Chapter 230: Topping the Examination List

"Very well, the school buildings have already been under construction for half a year. Headmaster Xu, make your preparations—you can take office in two months. The first batch of students is expected to number three hundred. The entrance examination will focus primarily on moral character, selecting as much as possible from poor and humble families. After enrollment, students will be culled based on their attitude toward study and their final examination results. These specific methods of managing students—surely you, as headmaster, are clear on them, so I won't add further comment."

Xu Guangqi immediately understood the reason behind Lin Qian's design: what a university cultivates is the core strength that will drive change in the future, and that strength must not remain in the hands of the great aristocratic clans.

He inquired, "Helmsman, what is this university to be called?"

Lin Qian said, "You may choose the name yourself. I have only one requirement of you as headmaster."

Xu Guangqi said gravely, "Please speak."

"No one is permitted to preach religion on campus." Lin Qian's tone turned icy. "No ideology of any kind may be exported. This is the university's iron law." This university was founded by Lin Qian; the teachers were all found by Lin Qian; the learning objectives were all aimed at social reform and remaking the world. Among these, courses involving values and worldview—such as history and current affairs—Lin Qian would personally vet. The campus would also regularly organize study sessions of the Nan'ao Times.

So to say there was no ideology on campus was not entirely accurate.

What Lin Qian wanted, in truth, was a talent corps with unified thought.

Xu Guangqi was eclectic and tolerant, but he had carried that tolerance too far—he had even come to believe in Catholicism himself.

Although Xu Guangqi's so-called faith had something of a muddled "wholesale Westernization, accepting everything as-is" quality to it, Lin Qian still wanted to administer the preventive shot in advance.

Xu Guangqi said gravely, "Very well. Whatever the students believe, let them choose for themselves after they leave the school gates. This old man will never interfere." Lin Qian broke into a smile, rose, and clasped his hands in salute: "In that case, in the future of Chinese education, you, Headmaster, will surely stand as the most magnificent monument!"

Xu Guangqi returned the salute with a beaming smile, then suddenly his expression changed: "Not good—if this old man goes to serve as headmaster, what becomes of compiling the agricultural treatise?" Lin Qian said, "From the manuscripts to the assistants, and your family as well—bring them all along. Buy new experimental fields in Guangzhou; the experimental fields on Nan'ao will also have someone tending them. The library I previously promised you, sir, will be built within the university as well.

This university is a key protected item in the Nan'ao central budget. All fiscal expenditures are at the maximum ceiling. Anything that can be solved with silver, you need not trouble yourself worrying about, Headmaster.

The current first-phase budget is fifty thousand taels, now being used to construct school buildings and purchase grounds. If it proves insufficient later, more will be added at any time, with no upper limit."

In an instant, Xu Guangqi was stunned by this bold manner of spending money like dirt.

In the Great Ming, no one was wealthier than the feudal princes—yet how did the princes use their wealth?

Fine horses and carved carriages, ivory and jewels, attendants and beautiful concubines, palaces stretching on without end.

All to flaunt their riches, committing all manner of bizarre, extravagantly wasteful, shocking and scandalous acts—utterly vulgar beyond bearing!

It was exactly as Du Fu wrote: "Behind the vermilion gates, wine and meat go rancid; on the road, frozen bones lie in the wild."

Now look at how the equally wealthy Helmsman did things?

Throwing his full strength into establishing a school, with a budget with no ceiling.

Xu Guangqi's feelings were exceedingly complicated. After clasping his hands in salute, he took his leave.

Lin Qian lay back in his reclining chair.

With the issuance of the "Silver Yuan Note" national bonds, the continuous expansion of the Hirado trade volume, and the tax revenues intercepted from Guangdong—

the fiscal surplus of Nan'ao's public accounts kept growing steadily.

Watching the ever-increasing numbers, Lin Qian came to experience the pain of having money one cannot spend.

So from army logistics and naval shipbuilding to newspaper expenses, bureaucratic welfare, artisan pay, and infrastructure investment—everything was raised a full notch across the board.

The entire Fujian-Guangdong region was immersed in the joy of rapidly soaring economic growth.

However, pouring out silver in vast quantities was not entirely a good thing.

No sooner had Xu Guangqi left than Scholar Zhou came to meet with Lin Qian.

Ranqiu invited him into the study, poured tea, and then stood attending at the side.

Scholar Zhou's expression was grave. He handed Lin Qian an official document, took a sip of tea, and said, "Helmsman, this is the price list for the prefectures of Jianning, Shaowu, Tingzhou, and Yanping."

These four prefectures were all inland prefectures of Fujian.

Lin Qian opened the document and looked—in the seventh year of Tianqi, grain prices in the four prefectures had risen about 5% in the second quarter compared to the first. The further inland, the more pronounced the trend of rising grain prices.

Other goods—such as cotton and hemp cloth, meat prices, vegetable prices, tea prices—had all risen to varying degrees.

This was the downside of "showering money": in a short time, silver flooded in, but the rate of commodity production could not keep up, causing prices to rise.

This was the same underlying logic as when Spain discovered the gold and silver mines of the Americas, leading to Europe's "Price Revolution."

Scholar Zhou added, "There's also the household registration numbers compiled by the Civil Household Bureau—the inland prefectures either aren't growing, or are growing slowly.

By contrast, the household counts of Fuzhou, Quanzhou, and Zhangzhou are growing very fast."

This was because regional development was unbalanced, causing Fujian's maritime trade to be extremely developed, so the population naturally moved toward the "star cities" of the several ports. For these two problems, history offered far too many cautionary precedents.

As early as his first visit to Guangzhou, Lin Qian had already discerned the trend toward inflation and uneven regional development in Fujian and Guangdong.

The massive infrastructure investment, the migration to Dongning Island, and the encouragement of grain production were in fact all responses made for this purpose.

All in all, Lin Qian's policies had been remarkably effective—otherwise the contradictions would have erupted long ago, and wouldn't have only now shown the first signs of a head.

Lin Qian said, "Using the sea to supplement the land—this has always been the basic policy for Fujian-Guangdong development.

The current difficulties can be resolved by expanding grain production and increasing investment in the inland regions.

Put simply, we need more grain, more silver.

At the root of it all, we need to continue expanding our overseas colonies."

At present, the only place that could barely be called a colony of Nan'ao's power was Dongning.

Due to the disadvantage of Fujian immigrants' low human rights, for Dongning's various villages and stockades to develop from a barbaric state into a mature granary would take at least five or six years. Moreover, there were many problems besides—cash crops competing with food crops for land, friction with the natives, and so on.

To obtain grain quickly, the best option was to find territory with better climate, hydrology, and soil conditions.

Moreover, this place needed to have a baseline population, the pioneering of a traditional agrarian civilization, and a low-human-rights labor force suitable for exploitation and oppression. The current New Army had limited troops, so seizing this place could not require committing too many soldiers.

This place also could not be under the control of any powerful faction, which would make the costs of conquest, defense, and governance prohibitively high.

The conditions were extremely demanding.

But as it happened, there was one place that satisfied them perfectly—the Mekong River Delta.

Lin Qian had been eyeing this place covetously for a long time.

On several previous trips to trade at Hoi An port, Bai Qing's men would take eagle ships to reconnoiter it.

The Mekong River Delta of today was called "Lower Zhenla" or "Water Zhenla."

It lay under the rule of the Zhenla Kingdom, the "soft persimmon" of the Indochinese Peninsula—easy to seize.

This place was a plain formed by tens of thousands of years of alluvial deposits from the Mekong River.

Every year in the rainy season, floods regularly overflowed, spreading silt rich in minerals from the Qinghai-Tibet and Yunnan plateaus upstream across the plain, continuously fertilizing it, making the soil extraordinarily fertile.

There was also a natural network of waterways, providing excellent irrigation conditions.

The region's low latitude and abundant heat meant that even during the Little Ice Age, rice could achieve three harvests per year.

Considering natural conditions alone, this place was a paradise for rice, capable of outclassing any rice-producing region within the Ming Empire.

The so-called "land of fish and rice" was a joke compared to the natural conditions of the Mekong River Delta.

Therefore, the next strategic objective of the navy was determined to be "seizing the Mekong River Delta."

Additionally, there were two secondary objectives: 1. Transport troops to Qiongzhou Island. 2. Settle accounts with the Governor-General of Manila.

Lin Qian explained the follow-up plan to Scholar Zhou and said, "As long as the winter monsoon arrives and the fleet sails south, everything will improve.

Before that, rest for a while and don't make large-scale investments."

"Good." Scholar Zhou nodded.

In early July, battle reports arrived from the front lines.

The New Army had breached the prefectural city of Gaozhou.

In this battle, the New Army committed six thousand troops and besieged the city for over a month. Using ricochet firing techniques, they inflicted heavy casualties on the Ming camp soldiers defending the city. The Prefect of Gaozhou was a diehard loyalist who stubbornly refused to surrender.

He also spread rumors throughout the city, such as "the rebels will massacre the city," "the rebels commit every kind of atrocity," "the Governor-General of Guangdong and Guangxi and his entire family were killed by the rebels," and "the rebel leader Lin Qian eats the hearts and livers of children raw."

Through coaxing and deception, he recruited several hundred civilian militiamen to help defend the city.

Lei Sanxiang brought in twelve-pounder cannons and bombarded continuously, blasting down the city wall corners at the northeast and southwest before finally entering the city.

Although the siege lasted a long time, the New Army spent almost the entire time firing from beyond the range of the Ming troops' muskets.

After entering the city, resistance from the Ming troops and militiamen was not strong either—after all, the hardcore holdouts had mostly died on the city walls.

Thus, the New Army suffered very few casualties in this battle—fewer than a hundred men. The soldiers harbored no resentment, and with high military pay, ample logistics, and strict discipline, no looting or rape occurred, and a massacre was even more out of the question.

It was only then that the common people realized that the "rebels" outside the city seemed different from what the Prefect had claimed.

If anything, when it came to looting and oppressing the people, the Ming troops seemed more like "rebels."

On the day the city fell, the Prefect of Gaozhou burned himself to death in the government office.

The scholars in the city, moved by his integrity, wrote eulogies in his honor.

But ordinary people simply felt that dying by self-immolation was letting him off too easy.

In accordance with the New Army's policy of lenient treatment of prisoners, the Prefect's family was not harassed, and surrendered Ming soldiers were all given travel money to return home.

For the wealthy households in the city that had resisted, a temporary military tribunal was established to investigate them strictly. Any who had the slightest record of oppressing the people were heavily and severely punished—fined until their families were ruined. As for the neutral factions and those who had surrendered, the authorities turned a blind eye and let them pass.

At the same time, the entire city was placed under temporary military administration and martial law to maintain public order.

These various response measures were essentially a repeat of the Guangzhou campaign.

When Lei Sanxiang led the main force to attack Huazhou, Shicheng, Wuchuan, and other counties west of Gaozhou Prefecture, each county offered only token resistance before opening their gates to surrender. In most of these counties, the County Magistrate fought to the death while the yamen clerks hesitated, and it was the common people and soldiers who opened the city gates.

By late July, the entire territory of Gaozhou Prefecture had been recovered by the New Army.

Reports of victory arrived one after another, landing on Lin Qian's desk.

As the front line pushed ever farther away, and the training consumption of the twenty thousand newly recruited army soldiers continued to increase, logistics management grew increasingly complex.

Lin Qian then established an Army Department and a Navy Department under the Military Affairs Directorate, responsible for each service's force building, equipment development, professional training, and daily management. At the same time, a General Staff Department was established at the central level, responsible for formulating strategic plans, organizing and directing operations, coordinating joint operations between services, and managing troop training and organization. Of course, this was constrained by the speed of information transmission and the scale of armies in this era.

The General Staff Department's functions were primarily focused on strategic analysis and did not directly command operations.

Front-line command remained Lei Sanxiang's prerogative—there was no risk of a lone horseman galloping up with orders like "move the artillery position five paces to the left." In early August, the New Army's main force, resupplied by sea at Wuchuan County, marched in full force toward Leizhou Prefecture.

Before the New Army advanced, the Nan'ao Times and surrender leaflets had already swept through every prefecture and county of Leizhou Prefecture like a flood.

Among them was a newly added policy: for surrendered County Magistrates, Prefects, and other principal officials, the New Army would help keep the circumstances of the battle confidential, publicly announcing that the officials had fought valiantly until overwhelmed and were captured after being betrayed by their subordinates.

This way, the possibility of their families elsewhere being held accountable by the imperial court through collective punishment could be reduced.

Ming officials were all shrewd operators. Their first reaction upon seeing this leaflet was—wait, isn't this exactly how Governor-General Hu was captured! Could it be a smokescreen? With the Governor-General of Guangdong and Guangxi as an example, officials of all ranks in Leizhou began to have their minds stirred.

In early August, the main buildings of the university campus were completed.

The university was located in the suburbs outside the east gate of Guangzhou City, equipped with school buildings, sports fields, a dining hall, a library pavilion, and surrounding walls, with a thirty-man security team. It was almost indistinguishable from a small town.

Because it was situated outside the Gate of Civilization in Guangzhou City, Xu Guangqi named it "Civilization University."

In the Ming Dynasty, the word "civilization" meant "flourishing culture and education"—an aspiration for a peaceful and prosperous era and the success of civil governance.

These two characters were akin to "Great Unity," the ultimate pursuit of Confucianism—lofty in conception and grand in momentum.

In the months before Civilization University opened, the Nan'ao Times had already run multiple consecutive pages of coverage on the university.

They publicized the educational philosophy, curriculum content, and faculty and student benefits extensively, while recruiting students from both Fujian and Guangdong provinces.

At the same time that Xu Guangqi personally inscribed the plaque for Civilization University—

—the entrance examination for Civilization University was also being held at the Guangzhou Prefectural Examination Hall.

Li Shixiong sat in his examination cubicle, slightly nervous as he waited for the test papers to be distributed.

He was from Ninghua, Fujian, and only twenty-five years old this year.

He had been a famous child prodigy since youth. At fifteen, he placed first in the child examination; at sixteen, he entered the county school; at nineteen, he took the provincial examination for the first time and failed. At twenty-three, he took the provincial examination again and still failed.

At twenty-five, he should have taken the provincial examination once more, but then Fujian and Guangdong changed hands—the Helmsman now governed both regions.

Although the Wei eunuch was in power and examination fraud was rampant, and his literary style was incompatible with the "pure, clear, elegant, and upright" standards that the eight-legged essay demanded, even with his extraordinary talent, he could take the examination for another thirty years and never pass.

But after all, he was still young, and the desire for examination success remained.

To suddenly make him give up the path of officialdom—how could that be possible?

Fortunately, the land route from Tingzhou Prefecture to Jiangxi had not been severed, and he had originally planned to flee to Jiangxi to take the examination again.

But first, he couldn't bear to leave his family; second, he was reluctant to give up the relaxed cultural environment under the Helmsman's rule and didn't want to return under the claws of the secret police; third, whenever a regime changed, amnesty examinations were always held on a grand scale, so staying in Fujian didn't mean he had no chance to take the examination again.

Moreover, under the Helmsman's governance, officialdom was clean and honest—surely the amnesty examination would be fair and just, not murky and corrupt.

Therefore, he temporarily settled in Fujian.

Sure enough, in March, the Nan'ao Times advertised that a university was to be established in Guangzhou and welcomed applicants.

Although this so-called "entrance examination" was different from the imperial examinations in every way—

But Li Shixiong was not only profound and incisive in his literary style—he had also delved extensively into the Hundred Schools of Thought, mastering the classics, histories, masters, and collections, as well as medicine, divination, astrology, Buddhist scriptures, and Daoist texts. Anything that appeared in the examination books could not stump him!

The papers were distributed, and the examination cubicles were locked.

Li Shixiong first wrote his name and examination registration number as required, then swept his eyes over the questions with full confidence—and immediately froze.

On the question paper, the first question read: "Suppose you arrive at an unfamiliar county to serve as County Magistrate. Faced with the courtship and corruption of powerful local clans, agreeing would cost you your integrity, while refusing would leave you vulnerable to secret harm and obstruction, accomplishing nothing. How should you choose?"

That was the complete question as written.

Not only was it entirely in vernacular, but it came with its own punctuation, and no question was drawn from the Four Books or the Five Classics.

To put it more bluntly, no question was drawn from any classic text at all.

The instructions even stated explicitly that answers must be written in vernacular, with punctuation included, and that the imperial examination style was forbidden.

"This... this... this is an utter joke! An insult to scholarship! Let me out, I refuse to take this exam!"

A string of furious shouts came from the neighboring examination cubicle.

To roar like that within the examination hall was, by the laws of the Great Ming, grounds for immediate arrest and public display in the cangue.

Yet the examination hall soldier simply opened the cubicle and let the man out, saying flatly: "Keep your voice down. Don't disturb the other examinees."

That examinee dared not make trouble before the soldier, and left without a word.

With someone taking the lead, many others demanded to withdraw from the exam, and the soldiers busied themselves unlocking doors and letting people out.

Li Shixiong had no heart for answering questions; he pressed his ear against the crack of his cubicle door.

The moment he saw the questions, he too had wanted to walk away, but after hearing that those leaving were all scholars muttering "zhi hu zhe ye," he calmed down again.

He quickly realized that the questions had been written this way precisely to anger those scholars into leaving, so that ordinary commoners without much learning could pass. The Nan'ao Times used vernacular for all its articles, travel expenses and room and board for the exam were reimbursed, and the questions were written in a deliberately idiotic manner as if afraid no one would understand them. Every aspect of this bizarre examination was designed to recruit ordinary commoners.

Li Shixiong, well-versed in the classics and histories, suddenly recalled an incident.

In the thirtieth year of Hongwu, a great case shook the realm.

At that time, the Great Ming had only recently been founded. The north had suffered prolonged warfare, and its culture and education lagged far behind the south—so much so that all the scholars in that year's palace examination were southerners. This caused an uproar among northern scholars. The Grand Ancestor flew into a rage, ordered the chief examiner executed, and organized a re-examination for northern scholars to select officials anew.

It was known to history as the "Southern-Northern Ranking Case."

People of that time believed examinations were the fairest method, yet with different identities, different family backgrounds, and different educational circumstances...

A poor scholar could barely scrape together money for books, while wealthy households could secure the guidance of learned Confucian masters.

If a new regime wanted fairness, it could not help but give some preference to impoverished scholars.

Having reasoned this through, Li Shixiong could not help but admire the approach inwardly, and sat back down in his seat.

After thinking for a long while, he set pen to paper. His approach to the answer was to break out of the binary framework of "either corrupt or mediocre," advocating strict laws and harsh punishments—systematically punishing corruption while also punishing those who offered bribes.

The next question asked examinees for their views on the Battle of Guangzhou, and for the reasons behind the New Army's capture of the city in three days.

Li Shixiong had read nearly every issue of the Nan'ao Times and knew how the Nan'ao faction characterized the reasons for their victory in that battle.

But was he the sort to speak flatteringly just to gain admission?

He summarized the New Army's swift victory with a single reason: a surprise attack by land and sea, catching the enemy unprepared.

Of course, to be fair, the Nan'ao regime had indeed treated the common people well, and Li Shixiong did offer a few words of praise.

The next question listed several examples of unscrupulous merchants and asked: is the conclusion that "all merchants are unscrupulous" correct or not?

The question after that: if a learned Confucian master said that "the sky is round and the earth is square" is wrong, and that the world is a sphere, would the master be correct, and why? The allotted time for the entrance examination was six hours.

There were six questions in total—two on morality, two on political stance, and two on logic—all requiring essay answers.

Li Shixiong was astonished to find that all the classics and histories he had read could only supply him with a few allusions in the face of these questions.

The questions required vernacular answers, so the literary style he prided himself on was of no use either.

When the papers were collected at dusk, Li Shixiong left the examination hall feeling lost and dejected.

He returned to the free inn prepared for the examinees.

His friend Zhang Moye came up and asked: "Yuanzhong, how did the exam go?"

Li Shixiong shook his head: "It's a long story."

Zhang Moye and Li Shixiong were from the same hometown, and the two had come to Guangzhou together.

Though Zhang Moye was also devoted to an official career, his literary talent was lacking—he had not even passed the xiucai examination. Seeing how simple the questions were, he had felt a surge of confidence. But Li Shixiong was Ninghua's famous child prodigy; in every examination, his essays were held up as model examples for commentary. How could he say "it's a long story"? Zhang Moye hurriedly said: "Yuanzhong, with your talent, answering such simple questions should surely be no problem, right?"

Li Shixiong smiled bitterly: "Writing in vernacular, it reads like a play—where could any literary talent be seen?"

Zhang Moye said in surprise: "You really wrote in vernacular?"

"You used the contemporary examination style?"

The two looked at each other, both smiling bitterly.

Li Shixiong said: "Forget it, let it be. Even if I don't pass, it's no great loss. At worst, I'll go to another province and take the exam again in three years."

While the examinees were eagerly discussing the questions among themselves...

In the school buildings of Civilization University, Xu Guangqi was grading examination papers.

Assisting Xu Guangqi in reviewing the papers were the editors of the Nan'ao Daily, led by Ye Yisun.

Only two thousand people had registered for this examination, and over four hundred abandoned it midway, leaving just over sixteen hundred papers to grade—it would not take long. Moreover, the grading standards Lin Qian had provided included many conditions that could be applied with a single stroke.

For example, those who wrote eight-legged essays, those who accepted corruption in the morality questions, and those who criticized Lin Qian's rebellion in the stance questions were all failed outright.

Among the six questions, the stance questions carried the highest weight, morality questions the second highest, and logic questions the lowest.

The scores from all six questions were totaled, rankings were determined, and admission was granted to the best.

Late at night, Xu Guangqi finished grading ten papers and stood up to stretch his waist, when he suddenly noticed that a whole pile of examination papers had spread across the floor.

Xu Guangqi hurriedly asked: "Are all of these failures?"

Ye Yisun said: "Mostly ones that wrote policy essays."

Xu Guangqi felt deeply pained. He picked up those papers one by one and brought them back to the desk to look through.

Ye Yisun said: "Headmaster, they're all stubborn and unenlightened types. Why bother reading them again?"

Xu Guangqi sighed and said: "These scholars have spent their whole lives practicing for the imperial examinations. Suddenly asking them to write in vernacular—many may not be able to make the turn. To fail them like this would inevitably bury talent."

Ye Yisun shrugged and said, "In any case, the helmsman never wanted to recruit too many scholarly types in the first place."

Xu Guangqi said, "I still think education should be open to all without discrimination—we mustn't overcorrect... Look at this exam paper—isn't it written rather well?" Ye Yisun took it and looked it over. This paper had produced six policy essays in one sitting—truly a talented individual.

The policy essay is a type of civil examination prose. As the name suggests, it asks the examinee to discuss their proposed solutions to a given matter.

But given the haste of the time, on closer inspection, most of it said nothing of substance.

Only on the topic of the "Battle of Guangzhou" did the opening of the essay make clear that this battle was a crucial campaign to punish the tyrant and save the people.

The body of the essay analyzed at length from the angles of morale, popular support, equipment, logistics, and so on.

The conclusion drew on Confucian classics to summarize the gains and losses of the battle, distilling them into universally applicable principles of governance and the art of war.

Ye Yisun himself had trained in civil examination writing, and he could tell at a glance that regardless of whether this policy essay was right or wrong, at the very least its prose was polished and its logic clear—an excellent piece. What a pity.

Xu Guangqi wanted to take this man in, but Ye Yisun insisted on principle and would not allow it.

Xu Guangqi said with dissatisfaction, "I am the headmaster of the university."

Ye Yisun said, "A man who clings to old ways deserves a lesson. Besides, the university will recruit again next year—it's not like the provincial examination, where one must wait another three years." The two could not reach an agreement, and in the end it was decided that the paper would be left for the helmsman to judge.

The paper was placed on Xu Guangqi's desk, and he quietly peeled back the name-sealing strip, noting down the examinee's name and examination number.

Talent like this should not be buried. Even if Lin Qian did not use this man, taking him on as an assistant would be a good thing.

On the fifteenth day of the eighth month, the results were posted at the Gate of Civilization in Guangzhou city.

Li Shixiong and Zhang Moye pushed through the crowd, anxiously searching for their own names.

The list was arranged by rank, with a total of three hundred and fifty people admitted.

The two started reading from the last name on the list.

Around them, people were cheering in celebration from time to time, while others left in dejection.

Around the Gate of Civilization, many common folk had also gathered, all curious to witness the spectacle of the new regime's first results posting.

The gathered crowd also attracted quite a few peddlers hawking their wares along the street—a lively and bustling scene.

All of this was no different from the autumn provincial examination results.

Even though Li and Zhang knew full well this was not the autumn examination, they could not help but be drawn into the tension of the civil examinations.

The two had already looked through the top hundred names without finding their own, and their hearts were gradually sinking.

By the twentieth place, they still had not seen their names, and the two had in fact given up hope.

It was not until they saw the first-place name that the two were stunned.

The top of the entrance examination list was none other than Li Shixiong!

Yahei

Fenyuan

Pen