WSMTATMC C161

Chapter 161

“Good news? What good news?”

“Our young master and second young master have both passed!”

Wang Ying’s head buzzed, as if struck by a wave of electricity. Suddenly, a chime rang out in his mind: “The experimental field has been upgraded to level six.”

He did not have time to worry about the field. The whole family hurried to the entrance, where several clerks from the yamen were waiting, just as Chen Qingyan and the others came out.

“Congratulations, young masters, felicitations to the two of you, for making the honor roll.”

Liu Changyi recognized one of them and stepped forward, asking, “The results of the Provincial Examinations have been announced?”

The clerk cupped his hands and replied, “They have. Young Master Chen Qingyan has ranked first in Jizhou Prefecture and third in the whole nation.”

This was the best result Jizhou had seen in the last ten years! The last time someone had done that well was Liu Changyi’s elder uncle, Liu Yaozhi, who had once placed second in the nation during the Provincial Examination.

Chen Qinghuai immediately asked anxiously, “And what was my ranking?”

“Young Master Chen Qinghuai ranked fourth in Jizhou Prefecture and twenty-first nationwide.”

Chen Qinghuai’s face broke into a smile. It was roughly what he had expected. There had been two questions where his answers were a bit lacking. To place in this position was already very satisfying to him!

Liu Changyi followed up quickly, “And me, did you see whether I passed?”

The clerk scratched his head somewhat awkwardly. “This little one looked carefully… Young Master Liu should go and check for himself later.”

Liu Changyi let his shoulders slump, disappointment overtaking him though he had already anticipated it. The thought of having to endure the torment of the Provincial Examination all over again filled him with dread.

Chen Qinghuai patted him on the shoulder. “Go take another look later. Perhaps they missed your name.”

“That won’t be necessary. I know my own abilities. I didn’t expect to pass this time anyway. It’s already excellent that you and my elder brother succeeded.”

Normally, there was no official report of success for passing the Provincial Examination (passing made one a juren¹). Only those who placed in the Metropolitan Examination (jinshi²) were formally congratulated. But the Chen family was different. To have both brothers attain juren status in a single household was considered a rare honor, not to mention that Chen Qingyan had earned such an outstanding rank. The Prefect himself intentionally sent people to invite them to the yamen for a meeting.

The two brothers hurried back to change their clothes. Madam Li and Fang Ling were so happy they shed tears, while Wang Ying, after coming down from his excitement, quickly took out two strings of coins to give as a reward to the clerks. Such events should not allow guests to leave empty-handed.

“Thank you, young master!” The clerks grinned broadly, exposing their teeth as they poured out endless pleasant words. Anyone could see clearly that the Chen family’s destiny was starting to change.

Passing the Provincial Examination conferred eligibility for official appointment. Even if only appointed to a minor position such as a seventh-rank county magistrate, this was already a social height common people could never dream of reaching in their lifetime.

The whole family rejoiced and prepared to celebrate, though Liu Changyi’s joy was tinged with dejection. It was, after all, his first time taking the Provincial Exam, and when everyone else had passed except himself, how could he not feel disappointed?

Seeing this, Chen Qingyun went over and tugged at his sleeve to comfort him. “It doesn’t matter even if you didn’t pass. Next time, you and Brother Song can try again together.”

“Mm.”

Chen Qingyan and Chen Qinghuai changed clothes and followed the clerks to the yamen, while the others sat around the table to eat their celebratory meal.

During the meal, Madam Li said, “I wonder if that nephew of ours passed or not. Earlier there was no convenient chance to ask.”

Wang Ying replied, “Then we’ll go have a look later. We can pretend we’re just out for a stroll.”

“Alright!” Everyone agreed eagerly. They all wanted to see Chen Qingyan and Chen Qinghuai’s names on the red announcement board with their own eyes.

After the meal, the whole family piled into three horse-drawn carriages and made their way to the yamen. A healthy crowd was still gathered around the examinations board.

Though the crowd was thinner now, in the morning when the lists had first gone up, the place had been packed with people. Aside from the examinees themselves and their families, ordinary bystanders and yamen officers had flooded the area.

By now, those who needed to see had already checked: the successful had gone home to celebrate, while those who failed had returned home to regroup and prepare for the next attempt.

When the carriages stopped, the tall Cao Kun was first to squeeze into the crowd to take a look. “I see it! Eldest Cousin’s name is ranked third!”

Before long, Liu Changyi and Chen Qingsong squeezed in as well, carefully searching the board.

On the massive red cloth, the names of the two hundred new juren were written in dense rows. First place was Liu Junshan of Suzhou, second place Huang Yuanzhou of Yangzhou, and third place was none other than Chen Qingyan of Jizhou.

Liu Changyi whispered, “I’ve heard of this Huang Yuanzhou before. He’s a well-known scholar. I hadn’t expected him to sit for the exam this year too.”

Looking further down, Chen Qingsong suddenly pointed to the tenth name. “Cai Jingqi of Laizhou. I know him—he’s Senior Brother Qinghuai’s schoolmate. I didn’t expect he passed too!”

They continued scanning downward until they found Chen Qinghuai at twenty-first, an excellent result indeed.

Chen Qingsong then began searching for their cousin Li Bingchen’s name. After looking through the board once, he couldn’t find it, but when his eyes reached the very end, he suddenly exclaimed aloud.

“What is it?”

“Changyi-ge, you passed too!”

“Where? Where?!”

“Right at the very bottom…”

Liu Changyi looked carefully. The two-hundredth place was indeed “Liu Changyi of Jizhou Prefecture.” At once, a flood of surprise and joy drenched him, tears of excitement filling his eyes.

His mother and master had always said he lacked the quiet focus needed for study, but this time he had truly given it his all. Today, at last, he had earned a result.

From the outer crowd, Chen Qingyun saw him rush out in a kind of ecstatic frenzy and grew alarmed. “What happened?”

“I passed, I passed!”

“You did?”

Liu Changyi wiped his face with his sleeve. “Yes… at the very bottom, last place.”

Even so, being the last still meant more than most could accomplish in a lifetime. After all, the number of participants varied every year, but this year there had been twenty-one thousand examinees nationwide. Who could say how many more would compete next year? To be among the two hundred new juren was to be counted one in a thousand.

Madam Li quickly said, “Hurry home and tell everyone; they surely don’t know yet.”

The rest of them stayed behind for a little while longer, waiting for the crowd to thin before moving up to get a closer look. Madam Li searched the board for her nephew’s name but could not find it. With a weary sigh, she murmured, “Bingchen has already taken the exam four times. If he didn’t succeed this year, I fear he may give up.”

The Li family had produced three juren in past generations, but since her father’s era, their fortunes had declined, producing only one more.

Still, with her sons Qingyan and Qinghuai passing, it was a tremendous joy. Their hearts light, they soon made their way home.

Fang Ling, however, could not sit still. She began packing her luggage right away, ready to depart the very next morning.

Madam Li and Chen Rong helped him pack as they persuaded him. “There are still over two months until the New Year. Why not wait until then before leaving?”

Fang Ling shook his head. “After the New Year, Qinghuai will be traveling to the capital to attend the Metropolitan Exam, which means nearly half a year away from home. I don’t know how Ying’er’s coughing illness is faring.”

“If you leave now, who knows when we will see each other again?”

Fang Ling put down the items in his hand and sighed. “To tell the truth, I don’t want to go either. The time I’ve spent living here has been the most relaxed I’ve felt in years. I didn’t need to worry about feeding and caring for the children, didn’t need to manage the household chores, didn’t need to fret over my husband’s official duties.”

“But once a parent, the heart is tied down for life. When away from the children, the mind cannot help but dwell on them. Wanting relaxation is all but impossible.”

Both sisters-in-law shared his understanding. “We can only hope there will be a day when we can all be together again.”

“There will be. You must all attend Qinghuai’s wedding when the time comes. Nobody may be missing.”

That evening, Chen Qingyan and Chen Qinghuai returned from the yamen. The Prefect had given them each two calligraphy scrolls with words of encouragement for the Metropolitan Exam, as well as a yellow stone inkstone and a box of Anhui ink.

Though not expensive, the meaning was priceless. It was their first experience in officialdom since they began their studies.

Chen Qingyan accepted calmly, but Chen Qinghuai was more reserved, showing his inexperience. Still, he was young, and more practice over the years would sharpen him.

At dinner, they told the family about their meeting with the Prefect. “When we went, the Prefect was writing. For me, he wrote: ‘Unaffected by outside turbulence, unmoved by material distractions—only then can one take up great responsibilities for the world.’ For Elder Brother, he wrote: ‘As heaven maintains constant movement, so too must a gentleman strive unceasingly.’”³

This Prefect was quite interesting; the words gifted to Chen Qingyan clearly referred to the fact that he had once been framed unjustly but later rose again to seize victory.

Chen Qingyan continued, “After gifting us the words, he spoke with us for a while about his own years of study.”

The Prefect, surnamed Lin, was not a native of Jizhou but from Yizhou, thousands of li away.

Yizhou, being less developed, had extremely scarce educational resources. Though the Lin family was considered well-off locally, it was very difficult even to hire a proper tutor.

Their county had only four xiucai⁴ scholars in total. Two of them were past fifty and nearly blind. The other two each ran small private schools, and Prefect Lin had studied at one of those.

Thanks to his intelligence, by age fifteen he had already passed as a xiucai and gone to study at the Yizhou prefectural academy. Even there, the number of academics was sparse, and the school had only a single juren serving as instructor, already advanced in years.

Every time he went to consult that old instructor on a difficult question, he had to kneel outside in advance, waiting until the old man was in a good mood to receive even a word or two of guidance. When the mood was foul, one might kneel the whole day without being called in. Through such relentless perseverance, he eventually passed into the Metropolitan Exam and later rose to his current post as Prefect of the Fourth Rank.

As they were leaving, Prefect Lin grasped their hands and said, “You two lads must cherish this chance for study, strive for success at the Metropolitan Exam, and one day serve in the imperial court!”

Chen Qinghuai mimicked the Prefect’s Sichuan-accented manner of speech so vividly that everyone burst into laughter.

Wang Ying rubbed his chin and thought: Prefect Lin was from Yizhou, which in modern times would correspond to the Bashu⁵ region. Perhaps the chili peppers he grew in the experimental field would be to his liking.

After dinner, Wang Ying prepared to enter the experimental field to take a look. During the day, the upgrade notification had popped up so suddenly he hadn’t managed to check.

Chen Qingyan and Yuanbao followed him inside. The two children ran along the ridges of the fields, plucking flowers and picking small cucumbers, happily at play.

Wang Ying glanced at them with a smile, then raised a hand to summon the virtual screen. He opened the field’s information panel.

The moment he did so, a cascade of reminders filled his view:

Chen Qingyan: First in the County Exam, +20,000 experience.

Chen Qingyan: First in the Prefectural Exam, +30,000 experience.

Chen Qingyan: First in the Academy Exam, +30,000 experience.

Chen Qingyan: Third in the Provincial Exam, +100,000 experience.

Experimental Field upgraded to Level 6.

Reward 1: Growth acceleration up to 5x speed (consumes experience to activate).

This reward was rather useless. Any feature that consumed experience, Wang Ying almost never used.

After all, leveling up was difficult and experience even harder to come by. It looked nice to gain tens of thousands at once, but really, Qingyan could only sit for the Provincial Exam once. That source of experience was a one-time deal. Once spent, it was gone.

Through crop exchange, it required one thousand catties of wheat just to gain one thousand experience. To accumulate one hundred thousand experience would mean one hundred thousand catties. With the field producing at most three harvests per year, barely ten thousand catties, at that rate it would take ten years for one level-up if no acceleration was used—truly not worth it.

Reward 2: Unlimited time inside the experimental field (note: first two hours consume no experience, afterwards costs 300 per hour).

Wang Ying cursed inwardly. “This damned field. I thought it was suddenly being generous, but turns out it still demands experience!”

At 300 points per hour, a full day inside would cost 7,200 experience. Who would be willing to waste that?

Still, it could be useful in critical situations, providing assurance against running out of time.

Reward 3: Visibility function unlocked (the field may be set up in a designated area where others can see and harvest from it).

Wang Ying frowned slightly. This was a double-edged sword. He could buy a plot of land and set up the field there, so people wouldn’t question the source of his vegetables.

But once exposed to greedy eyes, could he guard it with his current abilities? Probably not. So, for now, this reward was of no use.

In the end, none of the three rewards truly helped. Wang Ying closed the light screen with disappointment. It seemed he would just have to keep leveling up. If only his husband could pass the Metropolitan Exam—would that grant another huge surge of experience?

Footnotes:

1. juren (举人): Title granted to those who passed the Provincial Examinations, conferring eligibility for lower-level official positions. 
2. jinshi (进士): Title attained by passing the highest-level Imperial Examination (Metropolitan Exam in the capital), required for most significant government roles. 
3. The phrases given by the Prefect are famous maxims from classical Chinese philosophy. The one to Qinghuai is from the I Ching (Book of Changes), encouraging ceaseless self-strengthening. The one to Qingyan is from Han political writings, emphasizing indifference to external influences to handle responsibilities. 
4. xiucai (秀才): Licentiate. Degree bestowed on those who passed the county-level exam, lowest level of the imperial civil exam hierarchy. 
5. Bashu (巴蜀): Ancient term for the Sichuan region, widely known in Chinese historical geography.