Chapter 322: Daxia's Imperial Examinations

Back on Nan'ao Island, Lin Qian had held civil service examinations and selected a batch of officials to enter the Administrative Affairs Hall.

At the time, Lin Qian reasoned that it is easy to go from frugality to extravagance but hard to go from extravagance to frugality—better to have fewer bureaucrats than to start off with redundant offices and wasteful spending, so he was very restrained in selecting talent.

Later, when Daxia seized Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Ningxia and other regions, the administrative system did not change much—the officials selected all came out of the Nan'ao Island civil service examinations, supplemented by defecting Ming officials who had thrown in their lot.

This approach had many problems too, the most important being a shortage of officials. Nan'ao Island's total population was only a little over twenty thousand, and those who could take the exams and pass the selection were even fewer—capable administrators among them were as rare as phoenix feathers and qilin horns, nowhere near enough to fill the talent vacuum across four provinces.

Most Ming officials were both corrupt and mediocre, and few were usable. At present, the Fujian Governor was Shang Zhouzuo, the Guangdong Governor was Ye Yifan, the Dongning Governor was Chen Jiao, and the Guangxi Governor position had no one yet—temporarily filled by Qin Liangyu.

When provincial and prefectural offices lacked officials, one person could still hold multiple posts and barely manage, but when local offices lacked officials, the consequences were more severe—one official might conceivably serve as county magistrate for two counties, but there was no way to have a single person serve as both county magistrate and prefect.

If they did not hurry up and select and appoint officials, Daxia would soon reproduce the glorious spectacle of Emperor Wanli's anarchic governance.

Fortunately, Daxia had just been established as a state, and after such momentous events, it was customary to open a special grace examination—Lin Qian wanted to use this opportunity to restore the imperial examination system.

The imperial examinations could both gather talent and win hearts and minds while maintaining stability. Even Hong Taiji, far away in Liaodong, knew the benefits of the imperial examinations—if Lin Qian still did not restore them, he would be a fool.

Unexpectedly, the moment these words left his mouth, except for Ye Yisun who looked excited, both Ye Xianggao and Ye Yifan looked at him with worried expressions.

Lin Qian explained: "I know this is sudden—the spring examination is out of reach—but since this is a grace examination, it can naturally be more flexible. I plan to set it two or three months from now. What do you two think?"

Ye Xianggao fell into pensive silence, and Ye Yifan also wore a worried look.

Lin Qian was baffled: "What do you two mean by this?"

Ye Yisun said: "Brother-in-law, don't forget to flip it——"

Lin Qian smiled, flipped the roast duck over, and a few drops of oil slid down the duck's golden skin into the charcoal fire, bursting into a tongue of flame as the aroma of meat filled the air.

Ye Yifan exchanged a glance with Ye Xianggao, then asked cautiously: "May I ask, Your Majesty, are you planning to reform the imperial examinations?"

Lin Qian nodded: "The imperial examination system began in the Sui dynasty and has lasted over a thousand years to this day—it has accumulated countless deep-seated ills, so of course it must be reformed."

Ye Yifan scratched his head and ears for a long while, not knowing how to tactfully voice his objection.

In the end, it was Ye Xianggao who spoke bluntly: "No."

Lin Qian did not argue, quietly waiting for what came next.

Only then did Ye Xianggao say with a stern face: "Your Majesty has reformed the tax system, the official system, the legal system, and the military system—no matter how drastically, none of it endangered the foundation of the state. But the imperial examinations alone cannot be touched.

Within the four provinces of Daxia at present, there are over forty jinshi, six hundred juren, thirty thousand xiucai, and countless more scholars studying for the examinations.

If the imperial examinations change in the slightest, for these people it means decades of hard study by lamplight going to waste, and a lifetime of official career prospects destroyed.

The scholars and gentry will resist unanimously, and even the defecting Ming officials will waver in their allegiance. Once the official system collapses, all of Daxia's reforms will be destroyed in one stroke."

Ye Xianggao and Ye Yifan had both participated in the imperial examinations themselves—they understood all too well how important the examinations were in the hearts of scholars.

Think back to that year—Huang Chao, who wrote "When autumn comes on the ninth of the eighth month, my flowers bloom and all the rest are slain," was an imperial examination failure who had repeatedly failed the tests. In a fit of rage, he raised an army of rebels, marched straight into Chang'an, slaughtered the great clans, and threw the empire into chaos.

In other words, the Great Tang could have bought the empire's stability with a single official post—wasn't that far more cost-effective than using armies to suppress rebellions?

For the court, the most important function of the imperial examinations was maintaining stability; the talent selected was merely a byproduct.

That was precisely why Ye Xianggao and Ye Yifan strongly opposed reforming the imperial examinations.

After all, when it came to enriching the state and strengthening the military, Lin Qian had genuine insight, but when it came to maintaining stability and preserving rule, the imperial examination system had fused the thousand-year wisdom of the sages—it was very difficult to rashly alter.

Ye Yisun said bluntly: "Brother-in-law, when we were under Nan'ao's rule, we didn't hold imperial examinations. The scholars understood that we weren't stable yet, and their desire to become officials wasn't strong, so they didn't make trouble.

Now we've finally endured to the founding of the state, finally waited for the grace examination—and then they walk into the examination hall and find it doesn't test eight-legged essays, doesn't test policy essays, but tests all math problems and logic questions, and requires writing in vernacular. Hanging up a sheep's head and selling dog meat like that—wouldn't they be furious?

Brother-in-law, is it time to sprinkle the chili powder?"

Ye Yifan glared at his younger brother and hissed in a low voice: "How are you speaking to His Majesty?"

Lin Qian laughed: "No matter—we're all family. Whether you call me Majesty or not doesn't matter at all."

Then he shifted the topic and said to Ye Yisun: "Who said that if I hold imperial examinations, I won't test eight-legged essays and policy essays?"

"Huh?" Both Ye brothers were dumbfounded.

Lin Qian had only designed two examinations so far.

One was Nan'ao's civil service examination, which mainly tested simple listening, speaking, reading, and writing, plus basic arithmetic problems—it didn't even require being able to read classical Chinese. It was extremely simple, and the talent selected accordingly was mainly for clerical positions.

The other was the university entrance examination, which tested moral character, political stance, and logic, with explicit rules requiring vernacular essays—anyone writing in the imperial examination style was automatically rejected.

The Ye brothers could already see from this what Lin Qian's attitude toward the imperial examinations was.

Add to that the fact that Lin Qian came from a tenant farmer background, had never read much, and understood even less about the imperial examinations—the Ye brothers, though they did not discriminate against him for his origins, had still assumed from the start that Lin Qian must harbor a deep hatred for the imperial examinations and would want to overhaul them drastically.

Even Ye Xianggao showed a look of surprise.

"The eight-legged essay may have all sorts of faults, but there is one thing nothing else can compare to—and that is fairness."

As Lin Qian spoke, he reached out to Geng Wu, who pulled out a book and handed it to him. Everyone looked—it was a copy of *Licheng Chengmo*, a compilation of excellent eight-legged essays, equivalent to a "Collection of Perfect-Score College Entrance Exam Essays."

Lin Qian could speak fluently and at length about eight-legged essays, policy essays, and other imperial examination genres—he had read quite a few of these anthologies.

Lin Qian placed *Licheng Chengmo* on the low table and continued: "The three-part structure of the eight-legged essay—opening the topic, developing the topic, and beginning the discussion—trains the ability to analyze the prompt and summarize. The uniformity of format and character count also facilitates objective grading and efficient marking.

For scholars from poor families, learning to write eight-legged essays only requires buying a set of *Collected Commentaries on the Four Books*. They don't need to amass ten thousand volumes or travel the realm—they have a chance to become officials. This can maximally suppress the powerful and privileged from monopolizing the channels of upward mobility, giving poor scholars fairness.

I've heard that Yuan Chonghuan's family was in the timber business—humble origins. If he hadn't relied on mastering the eight-legged essay, he probably would never have had the chance to become an official in his lifetime, and the Great Ming would have lost a talent.

In my view, whether it's maintaining stability or selecting talent, the means are unified—the most important thing is to give poor scholars a path of advancement and prevent social resources from being monopolized by the powerful. So the eight-legged essay must stay, and the imperial examinations cannot be lightly touched."

Ye Xianggao clapped his hands in approval: "Exactly the right reasoning!"

Lin Qian did two things at once—while speaking, he kept turning the roast duck. Seeing that its exterior had turned golden, its flesh firm and slightly shrunk, he judged the heat was about right, picked it up, and moved it away from the charcoal fire.

Ye Yifan reminded him: "Brother-in-law, you haven't put the chili powder on yet."

Chili peppers were the kind of thing that once you started eating them, you couldn't stop—under Lin Qian's lead, the Ye family had gradually come to add some chili to every meal.

"Roast duck doesn't need chili." As Lin Qian spoke, he had the boatman carve the duck into small pieces, arrange them on a plate and bring it over, along with sweet bean sauce, white flour pancakes, slivered scallion whites, cucumber strips, and the like.

Lin Qian picked up a white flour pancake, spread sweet bean sauce on it, added scallion slivers and duck meat, rolled it up, and handed it to Ye Xianggao.

Ye Xianggao took it, took a bite, and his eyes immediately lit up. He praised: "Salty-sweet and mellow, the sauce fragrant and sweet—a flavor all its own."

Lin Qian also rolled up a pancake and took a bite. As he bit down, the duck skin and scallion whites gave a crisp crackle—the crunch of both perfectly fused with the soft texture of the pancake.

The mallard duck, just as the boatman had said, had not a trace of gamey smell—instead it carried a faint fragrance of reeds and water plants, plus the smoky aroma of fruitwood charcoal roasting, giving it a very rich layering of flavors.

It didn't have the cloying sweetness of Beijing roast duck; instead, it highlighted the natural savory sweetness of the duck meat itself.

This way of eating duck meat wrapped in pancakes was not Lin Qian's original invention. As early as the founding years of the dynasty, Nanjing already had the method of oven-roasted duck, which later spread to the capital under the label of Jinling oven-roasted duck.

However, this style of eating was not common in Fujian and Guangdong, so the Ye brothers all found it novel.

The group had been smelling the aroma of roast duck for a long while and were already starving, their stomachs growling. They ate for quite some time without anyone speaking.

Only after eating until half full did Lin Qian speak: "But the eight-legged essay, having been passed down to this day, also has many drawbacks. It must be reformed.

For instance, the eight-legged essay requires one to speak on behalf of the sages—the entire piece is filled with 'Confucius said this,' and candidates are not permitted to express a single view of their own. What kind of absurd regulation is that?

Does such a selection process produce people of real ability who can get things done, or merely yes-men who know only how to gauge their superiors' intentions?"

Ye Yisun pulled out a handkerchief, wiped the sauce from the corners of his mouth, then said with righteous indignation: "Brother-in-law is right! Before the Wanli reign, the Ming court still allowed candidates to freely discuss current affairs and express their own views in the 'grand conclusion' section of the eight-legged essay.

By the Wanli reign, factional strife had gradually intensified. Fearing that candidates would use the past to criticize the present and attack court policies, anyone who expressed personal views in the grand conclusion was failed outright. All that remained were flatterers."

Lin Qian said: "For a nation to grow strong, it must allow people to speak. So this regulation must be changed.

Then there's the problem of weighing every word. In the eight-legged essay, every sentence has a fixed format and fixed character count, every paragraph must have a fixed opening, and antithesis must be perfectly balanced—euphemistically called 'holding a Buddhist service in a snail shell.' If a single character fails to meet the rules, the candidate is failed. What kind of rule is that? Even writing parallel prose isn't this strict.

Do the people selected this way truly possess real learning?"

As Lin Qian spoke, he wiped his hands, picked up that copy of *Model Essays from Successive Examinations*, casually flipped to a page, and read aloud: "'Gentlemen who attain wealth and rank exist—in the age of Tang, Yu, Xia, and Shang there were those passed down; gentlemen who remain poor and humble are many—within the realm of poetry, documents, rites, and music there are those passed down.' What a pile of nonsense, all forced to fit the antithetical structure!"

"And this line: 'For one who violates benevolence within the span of a single meal, his violation is not limited to the span of a single meal; for one who does not violate benevolence within the span of a single meal, his non-violation is not limited to the span of a single meal.' Is this writing tongue twisters?"

The latter sentence means: "If one violates benevolence within the time of one meal, then the time of violating benevolence is not merely one meal;

if one does not violate benevolence within the time of one meal, then the time of not violating benevolence is not merely one meal."

Pure nonsense literature—nonsense taken to its absolute extreme.

Both of these lines were written by Chen Jitai, one of the Four Great Talents of Linchuan and a great master of the eight-legged essay in the Chongzhen reign. If even a man of his caliber had to force his writing to fit the eight-legged format, one can well imagine what the examination papers of ordinary scholars looked like.

Ye Yisun listened and shouted his approval repeatedly, waving his fist in support of Lin Qian.

Ye Xianggao reached out and said: "Let this old man borrow that copy of *Model Essays from Successive Examinations* for a look."

Lin Qian handed the book over. Ye Xianggao took it and casually flipped through, finding that most of the essays bore Lin Qian's annotations—nearly all of them furious condemnations.

For example, the line "Yao's benevolence vast, vast, vast, vast, vast; Shun's virtue lofty, lofty, lofty, lofty, lofty" was annotated by Lin Qian with "Incomprehensible nonsense."

Another line, "When the eight-legged essay is perfected, the world is governed; when the Zhu annotations are clear, the sages arise," received the comment "Blatant bootlicking."

And yet another, "Heaven has five stars dividing day and night; earth has five directions distinguishing east and west," was critiqued as "Utter bullshit."

Lin Qian continued: "Furthermore, many of the eight-legged essay's rules are unspoken conventions, never explicitly written down. They rely entirely on candidates seeking advice and

pondering them on their own, which again undermines the principle of fairness.

And these are only the flaws of the first session on the classics. The second session's essays on discourse, legal judgments, imperial edicts, admonitions, and memorials have completely degenerated into mere formality—candidates need no real learning, only the ability to memorize and copy formulaic phrases.

As for the third session's policy questions, they all ask stale, outdated questions, and the answers are all formulaic platitudes like 'draw near worthy ministers and keep petty men at a distance.' What meaning is left in that?

So for Daxia's civil examinations, the format need not change, but the content absolutely must. We don't need to get it right all at once, but we cannot inherit the system unchanged."

Finally Ye Xianggao said: "What you say is reasonable. Does Your Majesty wish to begin reforming the eight-legged essay first?"

Lin Qian said: "Exactly. First remove all the shackles—weed out those who spout empty words and clichés, who guess exam topics and memorize model essays by rote—and select those with genuine learning who have truly put in the hard work.

Additionally, abolish the legal judgment section. Daxia will no longer practice the Great Ming Code, and in the future there will be no need for administrative officials to adjudicate cases.

Increase the weight of the supplementary classics-ancient examination in the xiucai examinations, and especially raise the proportion of natural science subjects.

Also, this special examination will not impose native-place restrictions—candidates from other provinces may also sit for it. After all, we must gather talents from across the realm."

From Lin Qian's words, Ye Xianggao could tell that Lin Qian had done serious research on the subject.

The legal judgment section was about trying cases and handing down verdicts—under Ming rule, this was an important duty of Prefects and County Magistrates.

But according to the legal principles of Daxia previously agreed upon at Zhenhai Tower, the judiciary was to be independent in the future—at least formally independent, managed exclusively by the courts. So indeed, there was no need to test legal judgments anymore.

The classics-ancient examination was a supplementary test held before the prefectural examination, covering history, poetry and rhapsodies, geography, and so on. In practice it did not affect admission results, so almost no one took it.

Lin Qian continued: "But all of the above are merely formal reforms. In the future, I hope to combine the clerical staff examination with the civil service examination.

The examination should be reduced to a stepping stone for entering the public service. Increase the admission ratio—all who pass must start from the lowest clerical positions. Those with good performance records are promoted to township magistrates, then to prefectural magistrates, then to Prefects, and finally transferred to the provincial government, or even to the central government."

The three of them—Ye Xianggao and the others—did not react much to this. Daxia's shortage of officials had long since forced the practice of promoting officials from the ranks of grassroots clerks ahead of schedule.

Lin Qian's proposals were also consistent with the various policies previously enacted.

As they talked, the mallard duck Lin Qian had roasted was already finished, and everyone was still not full. Just then, the boatman brought over other roasted waterfowl.

"This dish is braised black waterhen with fermented soybeans and spring bamboo shoots, this is pan-seared small... this is cold-tossed purslane, and this is pepper duck-frame soup——"

The boatman set down several dishes in succession, each steaming with fragrant aroma, prepared in different styles, and looking considerably better than the ones Lin Qian had roasted himself over charcoal.

The boatman said: "Gentlemen, please take your time."

Ye Xianggao nodded: "Much obliged."

Lin Qian ate as he spoke: "It so happens that Daxia is now most short of grassroots officials. Positions like township magistrate—minor posts—and clerical staff are things those proud aristocratic offspring may not be willing to take anyway.

My idea is that for this special examination, we admit slightly more candidates. Those who pass through the normal channel are assigned positions according to the Ming system for jinshi. Those who fail but show adequate scholarship are assigned as township magistrates or clerks.

This way, the examination system doesn't touch the interests of the aristocratic clans, while poor scholars also gain a path forward. Once they take office, their performance records speak for themselves—talented people won't be buried, and mediocrities won't occupy high positions."

"Mm, feasible." Ye Xianggao said thoughtfully.

"The sooner the examinations begin, the better. Start with the county examination and prefectural examination, hold the prefectural academy examination next month, then the provincial examination and metropolitan examination. Complete the entire examination process as quickly as possible, and for those who fail at each round, grant public office to the best among them."

Ye Yifan stopped his chopsticks and said: "Your Majesty, these examinations must be held in sequence, and there's also travel time and grading to consider. It may not be possible to complete them all in a short period—the fastest would still be a year and a half."

Lin Qian said: "We'll use the old method for the old and the new method for the new. For those who already hold xiucai or juren credentials, we'll quickly hold the provincial, metropolitan, and palace examinations.

For commoners without any credentials, while the provincial, metropolitan, and palace examinations are underway, we'll simultaneously hold the county, prefectural, and academy examinations. Those who pass can be directly granted clerical public office and start working.

Additionally, the Daxia Times must do a good job of guiding public opinion. First, let the people and scholars know about the special examination and prepare for it. Candidates must also understand what changes have been made.

We must also let everyone know that Daxia will gradually abandon the unreasonable system of one examination determining one's entire life—everything will be judged by performance."

"Mm." Ye Yisun nodded heavily.

Ye Xianggao then said: "Although the examination reform benefits the selection of talent, it relies extremely heavily on the bureaucratic performance assessment system. Furthermore, Your Majesty previously spoke with this old man about binding the interests of domestic officials and generals to the interests of the state, transforming the malady of internal competition into external expansion—this also places extremely high demands on official assessment. This old man worries that if the system is improperly designed, it may follow the fate of the Assessment Law."

The Assessment Law was the bureaucratic evaluation method championed during Zhang Juzheng's reforms. The moment Zhang Juzheng died, the Assessment Law immediately died with him—the policy perished along with the man.

In fact, most of Lin Qian's institutional designs were borrowed from later eras. They formed a complete logical chain that could justify itself, while also demanding that no single link be missing.

Lin Qian reformed the official system, military system, tax system, laws, the imperial examinations, and administrative divisions, and in the end, everything came down to the evaluation of officials.

Lin Qian pondered for a moment, then said: "Speaking superficially, for official evaluation, we need to set up multiple quantifiable indicators, and also have a fault-tolerance mechanism, and maintain the bottom line of integrity.

These evaluation standards all existed at the beginning of the Ming dynasty's institutional design.

So I think the difficulty isn't in institutional design, but in preventing institutional collapse."

Ye Xianggao seemed lost in thought, and Ye Yisun said: "Brother-in-law is right! Under the early Ming system, corrupt officials were flayed and stuffed with straw—even such cruel punishment couldn't eliminate corruption, which shows how hard prevention is."

Ye Yifan said: "In the early Ming, a County Magistrate's monthly salary was only two taels, just four qian more than an ordinary soldier. That salary was barely enough to support a family; hiring a private secretary, clerks, sedan bearers, and so on was far beyond reach—the system was forcing officials to be corrupt."

Lin Qian finished eating a bird leg, casually tossed the bone into the reeds, and asked: "Brother-in-law, how much is your monthly salary now?"

Ye Yifan answered sheepishly: "Four hundred taels——"

"Four hundred taels!" Ye Yisun nearly jumped up on the spot, "Then a year——a year would be four thousand eight hundred taels, nearly five thousand! Brother, have you been corrupt too?"

"I have not!" Ye Yifan hastily defended himself.

Lin Qian smiled and said: "A Governor with the rank of a grand official holds the power of an entire province. With such great authority, if there's no corresponding material incentive, isn't that encouraging corruption?

If Governor Ye truly wanted to embezzle, he wouldn't need a year—he could earn five thousand taels in half a month. Four hundred taels to nurture integrity is already very low.

Moreover, Great Xia doesn't yet have a 'Three Dukes expenditure' system—from the Governor's office's staff expenses, to attendants and sedan bearers, to office repairs, equipment purchases, travel costs, and social entertainment, the Governor has to pay for everything himself. If we don't give him enough silver, aren't we making the same mistake as Zhu Yuanzhang?

But high salaries over the long term aren't a permanent solution either. The most important thing is still to separate public and private matters clearly, to separate officials' public expenses from their private accounts, and to establish a property declaration system."

Apart from the high-salary system, Lin Qian had long ago established the Qingping Bureau, an institution on par with the Government Affairs Hall, neither subordinate to the other, headed by Zhou Qiyuan, who was renowned for his integrity, and tasked specifically with monitoring the moral conduct of officials.

At the same time, under the Qingping Bureau, an Audit Office had been established, which had long since introduced modern accounting systems to audit officials' property and expenditure.

Only by employing multiple means, coordinating multiple approaches, could the current integrity of officialdom be maintained.

These measures, when spoken of, were like an antelope hanging its horns from a tree—leaving no trace at all. Thus the common people often thought all Great Xia officials were moral saints, little knowing that Lin Qian had long since done the groundwork, making officials dare not embezzle even if they wanted to, and even if they did embezzle, they wouldn't dare embezzle big.

But in the final analysis, official integrity was only the bottom line. To perfect the standards for evaluating officials, integrity alone was far from sufficient.

By this time it was getting late, and dinner was finished. The small boat rowed toward Guangzhou city, and behind it, two Sea Wolf warships and five bird boats also emerged from the reed marshes.

Lin Qian said: "It's late today. We'll discuss how to perfect the evaluation standards another day. The Government Affairs Hall should first prepare to hold a special imperial examination, and the newspaper should give it full coverage."

The three members of the Ye family all acknowledged in unison.

Three days later, the Great Xia Times published a front-page headline announcing the joyful news that Great Xia was restoring the imperial examinations.

Upon hearing this news, scholars from the four provinces wept with joy, and many households even set off firecrackers to celebrate. For a time, the entire Great Xia was suffused with a strong atmosphere of learning, and the bookstores' copies of the Collected Commentaries on the Four Books sold out within a single day.

For this special examination, the newspaper clearly stated that the scope of selection would be expanded—even those who failed the papers could still be granted public office based on merit—which reignited the fighting spirit of many scholars who had already given up on the examinations.

Among the literati of Jiangnan, attitudes toward Nan'ao had always been mixed. As Great Xia was established and its influence gradually expanded, assessments had been steadily improving, and once this policy was announced, it turned into a flood of praise.

As for Lin Qian's advocated changes—allowing people to express their own views, removing restrictions on word count and parallelism—these too garnered a great deal of praise.

Scholars with real talent had long suffered under the eight-legged essay.

With such a change, that path of memorizing several hundred model essays and going to the examination hall to change a few characters and write them out from memory would no longer work.

News spread far faster among the reading men of Jiangnan than among the common folk.

The news that Great Xia was holding a special examination and reforming the eight-legged essay quickly reached Yuyao in Zhejiang.

Zhejiang was right next to Fujian, and had frequent maritime trade with Great Xia.

After Yuan Chonghuan's death, the court's prohibitions had become empty words. Many scholars harbored goodwill toward Great Xia and were discussing going south to take the examinations.

Among them was a young scholar just over twenty years of age, named Huang Zongxi.

This man held the xiucai degree, and his father had been persecuted to death by the eunuch faction, so his greatest wish was to purge the eunuch faction, rectify the court, reform accumulated abuses, and act on behalf of the people.

Just this year, he had joined the Fushe—the Restoration Society—a literati organization similar to the Donglin Academy, whose slogan was "Revive ancient learning, strive to be useful."

In plain language, it meant: "Stop pondering Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism, please learn some real skills."

From its slogan, one could also see that this was an extremely radical organization, whose members were mostly Jiangnan scholars who held examination degrees.

These people had long been dissatisfied with the corruption and darkness of the Tianqi reign, and even harbored the desperate resolve of "knowing the Ming house could not be saved, yet saving it anyway."

When the Chongzhen Emperor ascended the throne, the Fushe members thought they had found an enlightened ruler and saw hope for the realm's revival. Yet Yuan Chonghuan was executed by lingchi, the Donglin Grand Secretariat fell, court factional strife grew ever fiercer, and the Liaodong levy and suppression levies were continuously increased—leaving the members feeling deeply deceived.

How Great Xia in the south governed the state and treated its people was something the Fushe members and Huang Zongxi himself all witnessed with their own eyes.

Coincidentally, Great Xia's governing philosophy largely aligned highly with the Fushe's political positions, and was even more perfectly in accord with Huang Zongxi's own thinking. Upon learning that Great Xia was opening examinations to select scholars, he felt deeply tempted.

Unfortunately, he was the eldest son of his family, with a widowed mother above and a wife and children below—he couldn't just leave at a moment's notice. He could only see off his fellow students as they departed for the examinations, envy clear in his eyes.

A few more days passed, and a new issue of the Great Xia Times arrived. Great Xia had updated its policy: if candidates from other provinces passed the examinations or took up public office, they could bring their families along.

Even if they failed, their names would be kept confidential.

Huang Zongxi was young and hot-blooded, and had long been dissatisfied with the Great Ming. After much deliberation, he still bid farewell to his mother, wife, and children, and with tears in his eyes, set out on the road to the examinations.

A few more days later, the news reached South Zhili. In Kunshan County, a xiucai named Gu Yanwu, not yet twenty years of age, was extraordinarily excited upon hearing this news.

This man was quite talented—he had passed the xiucai examination at fourteen, truly a child prodigy. Afterward, he failed the provincial examination, and with no other choice, joined the Fushe.

But ironically enough, although the Fushe's slogan was "Revive ancient learning, strive to be useful," the means by which they realized their political ideals was still drilling dead into the eight-legged essay.

After all, no matter how much one talked emptily, it was useless. To change the status quo, one needed power in hand—one had to become an official!

To that end, the Fushe systematically taught eight-legged essay techniques, compiled unified textbooks and exercise booklets, produced mock examination papers, and even had members who had passed the juren or jinshi examinations come lecture and share their experience. Its rigidity and rote cramming were almost no different from an examination factory—it could be inappropriately analogized as the Hengshui High School of the late Ming.

Last year, in the provincial examination of the first year of Zhongxuan, of the thousand people nationwide who passed the juren examination, over a hundred came from the Fushe, and the jieyuan of Yingtian Prefecture was also a Fushe member.

This made the Fushe famous for a time, to the point that most members who joined harbored no intention of saving the country—they came purely for rank and status.

Although Gu Yanwu had joined the Fushe, he was extremely contemptuous of its educational philosophy of drilling dead into the eight-legged essay, pandering to formulas, and having no real learning whatsoever.

He upheld the principle of statecraft—applying knowledge to the world—believing that geography, military affairs and agriculture, water conservancy, taxation, and border defense were far more important than dogmatic moral theory. Thus he was out of step with his Fushe classmates and was often ostracized.

Upon hearing that Great Xia was restoring the imperial examinations and reforming the eight-legged essay, and that the changes perfectly matched his own proposals, the Xia King far away in Guangdong seemed like a kindred spirit to him.

Gu Yanwu was immediately greatly invigorated, and at once packed his things, preparing to head for Guangzhou.

He was young, not yet married, his parents were still young, and his family was a prominent clan with money and leisure. This year wasn't a provincial examination year either, so the family let him do as he pleased.

Thus, Gu Yanwu soon got his wish and boarded a seagoing ship bound for Guangzhou.

Standing at the bow, watching the waves and seagulls, Gu Yanwu felt only hope filling the road ahead. He shouted in his heart: "Great Xia, I'm coming!"

Yahei

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