely slapped in the face by the Imperial College, they might as well slap themselves again. Face is more important than career, isn't it?
Face is the insole of your shoe. This truth is very simple. Everyone will say it, but not everyone can adjust this mentality. It took Ji Jushan a full eleven years to overcome this hurdle.
Simply put, there is always a path, so this time he returned to the capital and the first thing he visited was the House of Minister of the Ministry of Revenue. Why? Because Zhu Yong was his examiner back then. Although he was not the right minister of the Ministry of Rites at that time, he was
The Ministry of Etiquette has also become quite prestigious. There were too many candidates that year, so Uncle Zhu, who was still teaching the new imperial chefs how to cook in the imperial kitchen, was also recruited to be an examiner - look at their level, even the imperial chefs had to learn from others
Ask for advice - I'm going too far, let's go back to the origin of these two people. In short, Ji Jushan felt that he was bound to win, so he paid a visit to the so-called "mentor" in advance and regarded himself as Zhu Yong's disciple. After all, he also aspired to become an official in the Ministry of Rites - he
He also thought he was quite handsome. However, he felt guilty after learning that his name had been lost, so he never saw his "mentor" again until he left the capital.
Nowadays, Ji Jushan, who firmly believes that "face is the sole of your shoes", shyly visited Zhu Yong again. Although Zhu Yong didn't have much impression of this person, he still vaguely remembered that this kid was a very energetic child. In addition,
He had an easy-going temperament, so I chatted with him for a few more words, and just in time the order for sending Zhao'er home came.
Looking at Ji Jushan's face full of frustration, Qi Dan knew that this guy might also be a chess piece worth using, so the two of them connected, and after Ji Jushan's long sigh, Qi Dan also understood that Ji Jushan
Today's situation.
Hence the matter of Qi Dan bringing Ji Jushan to "give a gift" to Yang Jijiu today.
This gift... is of course evidence of Yang Jiejiu's fraud. In fact, Qi Dan has heard a little bit about the imperial examination fraud. After all, he knows so many dandies, and how much do they weigh in his eyes?
It was obvious at first glance, but he didn't bother to come into contact with those people who had no money to eat and drink. Anyway, these people were causing harm to his father's country, and the story was also passed down to his elder brother.
But things are different now. Now that Qi Dan has obtained tangible evidence of Yang Qingzheng's fraud and perversion of the law, it would not be Qi Dan if he does not use it to exploit his bones and suck out his marrow.
