Tao Dingnian said, "The rules differ from place to place. Ning'an County's rules are these: one person holds the examination paper at the front and turns one page every twenty breaths. After the final page is turned, we wait another hundred breaths, then answering stops. Whoever has the most correct answers takes first place."
Wen Gu smiled. "If we answered at leisure, old Provincial Graduates and old Metropolitan Graduates might well get every question right. But when answering quickly, no one has ever answered them all correctly. Moreover, every year's Appeal to the Sage's Words has several exceedingly obscure questions. Even old Metropolitan Graduates and Hanlin Academicians must ponder for a long while before answering them correctly, and the slightest carelessness leads to a wrong answer."
Fang Yun nodded. "So that was how it was."
Before coming to Ning'an County, Fang Yun had already learned that because Ning'an County sat at a strategic crossroads and was a superior county, it was far beyond a lesser county like Ji County.
Ning'an County had even once had county magistrates of Sixth Rank and even Subordinate Fifth Rank. Thus, not only was the chief constable a Metropolitan Graduate officer from the Prefectural Army, but Academy Lord Wen Gu and Academic Administrator Deng, who had been sent to Ning'an County, were also Metropolitan Graduates.
These three were not only equal to Fang Yun in Literary Rank, but also held an enormous advantage in age.
Though County Deputy Tao Dingnian was merely a Provincial Graduate, he was over forty and recited the Classics of the Sages every day, making his learning exceptionally solid. Let alone ordinary Provincial Graduates, even Metropolitan Graduates under thirty were little different from him in Appeal to the Sage's Words.
The three Metropolitan Graduates—Lu Hong, Wen Gu, and Academic Administrator Deng—studied