Minister Xun arrived at the venue, where all six Chief Examiners were eagerly awaiting him.
As he reached the doorway, the Chief Examiners, who had been discussing among themselves, all turned their gazes toward him.
"Surely your examination halls haven't all produced work of the Sage Realm?"
Looking at his subordinates, Minister Xun smiled.
The Chief Examiners smiled as well, then presented the examination papers in their hands one by one.
"The calligraphy path, the painting and ink path, and the Go path?"
As Minister Xun looked at the six examination papers, he clicked his tongue in wonder.
In previous years, there had not been a single one. This year, six had appeared at once.
This was indeed an extraordinary year.
Of the six Child Scholar Examination papers, three contained the calligraphy path, two the painting and ink path, and one the Go path.
Without further delay, Minister Xun began with the paper containing the Go path.
Within this paper, which subtly embodied the Go path, every horizontal, vertical, left-falling, right-falling, and dotted stroke held a profoundly mysterious quality.
Viewed as a whole, it hardly resembled an examination paper. Its characters were like black and white Go stones scattered across the stars, locked in a battle of strangulation.
Amid that struggle, the white stones sought to trap the candidate's black stones, forming a Dragon-Binding Lock that threatened to turn the position into a dead end.
Minister Xun could not help feeling a little regretful. If the candidate could not break this Dragon-Binding Lock, that would prove their mastery of the Go path was merely mediocre.
The great black dragon was bound ever tighter, on the verge of being strangled.
Yet this great black dragon simply refused to die.
Even after he finished reading the entire essay, the position remained in