After being idle for more than half a month, Chen Ke and several others were driven by Chen Xiliang to go to the government office to handle a series of procedures. I asked Ni Longdao to remember that on the first day of March, he had agreed with Su's brothers to go to Taixue to register together.

  At first, Chen Xiliang was worried that they would go to school and take exams conveniently. He specially settled in Nancheng, so the Chen family was only two miles away from Taixue, Guozijian, and Gongyuan on Xue Street, which is within walking distance for several pairs of iron feet.

  A long academic street, Taixue, Guozijian and Gongyuan, lined up from left to right. In many dynasties, Guozijian and Taixue were the same thing. At the beginning of the Song Dynasty, only Guozijian was set up, which only recruited sons of officials above the seventh rank, and lacked a sound system of rules and regulations. To put it bluntly, it was just a place for the children of officials to obtain the qualification of "national test" to participate in the examination of the Ministry of Rites Gongyuan.

  The Qingli New Deal reformed the academic administration, expanding university education. As the National Academy was too small to accommodate students, it was proposed to establish a Taixue in Xiqing Temple on the east side, recruiting from among the sons of officials below the eighth rank and outstanding sons of commoners. The top 200 were admitted as Neishesheng, with their food provided by the state. The rest were Outer Shesheng, responsible for their own food but also exempt from tuition fees.

  Apart from foreign students, there is another type of attached student, namely those foreigners who come to China as guests, such as Chen Kexu, Su Shi and Song Duanping, with the aim of taking exams. Their status can be imagined...

  So it's no wonder that he looked down on the faces of those who were not worthy. He didn't even bother to look at the files of several people, but just pulled out the batch of Kaifeng Prefecture and took a glance before lowering his eyes and saying: "Don't think that you can get away with it by messing around every day, we won't let trash affect the reputation of Taixue. The school rules given to you must be read carefully, those who do not follow the rules will be expelled; if there are three monthly exams on the list, you can pack up and go home directly..."

  The power of this school record is extremely great, in charge of executing school rules, examining and guiding, just like the director of teaching affairs in later generations. If you offend him, there will be no good days to come, so Chen Ke and several others, although angry, can only endure.

  Fortunately, the academic record was not willing to waste words with them, so he let an assistant teacher take out the flower name book and scatter these guys into various schools to insert classes. The Imperial Academy is divided into teaching classes, with about 30 students in each class, and one class leader is assigned. The class leader of the Imperial Academy is served by students, but has much more power than the class leaders of later generations, roughly equivalent to the class leader plus team branch book plus learning committee plus discipline committee...

  The assistant teacher picked out a few classes with relatively fewer students and took Chen Ke and his group to the campus.

  The environment in the school is very pleasant, under the tall national locust trees, there are rows of spacious classrooms, walking on the green brick paved road, the sound of reading aloud comes from the ears, it really makes people feel happy.

  It was now time for morning study, and when they arrived at a certain study room, the teaching assistant would take one of them in to report to the teacher.

  Chen Ke was assigned to 'Xing Shanzhai', and similarly, the assistant teacher led him in and handed him over to a white-bearded academician. Seeing another new student coming in, that academician complained in front of Chen Ke: "How did you promise me last month? How come on the first day of this month, you're stuffing people in again?"

  "There are fewer people in your dorm, other dorms already have nearly fifty people." The teaching assistant replied perfunctorily: "It's always like this during the big comparison year, just bear with it and it will pass."

  "This will drag me down!" Since the Qingli New Deal, not only students have exams, but teachers also have assessments. All aspects of their treatment are linked to the passing rate.

  "How could it be? It didn't even dig into your heart's meat." The teaching assistant smiled and said, "Besides, how do you know he isn't a thousand-mile horse?"

  " Him?" The teaching assistant looked at Chen Ke's tall and majestic appearance, pouted and said: "The imperial examination is not a competition of height..."

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  Complaints are complaints, but the orders from above cannot be disobeyed. So he had no choice but to accept this new student. He told Chen Qiao to sit in the last row and ignored him after that.

  Chen Ke sat down, his eyes fixed straight ahead. He didn't have any textbooks, nor did anyone tell him what to study. Fortunately, the morning reading session was over, and the teacher began class. Since it was a year of intense competition, he wouldn't be lecturing on basic knowledge like the "Thirteen Classics" anymore, but would focus on test preparation instead. Today's lesson was about the format for writing essays. Following routine, the teacher assigned a topic to the students, had them write an essay, and then explained it.

  Chen Kesixin said, then I'll follow and do it too. He ground the ink, picked up his pen, and quickly came up with a piece. It was rough, but from childhood to adulthood, he had been mixed with Su Xun, Su Shi, Su Zhe, Ouyang Xiu, Zeng Gong... five of the Tang and Song Eight Masters, so even if it was rough, it wouldn't be worse than ordinary people.

  He still has this confidence.

  A stick of incense time, a thousand-word article was written, Chen Qian put down his pen and let out a gentle breath.

  His actions caught the attention of the teacher, and in such a short time, other students had only just begun to write, and some hadn't even written a single word yet. The teacher couldn't help but be curious, so he got up and took away his essay, taking it to the podium to take a look, and couldn't help but nod his head slightly, this handwriting is really good...

  Chen Xiao slightly raised an eyebrow and let out a breath, thinking to himself: "This little guy, seeing my article that's almost at the level of the Eight Great Masters, isn't he moved to tears? And then apologizing for his previous arrogance?" Hmph!

  Who knows... that learned face had no excitement, but instead shook his head frequently, only read half of it and put it down, as if continuing to read would be a waste of time.

  Chen Ke widened his eyes, how could this be? Even Old Man Ouyang said that my writing is better than Zeng Zigong's, so why can't it enter the eyes of this learned gentleman?

  Other students were still writing their essays, and he couldn't ask questions, it was almost suffocating...

  It was easy to get through until all the students had handed in their papers. The teacher then went through them one by one, picked out a few model essays and read them aloud:

  "The Qin win, proudly record their achievements, engrave on Mount Tai, carve on Zhongnan Mountain, cut through the passes of Wu and Yue, inscribe on Kuaiji..."

  'Seeing a mountain ridge below with a pool of water entering Kun Wei... East is a stream, thin at Xun Yu...'

  "When others are anxious and worried, I alone am calm and composed; when others are flattering and smiling, I alone am upright and pure..."

  With Chen Ke's learning, it is almost impossible to understand what the article actually wrote.

  Having spent over a decade studying in this era, he knew that this was the renowned "Tai Xue Ti" style of writing. He couldn't help but secretly lament, "If I had to study this every day, wouldn't it be even more unbearable than having constipation every day?"

  But he also knew that in recent years, the Tai Xue style had become popular. Since the Qingli New Deal, the pursuit of elegant and empty Western Kun style was thoroughly denied, and the promotion of heavy and simple ancient texts became a new trend in the academic world. The "Tai Xue style" born from the advocacy of Shi Jie, a lecturer at Tai Xue, and widely sought after by students, is a product of the process of criticizing the floating and clever Western Kun style, which has become too rigid and awkward. Its literary style takes straightforwardness and clumsiness as its highest achievement, and everywhere it sings in opposition to parallel prose.

  The result was the formation of a strange and peculiar writing style, under which whoever's comments were strange and whose words were unusual, whoever's article was superior. And for several consecutive imperial examinations, no matter whether it was 'Fu', 'Lun' or 'Ce', all kinds of writing styles took this as the evaluation standard, making the dominance of Tai Xue Ti more solid.

  But since Chen Ke started reading books with a hair bun, all the teachers he had studied under... whether it was Chen Xiliang, Su Xun, or Wang Fang and Ouyang Xiu, were opposed to the Tai Xue style. They believed that this writing style lacked both the simplicity and elegance of ancient prose and the refinement and beauty of parallel prose, and its emptiness and lack of substance were even more pronounced than those of parallel prose, making it completely worthless. Therefore, Chen Ke has not written a single piece in the Tai Xue style up to now.

  He finally understood why Lao Die and Su Laoquan wanted them to come to Tai Xue to study for a period of time - even if the body of Tai Xue was disgusting, they had to use this kind of language to take the exam, even if it was just thrown away after one exam.

  Even Ouyang Xiu said that if he were the examiner, it would be unnecessary to mention it, but when someone else says it, one still has to pinch their nose and learn from it. Ouyang Xiu also cited his own example from those years... He recalled how he had insisted on not writing parallel prose, only to fail the exam multiple times as a result. Later, he gritted his teeth and learned it, and then passed the exam. From then on, he never wrote another piece of parallel prose again, completely treating it as a stepping stone.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  As expected, the teacher picked up Chen Ke's essay and said: "This new student's writing is as plain as water, it's obvious at a glance, it's simply like something written by a beginner. Writing such an essay, there's no need to even take the exam, the examiner will definitely throw it away after taking a look!" After a pause, he added: "However, the handwriting is not bad."

  Alright, alright, you win. I'll learn with a pinch of nose. After all, it's not like it's something difficult. For example, the sentence "嬴秦震矜厥勋，勒泰山，镵邹峄,剟之罘,刊会稽……" actually means that Qin Shi Huang had his merits engraved on Mount Tai, Zhongnan Mountain, Zhisou Mountain and Kuaiji Mountain. The characters 勒、镵、剟、刊 all mean "to engrave", but they used a different one each time, just not using the most common one.

  It's true that the so-called Tai Xue Ti is not speaking human language, how to make people look incomprehensible. This is really too advantageous for Chen Ke... As for the recognition of various obscure and rare characters, who can compare with someone who has compiled a "Dictionary"?

  Then in the afternoon when learning to write fu, Chen Ke would first write out the article with plain and easy words, then replace all the words inside with rare and obscure characters that no one had used since the eighth generation.

  This time, I got the teaching materials in my hands and took a look. Suddenly, I was stunned - one-third of the characters were unfamiliar, one-third of the words were unclear, and one-third of the sentences made no sense. Is this good or bad?

  It's supposed to be very good... but it can't be used as a model essay, because it's hard to read aloud, and the teacher almost cried while reading it.

  At night, he returned home and looked up the unfamiliar words in the dictionary. He couldn't help but be surprised and amazed. Suddenly... he was stunned: 'Chen Ke, the author of the dictionary, also has this name!'