Chapter 62: Seated Side by Side (2/2)

Don’t worry, I will definitely pass my answer to you!

”The first round of theory examination will last a total of two hours!” After laying down the examination rules, the invigilator announced the examination time.

Then, one by one, the theory examination papers were personally passed down by the invigilating officials. In the Law of Dao examinations, the theory examination was the first step, and was also used to test the students’ understanding of the Law of Dao’s meaning.

To put it simply, it tested their foundations.

Fang Zhengzhi received the examination paper from the invigilator. Picking it up, he took a look and realised that it was filled with densely packed words describing questions of all sorts, most of them originating from famous texts.

Finishing so many questions under two hours? To an average person, this was indeed rather difficult.

For example, the examination paper’s first question was, what were the Four Intelligent Creatures?

This was a paragraph from the Book of Rites, under the chapter ”Ceremonial usages; their origins, development, and intention”.

One could rather accurately guess the difficulty level of the Law of Dao theory examinations from this one question. It wasn’t too hard, because one only had to familiarise themselves with the various texts in the Law of Dao in order to explain it.

But, it wasn’t too easy either.

Because, the origin of the question wasn’t very clear. For example, the Four Intelligent Creatures appeared in many different books in similar forms, if one recalled incorrectly, a miss was as good as a mile.

As such, if one wanted to answer them correctly, what he needed was time.

Two hours was evidently a little short.

”They were the Qi-lin, the phoenix, the tortoise, and the dragon. When the dragon becomes a domestic animal, (all other) fishes and the sturgeon do not lie hidden from men (in the mud). When the phoenix becomes so, the birds do not fly from them in terror. When the Qi-lin does so, the beasts do not scamper away. When the tortoise does so, the feelings of men take no erroneous course.”

Fang Zhengzhi didn’t even have to stop to think before answering the first question, then, started on the second.

Sitting by his side, Meng Yushu saw that Fang Zhengzhi had started writing.

After being slightly taken aback, he quickly laughed out coldly in his heart. How could he be so fast? Even if he himself answered the question, he would still have to carefully review and analyse the entire examination paper, before guessing what the Lead Examiner emphasized in this examination.

Then, roughly categorise which text within the Law of Dao the question would come from.

People such as Fang Zhengzhi who would pen down their answers just like that was very obviously putting on an act.

When he thought of this point, Meng Yushu instantly calmed down. Next, the other party would just have to follow every step he laid out for him.

…

The entire Law of Dao examination venue was extremely silent.

When most of the examinees received their examination paper, the first thing they did was analysing the question, guessing the direction the answer would take from the Lead Examiner’s intentions.

People such as Fang Zhengzhi were classified as rare creatures.

In reality, Fang Zhengzhi shouldn’t be blamed. Because in this world, people only knew one book, and that was the Law of Dao. This book wasn’t specifically subdivided into texts and the Four Books and Five Classics.

Fang Zhengzhi’s cognition was indeed different.

In his mind, the Law of Dao had long ago been subdivided by him into different categories.

For example, the four categories - Confucian classics, humanities, religions and beliefs, and personal works, which were then split into further subcategories - Changes, poetry, rites, history and spring and autumn…

He had even managed to classify them by dynasties.

As such, he had no need to ponder carefully over the questions like the rest of the examinees, and could identify with one look which text the question set by the Lead Examiner had originated from, then, split them by their dynasties.

Under an hour, his writing stopped and he kept his pen.

Everything was as smooth as the moving clouds and flowing water. Fang Zhengzhi was very satisfied with his own performance. Looking at his neat and proper examination paper, he gave himself full marks.

It was still early, and Fang Zhengzhi didn’t rush to submit his paper. Because, there was a rather annoying rule in the theory examinations that one couldn’t leave the examination venue early to prevent questions from being leaked.

Then, Fang Zhengzhi gazed towards Meng Yushu.

His expression seemed to say, ”Come, I’ve already finished writing! Let’s cheerfully exchange our answers!”