Around midnight in the evening, another group of clerks came over to sell candles to the candidates. They also carried two baskets of white wax and asked the candidates in the numbered rooms one by one.
No need to speak, just shake your head or nod to communicate.
And the examinee who was threatened by Zhao Hongrun during the day seemed to be waiting for this batch of white wax.
Finally, the clerk walked up to the candidate with the basket in his hand and waved the white wax in his hand, as if asking the candidate if he needed any white wax.
The examinee glanced at the other person and silently made a gesture.
The gesture he made was very interesting. He extended his index finger with his left hand and spread his right hand out, as if he wanted six pieces of white wax.
Seeing this gesture, the clerk seemed to understand something. He first handed the other party a piece of white wax from the basket on the left, then took out five pieces of white wax from the other basket, and placed them one after another on the other side.
On the exam table.
The examinee glanced at the white wax he took out from the basket on the left, placed it on the right side of the last five candles, then took out one of the five white wax candles at random, placed it in the bowl, and faced the candles.
The petty official made a "please" gesture.
The clerk understood, took out the flame tongue from the basket, and lit the candle for the candidate.
The clerk left, but the candidate continued to sit at the examination table, as if he was still thinking about the question attentively.
A stick of white wax can probably burn for less than half an hour. The examinee lit the five sticks of white wax one by one. The difference was only more than two hours. In the blink of an eye, it was almost two or three hours after midnight.
Zi Shi.
It was already very late when it was almost midnight. Most of the candidates in the many rooms in the Confucius Temple had curled up on the stone couches covered with straw mats to rest. The covers were dirty and thin and exuded the smell of mildew.
Smell cotton mattress.
But there are also some candidates who haven't fallen asleep yet, such as the candidate just now.
At this time, even the inspectors holding torches rarely came here anymore, and most of the nearby students had gone to bed. At this time, he finally picked up the piece of white wax that was ranked last.
It seems that there is something strange about this piece of white wax, but from the outside, it is no different from the previous five pieces of white wax.
The strange thing is...
"Crack."
With a slight crunching sound, the candidate broke off the lower half of the white wax stick.
It turns out that the strange thing lies inside the lower half of the white wax stick.
The candidate listened attentively and saw that there was no movement around him, so he quickly pulled out a very thin roll of paper from the center of the lower half of the white wax where the candle wick was originally placed, about the thickness of the head of a chopstick.
.
He carefully spread out the roll of paper, and saw that the roll of paper spread wider and wider, and finally turned into a piece of paper the size of the palm of his hand.
On the paper, someone wrote densely packed small characters with a pen.
If other candidates were asked to take a look, I'm afraid they would be surprised, because the answers to today's test questions are clearly written on this piece of paper.
Seeing that no one was paying attention, the examinee quickly copied the small characters on the paper onto the answer sheet, and he finished the copying in a short time.
At this time, he put the piece of paper on the candle and lit it, then quickly put it into the bowl, broke the lower half of the hollow candle into pieces, and put them all into the bowl.
The paper burned out quickly, and there was only warm and soft candle liquid in the bowl. He pressed the hard candle fragments a few times and pressed them into the thick layer of candle liquid.
And when the last piece of white wax burned out, the candle liquid flowing down covered the candle liquid in the bowl, forming a thick, turbid and opaque piece of white wax, and all the evidence disappeared.
As a result, the examinee went to sleep on the stone couch, waiting for the examiners to come and collect the papers tomorrow morning.
Perfect fraud, seamless.
But what he didn't expect was that above his head, on the roof of the cell, a small piece of tile had been removed, and there was a pair of eyes silently watching his every move.
It wasn't until the candidate fell asleep in an uncomfortable position on the stone couch that the eyes disappeared.
Soon after, the owner of those eyes quietly came to the room in the side hall of his parents' temple and woke up the eighth prince Zhao Hongrun, who was already asleep on the bed.
Yes, the owner of those eyes is none other than Zhao Hongrun's guard, Wei Jiao.
There were also several other clan guards passing through. Their mission was to cover Wei Jiao. They seemed to be pretending to patrol the area, but in fact they were doing it so that no one would notice Wei Jiao lying on the roof of his cell.
For this reason, Wei Jiao specially changed into a black night suit.
"Bring me a basin of water."
Zhao Hongrun, who was waking up, yawned and said.
At that moment, a Zongwei scooped a few spoonfuls of water from the bucket in the corner into the basin.
Zhao Hongrun stood up and walked to the washbasin, patted his cheek with his palm wet with cold water, and then his sleepy eyes gradually became brighter.
"How?" Zhao Hongrun asked in a low voice as he turned around and walked to the bed to sit down.
Wei Jiao clasped his fists and replied in a low voice: "Just as His Highness expected, that white wax has something to say." After saying that, he told Zhao Hongrun exactly what he had witnessed.
The latter was speechless repeatedly.
It has to be said that the meticulousness and rigor of this cheating method surprised him.
Whether it was the delivery method of the cheat sheet, the choice of cheating time, or the final method of destroying the evidence, Zhao Hongrun felt that his life had been in vain.
"It seems that this official department has a sophisticated method of fraud..."
Zhao Hongrun thought to himself.
Based on his judgment, the examinee was definitely not the only one who committed fraud in the examination room. Among the more than 2,600 examinees, there must be similar cases of fraud, but he has not caught them yet.
Judging from the method of fraud, Zhao Hongrun judged that there were probably many people involved in this fraud. First of all, there must be someone who wrote the answer, the person who wrote the tiny words on the piece of paper, and the number of people was definitely not one person. Think about it,
If a cheating examinee writes the same answer, wouldn't it be a mistake?
Secondly, the clerks selling candles who passed on the answers may be just middlemen, but more likely they are acting under orders from above. In this case, the person in charge of these people may be responsible for this scientific examination.
the examiners.
"What is Your Highness thinking about?" Zongwei He Miao asked curiously.
Zhao Hongrun glanced at him in confusion: "What?"
"The meaning of humble position is that since you have caught the evidence, why doesn't Your Highness sue those people?"
"Where's the evidence?" Zhao Hongrun asked.
"Isn't the evidence..." He Miao spoke subconsciously, but before he could finish the sentence, he realized that the evidence of fraud in this way was destroyed on the spot, and there was no clue to it at all.
"Aren't there still those little officials who distribute candles?" Zongwei Zhou Pu reminded him, thinking he had a plan.
Zhao Hongrun smiled when he heard this, shook his head and said: "Don't you understand what it means to abandon a car to protect a handsome man?... Even if you catch the small officials passing the candles, what will happen? As long as those officials insist that they are. The people under my command are violating the law in private, and even with the confessions of those minor officials, it may not be possible to bring them down. Don't forget, they have the support of the prince behind them."
"Isn't it okay even if we intercept the batch of problematic candles?" Zongwei Shen Yu, who had just woken up not long ago, asked with a frown.
"It's possible, but it's not shocking enough..." Zhao Hongrun shook his head, and then a strange smile appeared on his face, and he murmured: "If you want to play, let's play bigger."
"..." The sect guards looked at each other in confusion, not understanding what their Highness meant.
After all, he was his confidant. Zhao Hongrun did not hide it and called the sect guards to come closer. He told them his plan in a low voice. All the sect guards were dumbfounded, with expressions of shock on their faces. Still excited about interest.
"Go get ready!"
"yes!"
Without further ado, the sect guards separated and prepared to go, while Zhao Hongrun continued to sleep on the bed. It was not that he was lazy, but if he didn't get enough sleep at this moment, he might not be able to survive the whole plan.
In this way, Zhao Hongrun waited until the sun was three high, and then Zhao Hongrun slowly woke up.
The first thing he did when he woke up was that he took the two clan guards to the examination room, and took advantage of the convenience of patrolling to memorize the test questions for this last exam.
The last scientific examination is "Chen Lue", which is a strategy question. It can be roughly divided into five categories: "Case Judgment", "Construction", "People's Livelihood", "Du Zhi", and "Yuefu". Each category has two case questions. Candidates are only required to answer the category questions that they are confident about, and there is no limit to the answers.
Of course, if you answer more questions correctly, you will have a wider choice of official positions in the future unless there are special circumstances; on the other hand, if you only answer one of the questions correctly, you will be recruited as an official in the ministry in the future except under special circumstances. , the choice surface is extremely small.
Other than that, there are no restrictions.
After memorizing the questions, Zhao Hongrun pretended to patrol the examination room for a while, and then returned to the rest room.
At this time, the other clan guards had prepared pens, ink and paper.
Zhao Hongrun thought for a moment and then wrote quickly on the paper for the "People's Livelihood" category among the five types of examination questions.
In about one stick of incense, two short but exquisite articles were completed.
He looked at it carefully, made some changes, and then put down the brush in his hand.
"Take the rat hair."
Next to him, Zong Wei quickly handed over the Shuhao pen and placed the carefully cut, palm-sized pieces of paper in front of him.
Seeing this, Zhao Hongrun took Shuhao's pen and carefully copied the article he had just written in tiny characters on a small piece of paper as big as the palm of his hand.
For several hours, he barely paused.
You know, writing small characters with a Shuhao pen is extremely energy-consuming. What's more, he copied dozens or hundreds of copies in one breath. By the end of the writing, his right hand was so sore that he could hardly lift it.
"That's it." After copying the last article, Zhao Hongrun put the Shuhao pen aside and told Zongwei Gao Kuo, Zhongzhao and Zhongzhao: "You two immediately take these to the Ministry of Industry and ask the craftsmen of the Ministry to copy them. Those white waxes, hide these papers in the white wax, be sure to make them before dusk and hand them over to me."
"Understood!" Zongwei Gao Kuo and Zhongzhao and Zhongzhao had already understood His Highness's entire plan, so there was nothing they didn't understand. They carefully wrapped the papers in cloth, hid them in their arms and quietly left the Master.
temple.
"If there are hundreds of candidates writing hundreds of identical answer sheets in one examination room at the same time... I believe this scene will be very shocking, hey!"
Shaking his sore right arm, Zhao Hongrun smiled maliciously.