Chapter 12: Lu Beigu's Future Plans

"In any case, County Magistrate Li's action has given me a fair chance to compete. For the next two months, I must prepare fully for the county school exam; I need to catch up on poetry and fu, Mo Yi, and Tie Jing."

"You just focus on your studies; with me here, the household will be fine."

Pei Yan's voice was very soft, yet it was like a thin thread, firmly tied to Lu Beigu's heart.

"By the way."

She suddenly remembered something: "Is that wound on your forehead really just from a bump?"

With Aunt Wang nearby just now, she hadn't pressed for details, fearing Lu Beigu might have been bullied by classmates at the county school.

"Of course; I was so absorbed in reading while walking that I wasn't careful, that's all."

After finishing the meal, Lu Beigu sat at the courtyard gate and quietly thought for a moment.

The reason he came here was that the room was simply too dark, whereas here there was at least moonlight, allowing him to see roughly clearly when scratching with stones on the ground.

Holding a stone, Lu Beigu wrote down the three matters he needed to face on the sandy ground, according to the urgency of time.

One: Go with Li Pan to meet that "very important person" in one week.

Two: Earn enough money within one month to buy books and rent a house in Hejiang County.

Three: Make up for other very weak subjects within two months, pass the county exam, and smoothly advance to the prefectural school.

In terms of time, preparing for the county exam seems the least urgent, but in reality, Lu Beigu is the most anxious about it.

Because the county exam determines whether he can advance from the county school to the prefectural school!

In the Great Song, the status of scholar-officials is indeed high.

But the problem is that ordinary people only "watch others eat meat without seeing others get beaten"; no one mentions how incredibly low, to the point of being hair-raising, the acceptance rate is when climbing step by step from the county exam to the prefectural exam and then to the provincial exam!

Take the county exam, which isn't even a formal imperial examination, for instance.

The average number of people passing the county exam at Hejiang County School in past years was five!

— This is equivalent to an acceptance rate of around 2% for the county exam!

In the last ten-day assessment, poetry and fu and policy essays were not tested; instead, Tie Jing and Mo Yi were tested. His results were Tie Jing Grade Bing Zhong and Mo Yi Grade Bing Xia, ranking 198th in the county school.

Being basically at the bottom among the 220 students at Hejiang County School, how easy is it to make up for the lost studies in poetry and fu, Tie Jing, and Mo Yi in a short time and reach the level of the top 2%?

Moreover, although there appear to be more than two months on the surface to prepare for the county exam, there is an information gap here: one must never measure ancient times by modern transportation speeds.

Traveling from Chengdu to Hejiang by water route down the Yangtze River is slightly faster, but the return trip also takes six or seven days; and if rushing from Hejiang to Chengdu, one cannot go upstream by water route but must take the land official road built along the river.

Although the Great Song's official roads are built quite completely, with relay stations every 20 li and post stations every 40 li, traveling by land between the two places, even on horseback, unless one is galloping for one's life, still takes about ten days to arrive.

Plus, one can't possibly stay in Chengdu for only one day and return, right?

Therefore, although there appear to be more than two months until the county exam on the surface, in reality, Lu Beigu has only a little over one month of preparation time.

And improving grades is not only time-pressured but also heavy in task.

Because except for policy essays, everything else needs to be made up.

Among the exam contents—poetry and fu, Mo Yi, and Tie Jing—the easiest to improve is Tie Jing, which only requires rote memorization.

Ordinary scholars, if willing to put in hard work memorizing the Analects, can answer six or seven out of ten questions correctly.

The reason for saying this is that during the exam, besides the possibility of not remembering clearly, the question-setters can also be very perverted.

How perverted?

Cutting out both the preceding and following content is one thing, but sometimes they leave the candidate with only one or two characters, and these one or two characters often appear repeatedly in the Analects.

To give the most extreme example, the question has only two characters: "The Master said."

Of course, the actual situation is definitely not this extreme; some hints will be given.

As for how to judge exactly which sentence in the original text it is, that depends on punctuation marks.

Hmm, fortunately, punctuation marks already appeared in the Song Dynasty.

If one traveled back to before the Song Dynasty, one would have to study sentence breaks oneself.

But regardless, the entire Analects is only about ten thousand characters; although this body's memory ability is a bit lacking, Lu Beigu has his own memory method.

Therefore, he believes that raising Tie Jing performance to answer eight or nine questions correctly, or even getting all ten right if lucky, within a short time is no problem.

As for poetry and fu, one needs to become more familiar with rhymes, formats, and themes, then conduct extensive training and prepare some fixed templates.

So improving poetry and fu is not particularly difficult, it just requires more time.

For Lu Beigu, the most difficult part is actually Mo Yi.

Although Mo Yi questions come from the Spring and Autumn Annals and the Book of Rites, these two books are not simple; especially the Spring and Autumn Annals, famous for its "subtle words with profound meanings."

Since the Han and Tang dynasties, classical studies have always been the foundation upon which aristocratic families relied to pass down their heritage; precisely because of this, during the long process of inheritance, many schools of thought with different understandings emerged from the same classic.

Different schools give different explanations for the same sentence or even the same character; even the Song Chaoting cannot produce a question bank with standard answers.

Furthermore, after the "Qingli School Reform," the court encouraged that Mo Yi questions should focus on the candidate's personal understanding.

So, although some questions have recognized standard answers, many questions have none at all.

However, heaven never seals off all exits; because Song Confucians abandoned commentaries to seek the meaning of the classics directly, they actually placed more emphasis on exploring the historical characteristics of the Spring and Autumn Annals, and many Mo Yi questions test the understanding of historical events within the Spring and Autumn Annals.

And even for questions testing commentaries, there are traces to follow; besides grinding through the Three Commentaries on the Spring and Autumn Annals or relevant content in the Five Classics Correct Interpretations, one can also directly study the "Three Great Scholars of the Early Song," namely Hu Yuan, Sun Fu, and Shi Jie, and their writings on the Spring and Autumn Annals and the Book of Rites.

Among them, Sun Fu was the most important Spring and Autumn scholar in the early Northern Song; this person took "revering the king" as the main theme of the great meaning of the Spring and Autumn Annals, and his interpretation of the classics differed greatly from the Three Commentaries; he wrote the twelve scrolls of "The Subtle Meaning of the Spring and Autumn Annals on Revering the King" and the three scrolls of "General Discussion on the Spring and Autumn Annals."

The book "The Subtle Meaning of the Spring and Autumn Annals on Revering the King" has an especially profound influence in the current Confucian academic circle of the Great Song, and this book is also one of the reference books for the Mo Yi exam.

Therefore, when Lu Beigu studies Mo Yi, he needs to pick the key points, spending the least time to improve the most grades.

"In the ten-day assessment after the Qingming Festival, at the very least, the test scores for Tie Jing and Mo Yi must enter the top 20 in the county school!"

"Within two months, while maintaining policy essays at a Grade Jia Zhong level or above, raise Tie Jing to Grade Jia Xia or above, poetry and fu to Grade Yi Shang or above, and Mo Yi to Grade Yi Zhong or above, entering the top 5 in the county school!"

"Only then is there a chance to enter the prefectural school!"

Lu Beigu rubbed off the marks made by the charcoal pencil with the sole of his shoe and stamped his feet.

Besides this, he also had something weighing on his mind: after the Hanshi Festival, he would accompany Li Pan to meet that "important person," and the words to be spoken then must be thought out in advance.

After all, the strategy he proposes is somewhat shocking to the world.

As for the matter of money, Lu Beigu was merely somewhat worried.

Although whether buying books in large quantities or renting a house required for registering a change of household registration, all required money.

But Lu Beigu believed that with his own talent, he could surely solve this problem and need not trouble his sister-in-law further.

Even so, when he stood up and saw the stone table in the courtyard where the account books had been, he still sighed sincerely.

"Even a hero is brought low by a single coin!"

(End of this chapter)