Chương 88: Book 2 Chapter 2: Exam

For nearly four thousand years, no institution had shaped the fate of the Great Xiang Empire more profoundly than the Imperial Examination. Dynasties had collapsed. Sects had risen and vanished like passing storms. Entire provinces had burned in the long centuries of chaos that followed the Shattering. Yet the Keju endured. Though much had changed since those ancient days, its spirit remained unbroken.

Across the empire it was known as the Official Threshold, a trial held once every five years, open to cultivators of every recognized realm, from humble Qi Condensation initiates to august Nascent Soul masters. There was not a soul alive within the central territories of the empire who did not dream of passing it. To pass the Imperial Examination was to cross an invisible boundary, one that separated the wandering masses from those who ruled the world.

Successful candidates were appointed as civil officials of the empire, their posts determined by both their cultivation realm and their performance in the trials. From that moment onward they ceased to be mere wandering cultivators or obscure sect disciples. Instead, they became instruments of the state, entrusted with governance, adjudication, taxation, and the careful management of spiritual resources across territories vast enough to swallow entire nations.

In a land where ancient clans had controlled the same territories for millennia and great cultivation families passed power down through bloodlines unchanged over centuries, the Keju stood as the single ladder by which a commoner might climb toward something more. For those born without powerful ancestry, without ancestral treasures or sect backing, it was the only legitimate path to authority that did not run through someone else's generosity.

A high rank in the examination could transform a nameless rogue cultivator into a district magistrate, a provincial overseer, or even a minister of the imperial court. The right bloodline could command armies. The right lineage could open doors that would otherwise remain sealed for a lifetime. But the Keju recognized only merit. Or so the empire proclaimed. Naturally, passing it was anything but easy.

Under the rule of the current dynasty, the syllabus for the Keju had been standardized around Four Canonical Texts, works so widely distributed throughout the empire that even remote villages could obtain them. Only the most distant frontiers saw them rarely: the regions near the Great Wall, the far southern coast bordering the Trackless Sea, places like the Thousand Shattered Islands, where imperial reach grew thin and scholarly tradition thinner still.

The four texts covered the pillars deemed essential for any imperial official: cultivation theory, administration, statecraft, and philosophical doctrine. Yet to call them merely "books" was a grave understatement. Each text was a vast compendium filled with commentary, historical case studies, parables, essays, and poetry written by sages, ministers, and cultivators from countless generations. A single passage could invite a hundred interpretations.

A single verse might contain principles applicable both to governing a province and comprehending the nature of the Dao itself. To study the texts seriously was not to memorize them. It was to sit with them long enough that they began to teach you things you had not thought to ask. Unfortunately, the Four Canonical Texts were only the beginning.

Around them stretched an ocean of supplementary material: treatises by long-dead ministers, annotations preserved by sect scholars, philosophical rebuttals penned by reclusive Nascent Soul masters in the previous century. The deeper one studied, the more branches of interpretation opened up, each demanding its own preparation. Knowledge, like cultivation, possessed no true end. And as one's cultivation realm increased, the trials grew correspondingly more demanding.

Qi Condensation candidates might be asked to compose essays on the management of spirit fields or the moral obligations cultivators owed to the mortal populations beneath their protection. Foundation Establishment candidates debated taxation policies on spiritual mines or proposed strategies to maintain stability between rival sects.

By the Nascent Soul stage, examinees were expected to design entire systems of governance: frameworks capable of harmonizing cultivation resources, military defense, and philosophical orthodoxy across vast territories. The examination halls had witnessed countless geniuses crumble beneath that weight. Naturally, such a system favored the powerful.

The scions of ancient clans and great cultivation families arrived with advantages that commoners could scarcely imagine: tutored since childhood by learned elders, surrounded by private libraries spanning centuries of scholarship, drilled by veteran instructors who had themselves passed the examination and understood its hidden expectations. They arrived prepared at the examinations armed with knowledge that others might spend lifetimes pursuing. And yet… the dream endured.

Every few decades, a legend would emerge: a farmer's son who memorized the Canon by lanternlight, a wandering rogue who grasped the deeper meaning of the texts through sheer insight, a destitute disciple whose essays moved even the imperial examiners. Such figures would rise overnight from obscurity, their names carried across the empire like thunder. And it was precisely these rare miracles that kept the hope of the Keju alive.

Yet the structure of the Imperial Examination was more intricate than most commoners realized. Just as the Keju was divided according to cultivation realms, from Qi Condensation to Nascent Soul, so too was it divided along another axis: the Outer Examination and the Inner Examination. The Outer Examination was the one celebrated in stories and popular imagination throughout the empire.

Open to any cultivator who met the realm requirement, regardless of birth, sect affiliation, or family standing, it was the path by which most candidates entered the imperial bureaucracy. Those who passed would be dispatched across the central territories: magistrates in remote counties, supervisors of spirit fields, inspectors tasked with regulating sect conduct, administrators overseeing spiritual mines, or clerks within the vast ministries of the capital.

For the overwhelming majority of candidates, this was already the summit of their ambitions. To pass was to have succeeded in the only way that mattered. But for the truly exceptional, another path existed. Among the thousands who passed the Outer Examination each cycle, the empire maintained careful rankings. The top hundred were observed closely in the months that followed.

If they governed well, resolved disputes with wisdom, and demonstrated the particular combination of cultivation insight and political acumen that the court valued above almost all else, their names might eventually reach the highest desks of the imperial bureaucracy. And if fortune favored them, an invitation would arrive. An invitation to sit for the Inner Examination. Unlike the Outer Examination, this trial was never announced publicly.

No one could apply for it, and no amount of preparation could guarantee entry. The only candidates permitted to participate were officials who had already proven themselves among the finest minds of their generation, selected by a process that remained deliberately opaque. Passing it meant far more than advancement.

It meant entry into the Imperial Palace itself, into the ministries that shaped imperial policy, the councils that regulated sects and the distribution of spiritual resources, and the less formally acknowledged departments whose mandates rarely appeared in official records. For outsiders, the palace was a realm nearly impossible to enter.

Aside from members of the imperial clan, heirs of the oldest noble houses, high-ranking sect envoys, and officials explicitly summoned for palace service, few ever passed through those gates. The Inner Examination was one of the very few paths for everyone else. Which was why, at this precise moment, Mo Jian was sitting in a small stone room on a very uncomfortable wooden chair, waiting for the written portion of the examination to begin.

The chamber assigned to him was small and austere, like many of the examination rooms within the vast complex. Bare stone walls surrounded a simple desk, an inkstone, a brush rack, and a stack of carefully prepared paper bearing the imperial seal. High above, a single window admitted a thin shaft of afternoon light. The beam barely reached the desk.

Mo Jian had the distinct impression that its inclusion had been largely ceremonial, an architect's assurance to the heavens that the examination cells had not entirely sealed off the world beyond. On the first day, the examination for Core Formation cultivators began with the written trial. Each examinee received a sealed booklet containing one thousand questions.

Their subjects could range across the full breadth of imperial scholarship without warning or pattern: cultivation theory, administrative law, agricultural policy, spiritual ecology, sect diplomacy, taxation of spirit resources, historical precedent, philosophical interpretation of the Canonical Texts. No candidate could predict what awaited them inside the sealed booklet. Whatever they had studied most thoroughly was probably not what waited on the first page.

Moreover, every answer had to be written in flawless calligraphy. Precision of thought alone was not enough. The empire believed that clarity of brush reflected clarity of mind, and so every stroke would be scrutinized as carefully as the arguments themselves. To ensure fairness, every candidate was confined to a private chamber like the one Mo Jian now occupied. No personal items were permitted inside unless supplied by the examination authorities themselves.

Communication between rooms was impossible, as layered sound-sealing formations had been etched into the surrounding stone. Even a shout would vanish before reaching the neighboring cell. Once completed, the answer sheets would not be judged immediately. Instead, they would first be passed to a corps of imperial scribes whose sole duty was to erase all identifying traces. Names, handwriting styles, and even minor calligraphic quirks would be carefully replicated into standardized copies.

Only after this process were the transcribed papers presented to the examiners. In this way, rank, lineage, and reputation could not influence the judgment. At least in theory. There would also be no pauses, no meals, and no moments of rest in between. The examination would begin precisely at noon and continue without interruption until midnight. For Golden Core cultivators, however, such endurance was hardly unreasonable.

Cai Jian, the gate guard from Dragon Gate Two Hundred and Thirty-Eight, who had been assigned to escort them to the examination hall, had apologized with considerable feeling when he showed Mo Jian to his seat.

"All the better positions were already claimed, Lord Mo," the man had said, looking carefully at a point somewhere past Mo Jian's left ear.

"I'm afraid this is all that remains." Mo Jian had quickly waved him off, feeling faintly embarrassed by the guard's excessive courtesy. It wasn't as though he minded. Compared to a few of the places he had slept in over the past eight months, this cell was practically comfortable. Bai Ning had been led further into the examination hall, closer to the center, where another available seat supposedly awaited her. Mo Jian had no particular intention of cheating… well, no serious intention.

In a strictly technical sense, he almost certainly could. But if he were ever caught looking at Bai Ning's answers, the damage to his dignity as her teacher would be irreversible. And even if he were absolutely, definitively certain he would not be caught, he could not guarantee she would never find out. He knew her well enough to know that she absolutely would. This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. He set the thought aside.

In truth, he expected to pass the examination regardless, if not with a particularly striking rank. During the eight months of travel to the capital, he and Bai Ning had obtained copies of the Four Canonical Texts early in the journey and studied them together along the road. Bai Ning, as usual, once she focused on something, had grasped them with alarming ease and uncovered layers of meaning in every sentence.

Mo Jian, on the other hand, had mostly nodded and pretended to understand while trying to look appropriately wise. Whenever Bai Ning explained some subtle philosophical interpretation, he would stroke his chin and respond with dignified phrases like"Indeed, that is quite profound," or"A compelling reading of the passage," -responses he had found could cover a remarkable range of situations when delivered with sufficient gravitas. In reality, he understood perhaps half of it. It wasn't that he was stupid.

He knew the material well enough. It was just that his days of cramming for examinations were far behind him. Not that it mattered. All he needed to do was pass. There was a reason he had not yet advanced to the Nascent Soul realm, despite being fully capable of doing so at any time. Once he received an official posting, no matter how minor, any sudden breakthrough in cultivation (especially at his realm) would place him directly into consideration for the Inner Examination.

As long as he performed competently in whatever position he was assigned… Everything else would follow naturally. And honestly, Mo Jian doubted the empire would give him anything particularly difficult to handle. There was, after all, a layer to his presence here that had nothing to do with the examination itself. Mo Jian was well aware that eyes had been on him since long before he passed through the capital's gates.

Whatever intelligence apparatus the imperial court maintained, and any court that had survived four thousand years had to maintain something, would have been tracking both him and the gui he carried for months, trying to piece together his intentions. He had thought carefully about what those observers would conclude when they saw him sitting in an examination cell rather than presenting himself at the imperial gates. For example, why was he not presenting himself to the Emperor and instead sitting for the Keju?

Why was he attempting to enter the palace? To them, the answers would seem obvious, once they gave it some thought. Mo Jian was simply positioning himself carefully before presenting the gui to the Emperor. By entering the palace through official channels, he could negotiate directly and extract the greatest possible reward for the relic he carried. That reading was plausible, clean, and hopefully, entirely consistent with the behavior of a reasonably clever man protecting his interests. At least…

That was what Mo Jian hoped they would believe. He needed them to think they understood him, because people who believed they had understood someone's motives rarely looked for a second layer. What he actually needed was entry into the Imperial Palace. Not an audience, not an escort to some outer reception hall, but genuine access to the palace's internal structures, its ministries, the councils, the interconnected web of official life that existed behind its gates.

A brief meeting with the Emperor, however impressive it sounded, would accomplish almost none of what needed to be accomplished. He could not explain the future in the middle of an imperial audience. He could not lay out the shape of what was coming; the Immortal of Slaughter, the purges, the sequence of events that Mo Jian had spent months assembling in his memory, under those conditions. So: pass the examination, receive a posting, and do the work competently.

Let the natural momentum of the process carry him inward. Step one of approximately a dozen. A loud gong suddenly rang out across the examination complex. The sound rolled through the stone halls like a wave, deep and resonant, ending his thoughts with the neat finality of a door closing. It was noon. The seal on the examination packet cracked open with a soft snap. The booklet inside unfolded on its own, the ink along its spine flickering briefly before settling.

Mo Jian straightened in his chair and turned to the first page. Question 1: The Dao which can be governed is not the Dao. Yet the Empire attempts to regulate cultivators. Explain this contradiction. Below, the page was entirely blank, with space clearly left for the answer. Mo Jian groaned inwardly. Great, philosophy and politics all in one question. He could feel, with the precision of a man who had once spent four years of his life on examinations of an entirely different kind, the shape of the answer expected.

It would require him to acknowledge the apparent paradox with appropriate gravity, cite two or three relevant passages from the Canonical Texts, demonstrate that he had grasped the relevant philosophical tradition, and then resolve the contradiction through an argument about the difference between governing the Dao itself and governing the conditions within which cultivators pursued it, preserving order not as an imposition on the Dao but as an expression of harmonious principle, the empire acting not against heaven but in accordance with it, the natural order requiring guidance just as a river requires banks- He already had a headache, and he hadn't written a word.

He flipped ahead. Question 39: Draw the twelve primary meridians, the eight secondary meridians, and the thirty-six tertiary meridians in the figure below. Also explain the concept of the three dantians and its significance to the art of cultivation. Below it, the outline of a human body sat in repose. The rest of the page was blank, clearly reserved for his explanation. He kept flipping. Some questions demanded short, precise answers.

Others opened into entire blank pages, clearly reserving space for extended arguments. There were sections for poetry, battle diagrams requiring strategic annotations, riddles without obvious solutions, and more than one question whose phrasing he suspected was itself a test of something other than the stated subject. Whatever happened to good old-fashioned jade slips and memory jades? Magical, convenient, and universally available; they were so much easier to use. Why this insistence on pen and paper?

Of course, he knew the reasoning: it was to ensure that no cheating happened, and to maximize fairness, but that logic had no place in his complaining heart. Just looking at the questions made his hand ache at the thought of all the writing ahead. He flipped to a random page toward the middle. Question 725: In the Battle of the Cuangjei Pass, what were the objectives of the Imperial army, and how were those objectives achieved in the face of opposition by Ogedei Khan?

Do you agree with the strategy employed by the troops of the Empire, and if not, what would you do differently? Finally, Mo Jian sighed and picked up the brush. Writing in calligraphy was not a challenge for any cultivator, especially when they could control the flow of qi in their hands and fingers. Yet it was not something he had practiced much. In the Thousand Shattered Islands, only those who pursued calligraphy as an art took it seriously. Official correspondence didn't have anything to do with it.

Here, though, under the watchful eye of the court, every stroke carried weight. Then again, he mused, just because nobles like something doesn't make it any less ridiculous. Time to pass this section of the exam. The first stroke felt awkward, hesitant, but then the rhythm took hold. Words flowed smoothly across the page, guided by his qi and concentration. The sun above continued its slow descent, shafts of light shifting from gold to amber to deep red, spilling across the desk, the walls, and the floor.

Mo Jian wrote on, almost unaware of the passing hours. Question 101: Name the Three Immortal Rules as established by the Immortal Emperor for all cultivators within the empire. Provide two examples each of when they were broken, and describe the response of the Imperial Dynasty. Easy enough, at first glance. However, the space left for the answer was generous, meaning it demanded more than mere facts.

He would have to weave in the "wisdom" and the "appropriate displays of authority" shown by the court, the "horror" at such violations, and the lessons intended to instruct all cultivators. Naturally, the tone had to be pious, reverent, and judicious, as if he were simultaneously awed and appalled. He kept writing.

Mo Jian answered question after question, drawing diagrams where prompted, composing poetry where required, or, more truthfully, borrowing lines from poets he remembered from Earth and passing them off as his own. He didn't even notice when the sun finally sank, leaving the last shards of light slipping from his room. Darkness claimed the chamber, save for a thin strip of silvery moonlight from the window above. This, too, was part of the exam.

Any cultivator distracted by such banalities, or wasting time conjuring qi light, deserved to lose those precious hours. By the time he reached question nine hundred and ninety-six, his head felt paradoxically both strangely clear and stuffed with cotton wool. It was like being back in his college days: surviving on ten cups of coffee and half a night of sleep, struggling through a critical final exam.

He was just about to begin the next question ("If the people enjoy sufficiency, how could the ruler suffer from insufficiency?"), and craft an argument about how wealthy subjects equaled a wealthy ruler, that taxes should be low to circulate wealth among the people, and so on, when the gong rang again. He froze, blinking. In that instant, the booklet containing his carefully penned answers vanished. The gong rang a second time. The first portion of the examination was finished.

The next section – the cultivation trial – would begin tomorrow, precisely at noon. Noon according to the Imperial Palace, not the rim of the city, where the sheer distance between districts created subtle differences in time. Mo Jian leaned back, letting out a long sigh. He couldn't remember the last time he had spent so many hours sitting still and writing, which, on second thought, perhaps said sad things about his daily habits as a cultivator.

He pushed the thought away, standing and stretching, letting the stiffness ease from his shoulders. The silence of the chamber pressed in around him, broken only by the faint rustle of his robes and the distant footsteps of attendants preparing other rooms. He needed to find Bai Ning.

They still had no place to stay; that conversation had been deferred in favor of arriving at the examination hall on time, and now it was past midnight in a city neither of them knew, with their supply of spirit stones in a condition best described as sad. The long journey to the capital had depleted their resources more thoroughly than anticipated. Luxury was not available. Somewhere close and cheap was the actual objective. Mo Jian stepped out of the small room assigned to him and into the wider examination hall.

The midnight air carried the thick scent of incense mingled with the comforting fragrance of freshly ground ink. Lanterns swayed gently from the wooden ceiling, casting warm uneven light across a floor polished by the feet of every candidate who had walked these halls across the past several centuries. He was not the only one emerging.

Core Formation cultivators were filing out of their rooms throughout the corridor, some moving directly toward the exits, others gathering in small clusters near the walls to immediately begin comparing answers with the competitive eagerness of people who had survived something together and needed to process it by talking. Mo Jian paused, taking in the corridor. He had grown accustomed to the capital's scale over the course of the day, or thought he had.

But standing here, watching this single corridor produce this density of Core Formation cultivators at midnight on the first day of a five-year examination cycle, reminded him that accustomed was not the same as comprehending. Back in the Thousand Shattered Islands, a gathering of this many Core Formation cultivators would have drawn attention from every major power in the region. It would have been an event.

Here it was simply a Tuesday (or the local calendar equivalent), in one corridor of one examination hall in one division of one quadrant of a city that continued in every direction further than he could meaningfully imagine. The Thousand Shattered Islands were, by any reasonable comparison, provincial. Mo Jian had known this intellectually for months. The gut understanding of it was taking somewhat longer. He shook the thought free and walked toward the outer courtyard.

The road outside was broad enough to qualify as a primary avenue anywhere he had previously lived. Even at midnight it was not empty; a city of this scale never fully slept, and the steady drift of cultivators departing the examination complex added to the usual flow of night traffic. Lantern-lit stalls were already setting up to catch the exiting candidates, vendors sharp enough to know that examinees emerging after twelve straight hours of writing had loosened purse strings.

Mo Jian considered the thought and acknowledged it as not entirely wrong. He scanned the street. Then, before he had fully located her in the crowd, he heard her.

"Mo Jian! Over here!" The voice carried across the courtyard with the cheerful, uncalibrated volume of someone who had grown up in a place where sound traveled across open water and had never fully adjusted for enclosed spaces. Half the departing candidates in the immediate vicinity turned to look. Mo Jian did not react to the attention, having had months of practice at not reacting to Bai Ning's approach to public spaces.

She was standing near the side gate, waving with the unreserved enthusiasm of someone who had not just sat through twelve hours of written examinations, which he found slightly unreasonable. He made his way toward her.

"How was it?" she asked, falling into step beside him as they moved away from the main flow of traffic.

"Fine," Mo Jian said. Then, because it was her: "Question one was philosophy and politics in the same breath. I spent twenty minutes on it."

"Oh, that one." Bai Ning's expression shifted into something he recognized as the particular look she wore when she had found something straightforward.

"I answered it by framing the distinction between governing the Dao and governing the conduct of those who pursue it. The empire acts on the outer conditions, not the inner principle. Just with more flowery language."

"Yes," Mo Jian said.

"That is pretty much what I wrote." She glanced at him sideways. He kept his expression entirely neutral.

"We still need somewhere to stay," he said, redirecting.

"I know. I asked one of the attendants before I left. Apparently, there are guides out on the streets who can direct us to whatever manner of accommodations we prefer." She paused.

"Also, they might all get busy very soon, what with all the examination candidates being turned loose, so we should probably move quickly." Mo Jian nodded. The mundane logistics of the situation; a rented room, a meal at whatever was still serving at this hour, a night's sleep before tomorrow's cultivation trial, settled over him with a domestic ordinariness that felt, after eight months of travel and one day of examinations, almost restful. One step completed. A dozen remaining.

He fell into step beside her, and they moved together into the lit and busy dark of the Imperial Capital.