Having narrated up to this point, the storyteller lightly coughed twice, then raised their cup and took a few sips of warm tea. The patrons of the teahouse understood the meaning of this action. Though a few of them angrily complained that this was yesterday’s story and questioned how could it still be used today to extort money, the majority still obediently took out some gratuity money.
The storyteller saw the amount of copper coins within the tea tray and was very pleased. Clearing their throat, they once again began resuming their account of the Grand Examination.
All the patrons listened attentively, with no one noticing that a middle-aged person wearing a large conical hat, upon finishing the remnants of their tea, left the teahouse.
That middle-aged person’s hat was worn extremely low, making it difficult to clearly see their visage, upon leaving the teahouse, they entered the streets and mingled with the crowd, taking but a moment to disappear from sight.
After a period of time, that middle-aged person appeared at an inn that was around four miles away from Li Palace, they took out two dark red medicinal pills from their chest area and then swallowed them. They then painfully coughed for a while, before finally subduing their injury, then walked over to the bed and laid on top of it, the conical hat shifted to one side and within their black hair, two bumps could vaguely be seen.
After noon, all the teahouses and stores became especially busy, but the accounts of the storytellers were no longer all that captivating, that’s because the results to the Academic Exam had been officially announced. Every teahouse and store’s manager or employee had gone to Li Palace and copied down the results, having returned, they now began to give details to the patrons.
Placing last in the academic phase was a Star Seizer Academy student named Zhang Ting Tao, the populace didn’t have any sort of recognition of this name and thus, there naturally wasn’t much discussion on it, with only a few mocking remarks and attacks on those who ran the academy before subsiding.
Xuan Yuan Po’s results were very close to the bottom, Tang Thirty-Six ranked seventh and Zhuang Huan Yu sixth. The four scholars of Scholartree Manor had extremely good results, they had all actually managed to place within the top 10.
Of course, what the populace was most interested in, were the two foremost rankings – Gou Han Shi and Chen Chang Sheng both placed at first and second respectively, beside their names on the rankings was also a note: Outstanding.
Looking at the final results to the Academic Exam, the viewers were all debating heavily, clicking their tongues in astonishment, pointing at Gou Han Shi and Chen Chang Sheng’s names, gasping praises nonstop.
Visitors that had come from outside of the Capital were very confused with this, wondering to themselves that even though they were ranked at the top, was it worthy of such praise?
Some people from the Capital explained: the academic results for the Grand Examination would usually just have rankings, only papers that were exceptional would be specially noted as to being “outstanding”, with “exceptional” usually referring to getting all the answers correct.
Both, Gou Han Shi and Chen Chang Sheng’s names had the note of “outstanding”, this made it clear that both their papers could be considered perfect. It had to be known that this was an extremely rare event – there had already been a lot of years where something similar has not occurred in the Grand Examination.
It was only with this explanation that those visitors from the outer regions came to understand the reason, but they still had something puzzling them; since both examinees had such outstanding results in the academic phase, having probably answered everything correctly, how had they distinguished the better?
Why was Gou Han Shi ranked first while Chen Chang Sheng was only ranked second?
This question was something no one could answer, even those knowledgeable citizens of the Capital were very curious, in the same way, the Li Palace examiners that were tasked with reviewing the results were also puzzled.
The principal examiner looked at the clergy member that had a slightly frosty expression on their face; they had obviously come to raise a fuss. The examiner thought to himself: “Even if the Education Board is angry with Chen Chang Sheng not taking first place, is it necessary to make it so evident?”
However, the Education Board, under the control of His Eminence, Archbishop Mei Li Sha, in this past year its influence had become abnormally strong, even if the principal examiner’s position was higher than the other party’s, he still had to carefully explain himself.
“It was a problem in the regulation of wording.”
He looked at those few clergy members from the Education Board who were tasked with reviewing the academic results, his expression solemn, and said: “In no other aspects could a differ