The ancient life of the master craftsman

91-100

Chapter 91

The noisy crowd quieted down the moment the officers and soldiers appeared. The students who took the exam lined up outside the examination room. The clerks also arrived at the door. They had to check the students' clothes and belongings to ensure that no one would bring papers into the examination room.

Li Enbai looked at the strict inspection that even broke the steamed buns into pieces. It was stricter than the examinations in later generations. The people in front were stripped of their coats for inspection and shivered with cold. The people behind them also became nervous. Only Li Enbai was not in a hurry, not flustered, and very conspicuous.

His appearance showed that he was extremely confident in himself. He was open and aboveboard and allowed people to look at him. When it was his turn to be inspected, the clerk took off his clothes for inspection. He was originally wearing thin clothes, but he seemed not to know the cold and waited quietly for the clerk to finish the search.

The things he brought were also very simple. For dry food, he only brought a few thin sauce-flavored cakes. The clerk checked them very quickly because the cakes were very thin. The clerk only needed to split them with chopsticks to see if there was anything hidden, so they didn't unpack them in a mess. The other clerk who checked the clothes and searched him was also very fast, mainly because Li Enbai's coat was relatively thin, so the inspection was much faster than others. When

the clerk returned his things and clothes to him and signaled that he could follow the officers and soldiers inside, Li Enbai picked up the basket, smiled lightly at the clerk, and said politely, "Thank you."

The clerk was a little surprised. Although he didn't have time to answer, their impression of Li Enbai was much better.

The Song Dynasty valued civil officials over military officials and paid special attention to the imperial examinations. The examination halls were all renovated, but a place that was only used every two or three years would not be particularly good after renovation. Li Enbai looked at the small compartment and felt like he was being locked in a cage.

He went in and tried it. If he lay down, whether horizontally or vertically, he couldn't straighten his legs, which was very frustrating. He moved the writing table and slightly staggered it outward by a fist. He could still lie diagonally like this. Then he cleaned the floor. While there were no candidates on the opposite side, he took out the insect repellent spray from the system space and sprayed it on the floor. The system's products were colorless and odorless, so there was no need to worry about people smelling them. Then he took out the moisture-proof mat and laid it at the bottom. On top was the mat allocated in the examination room. This mat was used once every two years, and most of them had a moldy smell. Li Enbai could smell it, but he had no choice but to hang a sachet around his neck, so that when he lowered his head to write, he would smell the smell of the sachet. The sachet was very small, and it was hidden in the clothes with a red rope, so it would not be easily discovered. After doing all this, Li Enbai took out the pen and ink and waited quietly for the exam to start. After a while, there were also students in the examination room opposite him. In Li Enbai's sight, he could see about five people on the opposite side, and the same was true on the opposite side. But except for him, no one was in the mood to observe the people on the opposite side. After the sky was completely bright, Li Enbai heard a gong sound, which indicated that all candidates had entered the examination room and the examination room was closed. Then, a clerk and two soldiers began to distribute the test papers for this exam. According to Li Enbai's observation, the opposite side had the same configuration. The soldiers holding □□ and fully armed played a great deterrent role. The entire examination room was quiet, with only the sound of the clerk distributing the papers. The Tongsheng exam will take five sessions. Because it is a consecutive exam, the candidates need to stay in the examination room for four nights. Because the weather is cold, a brazier will be placed between the two rows of examination rooms, and hot water will be supplied unlimitedly. However, it is not allowed to go to the toilet during the daytime exam. You can only solve it in the toilet in the examination room. After collecting the test papers, you can let the soldiers or clerks take you to the toilet. After hearing the exam rules, Li Enbai was in a state of panic, so he prepared a sachet. The one he hung around his neck now smelled of pear blossoms, which was just right for the most relaxing first day. After the test papers were distributed, the gong sounded again, indicating the start of the exam. Li Enbai also focused on the exam. When he focused, he easily ignored everything around him. Therefore, when others were still adapting to the hardships of the exam room and looking around, he had already reviewed the questions and started to draft. It might be that he wrote too quickly, and when he was concentrating on doing something, his expression was always serious and deep, which actually put a lot of pressure on the candidates opposite him, forcing them to step down and look at the test questions. As a result, the two rows of examination rooms where Li Enbai was studying were the fastest to enter the exam state in the entire examination room. While other examination rooms were still flipping through the test papers, these two rows only had the rustling sound of writing on paper. The examiner walked around the examination room and also discovered this. After careful observation, he finally found Li Enbai, who was extremely focused and caused this situation. The examiner stood in front of Li Enbai's examination room for a long time, only to see Li Enbai's pen writing non-stop. Although the handwriting was not very good, it had already shown its style. He touched his beard and went to other examination rooms with satisfaction. With the focused Li Enbai as a comparison, the examiner had a preliminary understanding of this year's candidates. Generally speaking, they were still uneven. On the first morning, Li Enbai spent his time quickly drafting. At noon, he put down his pen and stretched his body. For some reason, he always felt that someone was looking at him. When he looked up, he saw a group of people writing furiously. Unable to find the source of this sight, he became more alert in his heart. He did not dare to replace the sauce-flavored cake with a new one immediately. He could only ask the clerk for a bowl of hot water and ate the cold sauce-flavored cake with hot water. In the process, he continued to look for who was spying on him. In the end, he was surprised to find that it was the candidates on the opposite side. They seemed to do whatever he did. Li Enbai was full of question marks. Why was this? Why did he feel that the people on the opposite side were on guard against him? But he shouldn't be famous yet. After noticing the source of the gaze, Li Enbai felt relieved, as long as it wasn't malicious. He had already eaten one-fifth of the cold sauce-flavored pancake. The lunch distributed in the examination room finally arrived, which was a bowl of porridge and a black steamed bun that was as hard as a rock and hurt your throat. Although the sauce-flavored pancake was cold, it was made with good flour and oil, and the sauce on it was also Li Enbai's favorite slightly spicy flavor. It tasted much better than the black steamed bun, so Li Enbai didn't intend to touch the bun at all. There were many people who had the same idea as him, so the black steamed bun was just a decoration until it was taken away by the clerk at the end of the lunch break. Li Enbai spread the bedding provided in the examination room on the mat, which also had a strong musty smell and a faint sour smell. Li Enbai originally wanted to lie down and rest for a while, but he couldn't stand the smell, so he pulled the bedding back and spread it out to dry, trying to reduce the smell a little. He sat down in front of the desk, propped his chin with his hand, and squinted for a while. In the afternoon, he checked the draft he had made in the morning. If there was no problem, he copied the draft on the test paper. Because the afternoon was purely copying, he was not as focused as in the morning. He had the energy to observe the surroundings and saw some people scratching their heads, some writing furiously, and some blushing... An exam, with different forms, is quite interesting. The first day of the exam was spent without any tricks. In the middle of the night, Li Enbai quietly took out a thick piece of clothing from the space and spread it under him, so that he could barely sleep for a while, and then quietly put it away before dawn. The second day, the third day... Li Enbai stretched his legs hard. At this moment, he no longer cared whether there was a bad smell on the quilt. He just wanted to move his legs. But if he stood up, he couldn't stand straight, so he could only sit on the quilt and lift his legs. There was only a little bit of sauce-flavored cake left in the basket, which was definitely not enough, and he would never touch the black steamed buns provided in the examination room, so he could only find a way to secretly take food from the system when the night was thick. The black steamed bun was taken away at noon on the first day, and appeared in their dinner at night. Li Enbai took a look and saw that the skin was dried to the extent that it was obviously left over from noon, or taken away at noon.