Although many students hoped that the ranking list of the selection of attendants for the Eastern Palace would not be spread because it was too embarrassing, His Royal Highness the Crown Prince personally visited the Imperial College and reprimanded the teachers and students in public. He then spoke such powerful words in front of the many scholars who heard the news and rushed to watch the excitement. For a time, many places in the capital were discussing this matter.
Apart from the much-talked-about topic of ranking, the biggest topic was what His Royal Highness the Crown Prince said.
Most officials believed that the third prince wanted to express the central idea of encouraging candidates not to think about being attendants to the Eastern Palace, but to focus on the proper path of the imperial examination. However, none of the higher-ranking officials with a longer-term vision saw it so simply. Including Confucius, the third prince saw the determination to be inclusive from the examination questions for selecting attendants to the Eastern Palace in the future.
His Royal Highness not only encouraged most of the candidates not to think that being a servant of the Eastern Palace was a good opportunity, and thus to compete with a group of students for a way out, but also warned the students that being a servant of the Eastern Palace did not only require people who were good at writing contemporary essays, which made it sound as if the servants of the Eastern Palace were more inclined to miscellaneous studies. In this way, they were perfectly distinguished from the Jinshi who came from the imperial examinations.
This is certainly a somewhat alarming sign, but the problem is that the attendants of the Eastern Palace have no rank and are not lifelong. Instead, they are rotated every three months. Moreover, the court does not need to pay for the selection, and does not need to send people to help with the selection - Prince Jiangdu and Chief Clerk Xu Heida, who are considered idlers by the court officials, are not included - what else can they say
As for the fact that under this wave of trend, many students in the Imperial College hurriedly ended their studies and left the academy, and then went to the Ministry of Personnel to wait for selection, that is another story.
It is said that within one day, the Imperial College approved the departure of more than 600 students. This was probably another strange phenomenon after those who were previously qualified to enter the academy were scrambling to get into the Imperial College.
Amidst such turmoil, the first public class of Jiuzhangtang after it moved from the Imperial College to the public school seemed to have caused much less noise, because people's attention was all drawn to the turmoil in the Imperial College.
But the only reason this commotion was small was that this public lecture fell off the list of hot topics among the people. Among the astronomical and numerological talents who were summoned to the capital, among the candidates who went to the capital to take the exam, and especially among the famous scholars who went to the capital after the three presidents were appointed as lecturers in the Eastern Palace, this matter still had a very high priority. I don't know how many people were ready to register for invitations to go and see it.
Especially those who had seen the "automatic boat" at the Wenhua Hall were very curious about what Zhang Shou would come up with this time. So, on the day when the public school registered the names, birthplaces and native places, the two hundred invitations issued were snapped up in an instant.
Therefore, early in the morning of the open class, the public school in the outer city, which occupied a large area, welcomed the most stringent defense. Zhu Tingfang directly sent out two-thirds of the troops of the South City Military Department without reservation, casting a net everywhere in the outer city, arresting all kinds of suspicious people, and the servants and generals of the Duke of Zhao's mansion were patrolling around the public school in case of emergency.