As the New Year approached, the news soon spread in the palace. The emperor summoned Tao Sheng to play the zither several times. After listening to her performance, he thought it was very effective and then introduced Tao Sheng to all the emperor’s grandchildren.

The Crown Prince and the two sons of the King of Chu all vied with each other to hear Tao Sheng play the zither, which showed that he recognized her very highly.

Following the rumor that Tao Sheng’s zither playing could help one pass the imperial examination, this palace rumor gave Tao Sheng’s zither playing another layer of buff.

Afterwards, many relatives and ministers wrote to the emperor, expressing their wish to hear Tao Sheng play the zither at the New Year banquet.

After receiving the memorial, the emperor frowned and thought for a long time.

Tao Sheng is already busy enough now. Not only does she have to deal with court affairs, but she also has to satisfy the demands of the entire palace and deal with the strange ideas proposed by the King of Chu. It is really not easy.

The emperor decisively rejected this proposal, but to outsiders, this incident became ironclad evidence that Tao Sheng had become the imperial zither player.

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In the blink of an eye, it was New Year’s Eve of Youde’s 41st year, and Tao Sheng’s two months of busy work was finally coming to an end.

The New Year’s banquet had royal envoys from several other countries. What was meant to be a celebration of reunion and good fortune became a little less peaceful.

After three rounds of drinking, the prince of Ling State stepped forward to challenge in public, saying that there was a Mr. Chang in their country who wrote excellent articles, and his literary talent was not inferior to anyone else. Their emperor had planned that if the imperial examination system was to be implemented in the future, he would let Mr. Chang be the chief examiner. This time he wanted to compete with the talented people of Great Zhou and let them know what level the talents of Great Zhou were at.

Ling State is a small country that has just risen recently, and the only country in the world that has the ability to organize large-scale scientific expeditions is Great Zhou.

Prince Ling’s speech in front of the emperor in support of the imperial examination system may have been a bit provocative.

The emperor thought that those old officials who had been in the officialdom for many years had long forgotten how they felt when they studied for ten years. If we just talk about writing, naturally the newcomers who have just taken the imperial examinations will write the best.

Having just finished the exam not too long ago, they should still be at the top level of examination writing, and it would be no problem for them to defeat any scholar from Ling State.

After determining the direction, the next thing to do is to select people from this new batch of Jinshi.

If we just talk about the writing, the top scorer Ji Yanming and the second and third place winners all have their own merits.

But when it comes to the ability to respond to emergencies and the aura of the confrontation, Ji Yanming is naturally better.

The emperor then chose Ji Yanming to compete.

The King of Chu, sitting in a good position below the Emperor, closely followed the developments on the field.

The King of Chu remembered the time he visited his uncle’s house and overheard his two nephews talking about the gossip in the capital. He recalled how Ji Yanming had devised a plan to embarrass Murong Liu at a poetry gathering. He felt that Ji Yanming was very clever in these matters and would definitely not let the other party gain any advantage this time.

Ji Yanming didn’t quite understand the format of the duel that Ling Guo requested: “Does the prince want me to debate with Mr. Chang in the court?”

Prince Ling also knew that those who passed the imperial examination had strong defense abilities, especially this one who was the new champion. He immediately refused and said, “Now that the topic has been decided and Mr. Chang’s essay has been completed, Lord Ji can also write an essay on this topic and compete with Mr. Chang.”

All the ministers present and the envoys from various countries began to whisper.

I have seen shameless people before, but I have never seen anyone as shameless as Ling Guo.

I don’t know how many days and nights Mr. Chang spent writing this article, but now Mr. Ji has to write another article in just one hour to compare it. There is no fairness at all.

The noise from the audience grew louder, and even the Ling Kingdom delegation, no matter how thick-skinned they were, could no longer sit still.

Ji Yanming nodded gently, his face expressionless: “It is indeed unfair and immoral for Ling Guo to do this, but considering that Ling Guo has only been established for less than ten years and cannot be compared with our Great Zhou, it is understandable that they have done this.”

With every word Ji Yanming said, the faces of the Ling State envoys turned greener.

Ji Yanming ignored the Ling Kingdom delegation’s reactions and continued, “Since the article is already written, let me explain Mr. Chang’s article. Mr. Chang will explain my article to clarify the thesis. How about that?”

This plan finally sounded acceptable, and the other party knew that his first plan was too shameless, so he agreed immediately.

After reading the topic, Ji Yanming only spent a quarter of an hour to finish his article.

After handing the article to the other party, he took the article written by Mr. Chang to read.

You won’t know the result until you see it. It will shock you. It is extremely rare to dare to show off an article of this level.

Since Ling State has these ideas, it should at least recruit some reliable talents to give guidance. Just pick a scholar with better knowledge from Great Zhou, and their writing will be better than this.

Ji Yanming pointed out the shortcomings of the article by dividing it into eight major points and twenty-nine minor points. At the end, Mr. Chang, who wrote the article, almost fell to his knees.

As for Ji Yanming’s article… every sentence has at least three allusions ^[1]refers to references to historical or literary sources., and the whole article is full of rare characters. After Ji Yanming pointed out the shortcomings of the article point by point and finished explaining them, the other party stumbled and couldn’t even read it, let alone understand its meaning.

The emperor shook his head disdainfully.

For such a small barbarian country, the top talents are only at this level. If they want to catch up with Great Zhou in terms of cultural level, they will not be able to catch up even a little bit even if they wait for hundreds or thousands of years.

In this kind of low-end game, there is no need to send out Ji Zhuangyuan. Anyway, you can just pick two Jinshi ^[2]refers to successful candidates in the imperial examination. to defeat them.

At this time, the emperor finally understood the true meaning of the saying “Why use a butcher knife to kill a chicken^[3]means not wasting too much effort on something small.?”

Prince Rui sat below Prince Chu, quite close to the Emperor, so he could naturally see the Emperor’s expression of deep satisfaction with Ji Yanming.

To this day, King Rui has increasingly discovered that Ji Yanming is indeed a rare treasure, but such a capable minister has a somewhat unfortunate fate. When he just entered the officialdom, he was assigned to the King of Chu by the emperor. The King of Chu treats him very well, and with the emperor sitting on the throne to support him, Ji Yanming will not choose to betray the King of Chu in the short term.

But these are general situations. If they become in-laws, things will be different.

In his opinion, Ji Zhuangyuan’s cousin Tao Sheng was indeed a good choice for marriage.

It just so happened that there was still a vacancy for the position of concubine by his side. If he was willing to give this position to Miss Luo, Ji Yanming would definitely be grateful and work for him.