When the bell for lunch break in Banshan Hall was about to ring, Zhang Shou came back with Lu Sanlang.
Zhang Wu, who was standing in the lecture hall to supervise the exam, felt relieved, but the students below him were in different states of mind. Some looked relaxed, some were beaming, some were frowning, some were thinking hard, some were scratching their heads, some were biting their pens, some were mumbling to themselves... In short, there were all kinds of people. But the ones who reacted the most were the third and fourth princes.
The fourth prince was the first to run up, waving his test paper in his hand: "Teacher, teacher, I have also finished answering the second test paper!"
After interviewing so many people in the morning, they finally selected 21 students. With Lu Sanlang and Qi Liang, Zhang Shou planned to apply for 23 students as Jiuzhangtang students, which was less than the number of students Cuiyunjian accepted at the beginning. But in terms of the ratio, Zhang Shou was already very satisfied.
In particular, apart from Yan Fang, he also saw several familiar faces who had blocked the door of the Ge family before. After personally questioning them, he no longer had much doubt about these people's mathematical skills.
The only thing he was unsure about was virtue. But even the emperor could not guarantee that he would not make mistakes when employing people, so he did not intend to be too strict at the beginning, but planned to teach while observing. Therefore, he was absent-minded until the fourth prince rushed to him, and then he suddenly woke up. As a result, the fourth prince ran too fast and bumped into his arms, and his little head hit his stomach directly.
He was very glad that the Fourth Prince was quite tall. He took a deep breath, rubbed his stomach, and forced a smile to say it was okay. When he took the paper and saw the neat calligraphy, he couldn't help but be slightly stunned, and then looked at the chubby boy in front of him with some surprise.
Although there were blank spaces in the middle of many characters and nearly half of them were unwritten, if you counted them, you would know that the Fourth Prince could write at least one or two hundred characters, and there were no mistakes in these one or two hundred characters.
"How can you write so many words?"
The fourth prince immediately became proud: "My third brother and I learned to read very early! Not only us, but also my eldest and second brothers were like this! I can recognize many words, but I can't write them very well..."
He seemed a little guilty as he spoke, and stammered, "So I can only leave it blank. Because my father said that words that you don't know how to write should be left blank rather than replaced by other words. But I can answer all the questions you asked, teacher! Because I remember them all clearly. After returning to the palace, I asked my father and did experiments..."
Before the Fourth Prince was ready to give a verbal answer, Zhang Shou stopped him with a wave of his hand. He then said with a smile, "No need. It's good that you have such a desire to learn. Your Majesty is right. You really can't replace the words you don't know how to write with other simple words with the same pronunciation. Because if you do it again and again, you will probably form a habit of writing it wrong in the future."
Smiling, Zhang Shou sent the fourth prince back to his seat. He also took a look at the third prince's answer sheet to show that he was not partial to one over the other, and then signaled Zhang Wu to collect the papers. Seeing that some people were refreshed while others were sighing, he came to the lecture hall and slammed the gavel.
"This exam is different from the ones you've taken before. I think everyone should have some experience with today's exam. As long as you pay attention in class, you can at least answer 80% of the questions. And if you pay attention in class and go back to learn from your experience and look up books and ask your elders and teachers for advice, you can easily answer all the questions."