Although no one wants to be the chief secretary of the royal palace in most cases these days, after all, everyone thinks it is not a proper career path, but the chief secretary of the Imperial College is not like other academic officials. He has never used Jinshi and has always been a miscellaneous assistant official! Since resigning from his post and becoming the chief secretary of the King of Jiangdu, Xu Heida has been promoted from the seventh rank to the sixth rank, which is faster than Zhang Shou's promotion!
As the saying goes, if you don't return home when you're rich, it's like walking in fine clothes at night.
If this statement is true, Xu Heida must have been eager to show off his power when he returned to the Imperial College this time. Once he had power, he would issue orders and show off his power in front of the academic officials who looked down on him in the past. However, the former Xu Jiancheng, now Xu Changshi, had no intention of wasting his energy on these idle people.
After accompanying Prince Jiangdu to inspect various examination halls - or in other words, after checking the examination status of the students in the six halls according to his previous procedures for monthly, quarterly and annual examinations, he did not say a word to his former colleagues whom he could only look up to in the past, and directly announced the examination questions for His Royal Highness the Crown Prince.
As a result, as soon as the first question was announced, if the exam did not require silence, there would definitely be wailing in the six classrooms.
It was an original question from the sixth volume of the Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art, with the numbers in the question unchanged: Now there is a good person who walks 100 steps, and a bad person who walks 60 steps. Now the bad person walks 100 steps first, and the good person catches up with him. How many steps will it take to catch up with him? Moreover, it requires a detailed solution, and those who only give one answer can only be given a consolation mark.
Seeing that many academic officials were also angry after facing this question, he said calmly: "If students outside the capital say that the Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art is hard to find, then it is understandable, but the Nine Chapters Hall has been in the Imperial College for more than a year, and His Royal Highness the Crown Prince has been in the Nine Chapters Hall for a long time. If he has no clue about even the easiest question in Volume 6, then it is too unreasonable."
Seeing that several doctors were about to retort angrily, King Jiangdu said with a smile: "Okay, okay, His Royal Highness the Crown Prince just hopes that the attendants of the Eastern Palace can understand a little bit of mathematics. Everyone knows that he is gifted, and even Scholar Zhang praises him highly. Aren't there still questions 2 and 3?"
Xu Heida had already resigned and had thought about going to the public school, but the emperor forced him to be the assistant of Prince Jiangdu. He was reluctant at first, until he learned that he was asked to do this task, and then he agreed with all his heart.
Hearing King Jiangdu's attempt to smooth things over, he continued to announce the second question.
"Your Highness, the Crown Prince, asked: Agriculture is the foundation of a country, but now most of the wasteland in the world has been reclaimed. Rich places like the southeast have little land and many people. In the past, many farmers gave up farming and became workers, or even gave up farming and became workers. The population of the world today is several times more than when the country was founded. If this continues, how can a limited land support an unlimited population?"
Seeing a group of academic officials with stiff expressions facing such a question which seemed a bit out of place upon closer inspection, Xu Heida let the clerks under him take the papers with the questions written on them and pass them around, and then he calmly said the third question.
"For the third question, His Royal Highness the Crown Prince ordered us to write an essay on the topic 'Not changing my father's ways for three years'."
The third question was about writing essays on current affairs. Among all the school officials, I don't know how many of them couldn't hold back their expressions. Moreover, compared to the weird questions in the imperial examinations nowadays, the question chosen by the third prince was the original text of "The Analects of Confucius". It was not the kind of question that was irrelevant and deliberately made things difficult for students. It was a magnificent and generous one, which further demonstrated filial piety.