On the ninth day of the second month, although spring has arrived early, the weather in the capital is still quite cold. The spring is chilly and occasionally a gust of cold wind blows, making the horses tremble.

However, this did not affect every candidate who came to the Gongyuan to participate in the imperial examination. They all wore thick cotton coats and came to the Gongyuan early in the cold wind, waiting to participate in the first imperial examination.

In fact, waiting is not difficult. The most difficult thing is the search. The Ming Dynasty was very strict with the candidates entering the tribute school, and even needed to take off their clothes and hats. You should know what season is now? Early in the morning, the whistling north wind blew. Even wearing a thick cotton coat and a thick hat, it was still cold. When taking off the clothes and hats, a cold wind immediately poured in, which made people shudder.

What is particularly speechless is that the search time in the Ming Dynasty was relatively long. If you search carefully from head to toe, there must be no words in the paper, which makes the candidates even more distressed.

However, since these candidates have already reached this point, they will naturally not give up easily, so they all gritted their teeth and stood up. Even though they were shaking all over, they didn't say a word.

After rushing to search, the next thing was to lock the hospital. Ma Mingfeng had experienced this. It was basically the same as during the provincial examination, but it was more stringent. However, this was not worth mentioning to Ma Mingfeng, because his memory was not wrong, and the exam questions were exactly the same as those recorded in history. In fact, when he was writing an article, he did all the questions of the Five Classics. Later, he found out that the examiner Cai Guoyong was in charge of the Spring and Autumn Period, so he studied the exam questions of this sutra for the Spring and Autumn Period until there was no problem. Then he finally felt relieved.

It is precisely because of his sufficient preparation that this exam basically has no problem with Ma Mingfeng, and he can basically hand in the paper in half a day.

However, in order to avoid being criticized by the public, Ma Mingfeng still waited until the end of the day before handing over the test paper.

Even so, his answer speed is really shocking enough.

The second and third games afterwards were basically the same routine, but when making policy statements, in order to avoid provoking his views like Huang Daozhou, Ma Mingfeng was just a regular one when answering policy statements. It cannot be said that it is not bad, but it is not very outstanding.

Anyway, when the Ming Dynasty was admitted, the most fiercely competitive was the southern list, followed by the northern list. As a student on the list, Ma Mingfeng has 10% of the total number of admitted students. In fact, for Guizhou, Yunnan and other places with a backward education, 10% of the total number of admitted students is already very high. If all the lists are combined, it would be great that there would be up to ten in the north to be admitted. Sometimes there may be only one or two. The most extreme situation is that there is no one in the north, and all the people admitted are southern scholars, not to mention Guizhou and Yunnan.

This extreme phenomenon has happened. This happened during the Hongwu period. All the scholars admitted were from the south, and none from the north, and the examiner happened to be from the south, which caused dissatisfaction among the officials in the north, so he went to the Emperor Hongwu to complain. Emperor Hongwu was furious when he heard this and executed the examiner directly. Even the scholars who passed the examination were not spared and were directly imprisoned. Not only did they lose their future for a lifetime, many people even died in it. This was the case of the North and South List that shocked the whole country at that time.

In fact, the examiner at that time was wronged because the southward movement of the economic center of gravity would inevitably lead to the southward movement of the education center of gravity. In addition, Daming had just been established at that time, and the north had a long battle, and education in the north was backward. However, Emperor Hongwu considered the stability of the political situation and the emotions of the northern officials and people, so he was so angry.

After this, the Ming Dynasty basically established a north-south ranking system. Later, considering that Fengyang, Zhongdu and Guizhou and Yunnan, which had relatively backward economic and cultural development, there was obviously no hope of competing with the Southern scholars, so the top ranking was set up separately. Because the number of people in the top ranking was small and the education was relatively backward, as long as there were some talents, the exam was relatively easier.

Of course, this does not mean that the competition on the list is not fierce. For example, Yang Wencong once took six exams, but never passed the exam.

However, Ma Mingfeng was quite sure. After all, he had already made sufficient preparations before, especially the articles in the first exam, which were also articles by a member of that dynasty later, and this sutra was the Spring and Autumn Period that the chief examiner Cai Guoyong was good at.

As for the second exam, it basically won't attract the examiner's attention, because the imperial examination and provincial exams have the same unspoken rules in some aspects, that is, only focus on the answer sheet of the first game, and the next two games are just foils.

In the third scene, Ma Mingfeng took it a little attention. After all, he didn't know Cai Guoyong's temperament. What if it was another Huang Daozhou, and his policy theory was not well written, wouldn't it be a tragic thing? So his policy theory was also put in some effort, but his views were no longer novel, they were just a matter of order.

After six days and three exams, this exam was finally over. Because the exams were not released until the 25th or 26th, Ma Mingfeng felt that it was meaningless to take him in the capital, and he also had a place of trouble in the capital. If he accidentally offended someone, wouldn't it be even more unfair?

So after the exam, Ma Mingfeng left the capital directly and went to Bazhou to pick up Liu Yuling who lived in his aunt's house. At that time, it was inconvenient for his own group of men to bring a woman to Beijing, so Ma Mingfeng kept Liu Yuling in Bazhou and asked her to live in Yue Qijie's home first, and promised them that they would pick up Liu Yuling away after the exam.

Ma Mingfeng left the capital with another purpose, which was to go to Tianjin again, and take advantage of his spare time to visit the brothers Liu Zhaolin and Liu Zhaoqi. On the surface, he wanted to contact each other, but in fact he was trying to find a way to abduct the two brothers.

In fact, according to Ma Mingfeng's intention, Liu Zhaoqi had to be taken away when he went to the capital last time. However, because he was busy with the exam, he did not have time to take care of a lively and active little kid, and because the Liu family had just obtained a lot of wealth, they needed to find ways to settle these wealth, and they couldn't get rid of it for the time being.

The reason why Ma Mingfeng has to do everything he should do is because he is afraid that if he is appointed as an official after passing the Jinshi exam, he will not have time to care about them anymore. So after thinking about it, he has nothing to do now, so it is better to just take them away, so he can save the night and dream too much.
Chapter completed!