Chapter 145

The system, being just a sum of data, never had the chance to experience the human world.

So it didn’t have much more to say.

Afterward, Mu Er Pang continued with his poetry and prose training.

Wei Shu and Cui Fei also utilized various connections to collect poems and articles circulated by the officials as review materials.

Mu Er Pang thought Mei Ruochu’s tricky poetry topic was already quite cunning, but Wei Xi, who usually kept silent, took it to another level — he made the topics by excerpting from Liu Xuezheng’s poems and writings.

By “excerpting,” he meant cutting sentences apart and using unrelated content as exam questions.

For example, one sentence might be “In front of the bed, the moonlight is bright,” and the next might be “Red palms stir the clear waves.”

Just thinking about the test questions made Mu Er Pang’s head buzz.

Usually, only provincial examinations would have such difficult questions.

But this difficulty was for his own good and to test whether Mu Er Pang had memorized Liu Xuezheng’s works in such a short time.

Of course, it wasn’t enough to just do the questions.

Mu Er Pang also needed to accumulate some less common poems and literary allusions for reference.

After all, the allusions used in Liu Xuezheng’s works were mostly obscure. It was clear that commonly used allusions were not his forte.

So Mu Er Pang had to memorize poems, and Shen Cui also helped by finding two collections of poems and prose from the “Library” for him to memorize.

To the extent that during meals, when he saw leeks, Mu Er Pang muttered, “Cutting spring leeks in the night rain, new rice steaming in the stove.”

When he ate shepherd’s purse, he recited, “The shepherd’s purse is fragrant and sweet, unparalleled in taste.” Even when Shen Cui was practicing needlework, he could suddenly come out with a line, “In the kind mother’s hands, the thread; on the wandering son’s body, the clothes.”

After a month, his reserves of poetry and reading volume visibly increased.

At first, Shen Cui felt a little sorry for him seeing his focused appearance.

But later, Ren Shun and Zhao Xiuwen came to the academy to discuss the arrangements for the future.

He Qing and Zhang Zian had failed the exam, so there were two fewer candidates for the agreement after the courtyard examination.

Fortunately, when Wei Shu and Cui Fei helped select candidates, they really put in the effort.

Out of the ten people selected, six of them besides themselves passed the exam.

Among these six people, some were in a situation similar to theirs, with their companions from the courtyard examination failing the exam. It wasn’t difficult to find others to fill the gaps, so there was no need to look for additional candidates.

After discussing the matter, Ren Shun and Zhao Xiuwen only stayed for less than two quarters of an hour before they immediately took their leave.

Shen Cui offered them some snacks to take back, but they declined, saying they needed to focus on poetry and prose when they got back!

From this, it can be seen that the candidates of the same year had already inquired about Liu Xuezheng’s preferences, so they were all working hard to improve their poetry and prose skills.

Shen Cui didn’t want to advise Mu Er Pang to take it easy.

Later, Wei Shu and Cui Fei, the “information experts,” also didn’t idle.

They found out some of the poems written by the candidates in the previous county exams.

The poetry topics in the county exams were generally relatively simple, with sentences from the Four Books and Five Classics, and not very open-ended.

But even with such topics, some people wrote exceptionally talented and dazzling poems, which were impressive.

For example, in the second round of the provincial exam, there was a candidate named Shen Aoshuang, who lived up to his name. His poetry written on the spot in the county exam was particularly outstanding.

If Mu Er Pang, who hadn’t taken the marrow-cleansing pill at that time, had taken the county exam with him, it would have been unlikely for him to get the top spot.

So there was no room for any slackness. Mu Er Pang’s training intensity only increased.

By late April, Shen Cui received a letter from the Zhou Shi in the capital.

Naturally, the content of the letter was joyful news: Mu Yunchuan had achieved the top scholar position in the Spring Imperial Examination held in February and was now preparing for the final palace examination.

The letter had been sent out by the Zhou Shi at the beginning of March, but perhaps due to some delay on the way, it had taken almost two months to arrive.

Counting the days, the palace examination was already underway at this point, and in about a month, she would probably receive another letter announcing Mu Yunchuan’s success as the top scholar.

Shen Cui already knew about this information, so she roughly calculated the days and went through it again, without delving into it further.

What she mainly looked at was the other content.

She was actually worried that Mrs. Zhou might suffer in the company of Mu Yunchuan or be influenced by some broken rules, becoming nothing more than a tool for dedication.

But the letter from Mrs. Zhou stated that everything was fine in the capital.

When they first arrived in the capital, they only rented a slightly noisy small courtyard in the civilian area.

Although she had saved dozens of taels of silver, she hadn’t used them on the way, and Mu Yunchuan also had some silver on hand, but in the expensive capital city, even with money, they couldn’t rent a good house.

That place was full of all sorts of people, and it was definitely not conducive to studying.

Mu Yunchuan went to live and study in a temple outside the city.

Just arriving in the unfamiliar capital city, they were separated again, leaving her alone.

Compared to before, Mrs. Zhou must be sleepless with fear.

Now Zhou didn’t want to consider the mixed living conditions of fish and dragons as an advantage.

She spent a couple of months getting along with her neighbors and observing the fashionable clothing styles in the capital.

By the time she wrote this letter, she had already started helping people tailor clothes.

Mu Yunchuan, among other things, had a very good quality: he didn’t feel ashamed of his humble background.

He didn’t think he was about to make a breakthrough and achieve something big, so he didn’t restrict Zhou from doing her own thing.

Of course, it’s also possible that he didn’t pay much attention to such trivial matters. In any case, he didn’t interfere with Zhou.

Zhou didn’t usually bring up her status as the wife of a juren, but when she encountered deliberately difficult customers, her status came in handy.

Although there were many officials and nobles in the capital, the status of a juren wasn’t very heavy, but it was still respectable for ordinary people.

So, the small business was doing quite well.

Until recently, after Mu Yunchuan became a top scholar, there were changes. Zhou’s orders surged, and some people offered absurd prices, and suddenly several very good houses were offered for sale at low prices.

At that time, Mu Yunchuan was still studying in the temple outside the city, preparing for the final palace exam.

Before this, Zhou definitely didn’t know how to deal with it, afraid that she might offend the families behind those people if she didn’t handle it properly.

Now she had an idea. She directly told people, “Although this house is small, it is still rented by my husband. Now that he is not at home, although I am his wife, I cannot make decisions without his consent.”

Without mentioning Mu Yunchuan, those people didn’t know his whereabouts, and they wanted to flatter him, so they couldn’t urge Zhou to make decisions on her own.

Then they turned to Zhou and asked where Mu Yunchuan was.

Zhou pretended not to know and said she was just a woman who didn’t know what was going on outside.

Shen Cui looked at the letter, with a slight smile on her face.

After thinking about it, this approach seemed familiar. It was just like when someone offered money to buy Cui Wei before, and she came up with the same response!

It’s really her daughter-in-law whom she has taught well!

……

In May, Cui Wuniang had some free time, so she specially came to see Cui Wei.

Although their private relationship was very good, Cui Wuniang was busy all year round.

Except for meeting once when she delivered New Year’s goods at the end of last year, they had been in contact by letter for the past few months.

This time, Cui Wuniang came firstly to congratulate Cui Wei on having another scholar in the family.

Who knows, if he passes the palace exam immediately, they’ll have another scholar.

Secondly, she came to renew the contract. Last year, they made a contract during the palace exam, and it’s about to expire in a month, so they needed to sign a new one.

This time, Cui Wuniang didn’t mention it, and Shen Cui didn’t even remember.

She apologized, “Time flies, I’ve only been counting the days by the children’s exams lately. I didn’t expect I’ve been in the capital for almost a year. It’s a bit much for you to come all this way for such a trivial matter.”

Cui Wuniang waved her hand, “I came here specifically to congratulate you. Signing the new contract is just a side matter. And there’s one more thing, I think I need to inform you about Fei…”

In this almost year-long period, Cui Fei had been steadily losing weight at a rate of ten to fifteen catties per month.

At first, they needed a tailor to measure him before they could see the decrease in his size.

Now, almost a year had passed, and he had lost more than a hundred catties. Unless someone was blind, they could all see the dramatic change in him.

“The family has decided to arrange a marriage for Fei.”

Hearing this, Shen Cui, who was drinking tea, was truly stunned. After all, in her mind, the young men in the academy were still children on the path of learning, and marriage was something for the future.

Especially Fei, his mental age was definitely much younger than his actual age, similar to their own chubby son.

But upon further thought, it made sense. Fei was almost nineteen, and in this era, that was considered late for marriage.

Moreover, the Cui family knew that Fei had wasted several years before. It was unrealistic to hope for him to pass the juren or jinshi exams in a short time. They couldn’t wait until he was thirty or forty before arranging these things for him.

Now that he had lost so much weight and his health had improved, the matter of marriage was brought up for discussion.

Moreover, there’s a saying nowadays that if a boy gets married early, he’ll settle down and it’ll also help with his studies.

Cui Wuniang didn’t actually believe in this saying, but she didn’t have the final say in this matter.

Although she was the head of the family, there was a proper hierarchy, and she couldn’t make decisions regarding the marriage of her younger brothers of the same generation.

It was still up to his grandfather’s opinion.

“This is a good thing!” Shen Cui congratulated first, then asked, “What about Fei after marriage…”

The ‘Marrow Cleansing Pill’ is currently not available in the system.

The academy can only temporarily block the power of the rules.

If Fei leaves the academy, he might revert to his previous state.

Fortunately, Cui Wuniang immediately said, “We’ll observe him this year. If everything goes smoothly, the wedding won’t happen until next year at the earliest. And even after the wedding, the family’s intention is for him to spend his daily life between the Prefectural Academy and here with you, Cuiwei Academy. When the Prefectural Academy is on break, he’ll come back home.”

Shen Cui nodded, “It’s just that his future wife will have a hard time.”

Being separated right after marriage made Shen Cui think of Zhou, who had just written a letter.

But she believed that Fei would surely have more communication than Mu Yunchuan.

He wouldn’t keep everything from his wife, and the breaks at the Prefectural Academy were determined by the officials’ breaks.

They had five days off every five days, plus five days off for the summer solstice and winter solstice, and three days off for the emperor’s birthday.

It meant that the young couple could spend five days together every ten days, which was much better than Zhou’s situation at that time.

Cui Wuniang nodded, “It might inconvenience her a bit, so when we observe him, we’ll make this matter clear. Besides, the Cui family is still under my management, and I won’t mistreat anyone.”

This time, Cui Wuniang didn’t stay long. After finishing the matter, she signed a new contract for one year, left some snacks, and then left.