A young man was still writing furiously when someone beside him reported him.
"You, you can go home. You violated the rules of the Academy Exam. Your score is void."
"What? Teacher Lu, my father is..."
Before he could finish, Lu Hong picked up his brush and made a heavy stroke across the boy's answer sheet, ruining it.
"Whoever your father is, you still can't break the rules set by the Great Qin Dynasty!"
His voice rang out loudly enough for every young man in the outer hall to hear. Feng Yuan, seated in the small courtyard, heard him too.
"Go home." Lu Hong paid no mind to the boy, who was on the verge of a breakdown, and continued collecting the papers.
Similar things happened during the monthly exams in previous years. As long as they weren't too egregious, he generally turned a blind eye.
But this time was different. There was a lord seated in the small courtyard, and he'd already tested Lu Hong earlier. Now that Lu Hong had a chance to impress him, how could he not make the most of it?
After collecting all thirty-odd answer sheets, Lu Hong said gravely, "Grading will take about an hour. You can go home or wait here."
With that, he left the outer hall.
As soon as Lu Hong had disappeared from view, the outer hall erupted into lively chatter.
Chi Lin and Guan Chong sat together, surrounded by more than a dozen young men.
"Brother Chi, how did you do?" Guan Chong asked with a smile.
Chi Lin shook his head lightly. "Not well."
But anyone with eyes could see he was only pretending. He could barely keep the corners of his mouth from rising, and still he claimed he'd done poorly. Who was he trying to fool?
"Heh heh, I didn't do well either." Guan Chong pulled a book from beneath his desk. "I still need to work hard."
Damn!
That was sickening.
The young men gathered around them felt as if they'd just swallowed a fly.
It was bad enough that the two of them were feigning modesty. Why drag everyone else into it?
The young men dispersed, seeking out those whose ability was usually on par with theirs. They formed little groups of two or three and began discussing the exam.
They all knew they probably wouldn't make the top three this time, but until the final scores came out, there was still hope, wasn't there?
Maybe the three of them had performed poorly.
Watching Guan Chong study so earnestly, Chi Lin got goosebumps. How could he be so good at putting on a show?
"My father's hosting a banquet at the Green Bamboo Pavilion tonight to celebrate my upcoming admission to Baiyuan Academy. If any of you are free, you're all welcome to come."
"I'm in, definitely! The Green Bamboo Pavilion! I've never eaten there before."
"What could be more important than Brother Chi's invitation? Of course we'll come."
"That's right. Brother Chi's going to Baiyuan Academy soon. He'll surely become a high-ranking official one day."
The young men who had been repelled by their act immediately gathered around again, praising Chi Lin from every side until they nearly sent him through the roof.
Chi Lin looked at Guan Chong with a smug expression.
When it came to putting on a show, you still couldn't compete with me.
"Brother Lu, Brother Guan, why don't you come too?" Chi Lin asked confidently.
His family was a wealthy merchant household in Willow Town, and the Green Bamboo Pavilion belonged to them.
The young men looked at Guan Chong, then at Lu Xian.
Guan Chong clenched his hand beneath the desk. He couldn't compete with Chi Lin in terms of family background, nor could he compete with Lu Xian, whose father was a private tutor.
So all he could do was study as hard as he could.
If he failed this time...
"Sure. I'll be there."
There was no way he'd fail. Even if Lu Xian and Chi Lin took the top two spots, he'd still come third and be able to study at Baiyuan Academy.
In other words, they'd all be classmates from then on, so he had to maintain a good relationship with them.
"What about you, Brother Lu?" Chi Lin looked at the young man sitting alone in the middle of the front rows.
Lu Xian paused, then nodded lightly. "Sure."
"Hahaha, Brother Lu, Brother Guan, we're all from Willow Town. We should stick together, so we don't get bullied once we're at Baiyuan Academy."
The people Chi Lin truly wanted to invite were Guan Chong and Lu Xian. The others were only there to cheer them on.
"C-can I come too?"
Just as everyone was fawning over the three of them, a tentative voice sounded.
"Of course. Everyone's invited tonight, including you, Huang Lu, and your friend—what was his name again...?" Chi Lin glanced over with a look of smug disdain.
"Chu Ming. His name is Chu Ming."
Huang Lu hurriedly answered.
But no one paid him any attention, and no one cared about his answer.
Chi Lin merely glanced his way, then looked away.
"Heh heh, Brother Chu, you hit the jackpot! We actually get to eat at the Green Bamboo Pavilion. You know, it's the best restaurant in Willow Town..."
Huang Lu seemed long accustomed to being ignored. Once he got confirmation that he could go to the Green Bamboo Pavilion, he excitedly began chattering to Chu Ming about it.
Chu Ming sat at the rearmost desk, his gaze calm. He only nodded now and then to show he was listening.
Inner hall.
Lu Hong was quickly grading the exam papers when Feng Yuan entered with his attendant.
"Lord Feng." Lu Hong hurriedly bowed.
"Mm." Feng Yuan gave a slight nod, then picked up an exam paper from the desk and looked it over. At times he shook his head; at others, he nodded.
Suddenly, his eyes lit up, and his gaze stopped on one of the papers.
"This Guan Chong did quite well." After a pause, he looked at the next paper, his smile growing wider. "You've taught your students well, Teacher Lu."
Lu Xian's paper had very few mistakes.
"Thank you for your praise, Lord Feng. My son does have a little talent." When it came to his son, Lu Hong wasn't modest.
"What about the one named Chi Lin?"
"I'm grading it now. Please wait a moment, my lord." Lu Hong immediately looked over the paper in his hands.
Before long, he had finished grading it.
"Compared to Lu Xian and Guan Chong, he's a little behind..." Feng Yuan looked over the paper he'd been handed, his expression unreadable.
Chi Lin had done well, and was very likely to place in the top three, but the result wasn't much of a surprise.
Setting down the paper, Feng Yuan looked at the small stack that remained ungraded. "Which paper belongs to the young man in the back corner? Has it been graded?"
"The one in the back corner?"
Lu Hong froze for a moment, but quickly realized whom Feng Yuan meant.
He leafed through the ungraded papers beneath the inkstone. "Do you mean the one named Chu Ming, Lord Feng?"
When he'd collected the papers earlier, he'd checked everyone's names. He'd taken note of Chu Ming's because Feng Yuan had mentioned him earlier, but he hadn't had a chance to grade his paper yet.
At the name, however, Feng Yuan's brows drew together slightly. "Chu Ming?"
The third son of the wealthy Chu Family of Baiyuan County was named Chu Ming. Ordinary people wouldn't know of him, but as a Registrar of Principal Eighth Rank, Feng Yuan had heard a little about the concubine-born son.
He liked travelogues and listening to songs in the pleasure quarters, and was an idler who neglected his studies. After his mother died over a year ago, he had been sent off to a small town beneath Baiyuan County.
Feng Yuan had never paid much attention to which town it was.
But seeing this name, and recalling the conversation he'd overheard among the young men earlier... travelogues, pleasure quarters...
It couldn't be such a coincidence. It was probably the same person.
But... was it really?
Could such a calm gaze belong to someone who craved pleasure?
Besides, given the habits of the Chu Family's concubine-born son, he was unlikely to come here to take the Academy Exam.
As he pondered this, Lu Hong had already found Chu Ming's paper and begun grading it.
But the farther he got, the more varied his expression became.
Every so often, the furrows in his brow relaxed, only to tighten again at once.
After grading the final tie-breaker question, he stared at the paper and checked it over again and again.
"Impossible!" But no matter how many times he checked, the answers on the paper were nearly flawless.
There were only a handful of mistakes, and those left him both laughing and crying.
Of the five mistakes, three were answers that had originally been correct, but had been crossed out, repeatedly changed, and ended up wrong.
It gave him the impression that Chu Ming... knew the answer but wasn't sure it was right, so he'd ended up writing the wrong one!
And yet, looking at it, there seemed to be something deliberate about it...
"Did he deliberately write the wrong answers?" he murmured again.
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