Fang Yun hadn't written anything until noon.
The subject matter requirements for this poetry test are very general. In addition to the almost mandatory "frontier category", there are four other categories: "rural scenery", "diligent study" and "farewell", and six rhymes are stipulated.
After lunch, Fang Yun took out a piece of white paper and wrote and drew on it. Finally, he decided to write a poem about the countryside, and used Baodao as the rhyme, and wrote "Remembering Hometown".
"The river is surrounded by green grass..."
After finishing "Remembering Hometown", Fang Yun put the poem away and flipped through the thick test paper one by one. After five pages, he took out the questions on the meaning of the scriptures.
Fang Yun took a closer look at the four words "维民所止", a smile appeared on his face, and then he thought in his heart.
If the phrase "维民所止" is interpreted literally, it means the place where people live. It comes from the Book of Songs: Xuanniao, and the whole sentence is "邦际千里，维民所止，肇域彼四海". It means that the Shang Dynasty had a vast territory and the people lived and worked in peace and contentment.
These four words reminded Fang Yun of the stories of the ancient Chinese nation.
During the Qing Dynasty, Emperors Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong launched a large-scale literary inquisition to maintain imperial power. Anyone who even slightly alluded to the Qing Dynasty would have his property confiscated and his life executed. There were nearly 200 major cases, with 130 occurring during the reign of Emperor Qianlong alone. Among these literary inquisitions, less than 10% of the people were truly rebellious, and 90% were wrongful convictions.
During the reign of Emperor Yongzheng, the Juren Wang Jingqi wrote an article saying that emperors whose reign titles contained the character "正" all had a bad end. He cursed Yongzheng and Kangxi, and colluded with Nian Gengyao, for which he was executed.
If Wang Jingqi hated Kangxi and Yongzheng because he opposed the Qing dynasty, he would be an upright hero. However, Wang Jingqi was just venting his personal anger, which would be considered slander even in enlightened later generations. However, the subsequent "Weimin Suo Zhi Case" was an unjust case.
Several years after Wang Jingqi's death, the Jiangxi Provincial Education Commissioner Cha Siting set test questions on the classics that contained the words "正" (correct) and "止" (stop), which violated Emperor Yongzheng's taboo and he was severely investigated. He was later confiscated and executed.
In order to ridicule Yongzheng, later generations borrowed the phrase "维民所止" from the Book of Songs as the title of the book, because if you remove the first character of the word "Yongzheng", it becomes "维" and "止".
Fang Yun thought of the cruel literary inquisition in the Qing Dynasty. He also thought of the Shengyuan Continent today. The two eras are simply two extremes. Shengyuan Continent used to be open to speech, but now many words are no longer words, but insults. The people who speak are intended to hurt others, and some people even collude to slander secretly.
Fang Yun had long known that the Wu people of Qing State had been spreading rumors about him, but he had never understood why those people spread the rumors until he heard something Li Wenying said.
"The grass looks at the beautiful tree, but does not see its deep roots. It hates that it steals the light of the sun and the moon. The insects and mice look at the elephant, but do not see that it rushes about all year round. They think that it is huge because it is fighting to swallow up the dirt."
Fang Yun suddenly smiled, remembering that there was a "Dark Cloud Literary Society" in Qing Kingdom that aimed to "slander Fang Yun". If he had not heard what Zong Wude said with his own ears, or even seen the slanderous words they wrote, he would never have believed that there were such despicable people in the world.
Fang Yun shook his head gently, putting all distracting thoughts behind him and concentrating on solving the problem.
"The superficial meaning of 'Weiminsuzhi' is the place where the human race lives, and the inner meaning is that the people live and work in peace and contentment. However, the two sentences before and after the original text of the Book of Songs involve the territory of the Shang Dynasty. If you want to get the best interpretation of this scripture, you must understand the real intention of the semi-sage who asked the question. This step alone is enough to distinguish the scholars from the inferior ones."
"The meaning of Weimin's stop is, if we take the lower part, the people will live in peace; if we take the middle part, the human race's territory will be forever secure and will not be invaded by monsters; if we take the upper part, then wherever people reach will be our human race's territory! First understand the meaning, then solve the problem!"
There are six ways to break the topic: open breaking, hidden breaking, smooth breaking, reverse breaking, positive breaking and reverse breaking. It can also be divided into breaking the meaning, breaking the sentence or breaking the word.
Fang Yun thought about it and decided to secretly reveal his intention, and slowly wrote down the solution on the draft.
"The destiny lies in man, but the destiny is endless!"
In this sentence, "people" is used to represent the people, and "heaven" is used to represent "stop", which is a typical implicit solution. The "endless" here includes the boundaries of the two sentences before and after "维民所止", but it does not go off the topic, because the focus of the solution is "Heaven's will is in man."
Heaven's mandate lies with man means that man is the most outstanding creatures in the world, so people should naturally live and work in peace and contentment, and the world is endless, so people can live anywhere.
A great scholar can sense fortune and disaster, and a sincere heart can predict the future. After writing this sentence, Fang Yun felt his heart at peace, as if he had somehow harmonized with a holy way. His mind, literary courage, and literary palace were highly unified. All the strength of his body was mobilized at this moment. His talent burned rapidly, and the power of his literary courage continued to vibrate in the literary palace.
Fang Yun saw that there were countless golden characters flying in his palace of writing. They instantly formed a holy text of all saints and then disappeared in an instant. Then they formed a new holy text. However, in the blink of an eye, all the holy texts flashed in the palace of writing.
The books he had read turned into an invisible force, making Fang Yun's mind extremely powerful at this moment.
After solving the problem, the next step is to continue the topic.
Fang Yun continued writing the follow-up question and further explained his solution.
"The destiny of heaven is determined by wisdom, and man is at the top..."
Fang Yun first explains why people are given destiny, and then goes into depth about what it means to live and work in peace and contentment.
Fang Yun first used himself as an example. He lived with Yang Yuhuan and was poor but at peace. But when Liu Zicheng appeared, he felt uneasy. However, when he left Ji County and went to Dayuan Prefecture to face Liu Zicheng, his life became more stable.
Then, Fang Yun took the example of Confucius' voyage to the demon world on the four seas and further elaborated on the core argument of his own classics. He believed that since the human race has the destiny of heaven, it should expand its territory, use the "endless sky" to protect the "finite residence", and use the most thorough way to make the human race live and work in peace and contentment.
Then he quoted Confucius' famous saying "He who does not plan for the future will surely have immediate worries" to unify "living and working in peace and contentment" and "endless sky".
This is the meaning of the classics, which focuses on the overall situation, and it is enough to stop here. If Fang Yun is writing a policy paper, he must write in detail how the human race can send outstanding talents to conquer the ancient land while protecting the Shengyuan Continent.
After finishing the draft happily, Fang Yun realized that he was sweating all over and his clothes were soaked. All the sweat was slowly being drained away by the power of the Dragon Ball, but the Dragon Ball drained water very slowly, and the sweat was as heavy as mercury.
Fang Yun looked down at his clothes and thought to himself that this was the legendary expression of "what the heart has done, sweat turns into mercury". Every drop of sweat contained what one has gained from reading, which was the power of spirit and wisdom.
Fang Yong dipped his pen in ink and was about to revise the manuscript when he found himself weak and powerless. He was surprised and his mind entered the literary palace, only to find that his talent and literary strength were almost exhausted.
Fang Yun was overjoyed. If an article could consume one's own talent and literary courage, then it would be a typical example of "being close to sainthood". An ordinary article should never consume even a bit of one's strength.
"Fortunately, I have received five initiations of talent, and I have literary talent to replace talent. If an ordinary scholar finished writing such a classic, he would be seriously ill for at least three days, but after three days, his talent would overflow and his body would be stronger. If a boy wrote such an article, he would be bedridden for at least half a year. Scholars before Confucius were weak and sickly, and were laughed at as being weak as a chicken, because all the strength of the body was used in reading and writing, and there was no talent to make up for it."
Fang Yun stopped reading the draft and drank a lot of water, ate some dry food, and went to bed.
Writing in the imperial examination is completely different from daily practice, because the imperial examination is closely related to the holy way.
Daily practice is just learning the holy way, while the imperial examination is touching the holy way!
The imperial examination papers are the product of the intersection of thoughts and the holy way.
It was okay to read the sacred words or poems, but every word of the scriptures and policy essays required more energy. This time, it consumed his talent and literary courage. Fang Yun did not wake up until eight o'clock the next morning, and slept for a full six hours.
After waking up, Fang Yun finished his meal and reread his essay. He found that there was nothing left to change. This draft could be a formal essay. Fang Yun was puzzled, so he recalled it carefully and was surprised to find a problem.
The poem "Remembering Hometown" was completed in the afternoon, which was about 3 pm using the cheap military time. I pondered for another 25 minutes. This poem "The Min Suo Zhi" is only a few thousand words, so it should be finished by 5:30 pm at the latest. But from what I remember, it was already dark when I finished writing the sutra, at least 7:30 pm.
"Where did the middle hour go?"
Fang Yun recalled carefully and suddenly realized that after he finished writing the opening sentence, all the holy scriptures he had read emerged in his mind. It felt like only a moment, but in fact a whole hour had passed.
"It's amazing. Confucius once studied very hard, and before he knew it, he found himself old. I used to think it was just a metaphor, but now I understand that Confucius was probably so immersed in the holy way that even time could change."
Fang Yun shook his head again, always feeling that Confucius could not have achieved that level before he was canonized.
Fang Yun was not careless. He repeatedly read his "Wei Min Suo Zhi" scripture volume silently, pondering it word by word, and found that there was really nothing to change. A faint smile emerged on his face, and he vaguely understood the meaning of the hour that passed in an instant.
"In terms of the level of the meaning of this sutra, it should be similar to the one in the scholar's test, 'Unpropriety of Etiquette'. However, 'Unpropriety of Etiquette' contains principles that should not exist in this era, so it caused a strange phenomenon. The principles in this 'Guardians of the People's Suffering' have already appeared in the sage scriptures, so its value is not as good as 'Unpropriety of Etiquette', so it did not cause a strange phenomenon."
Fang Yun was relieved. After writing this article, his level of understanding of the scriptures has improved, which shows that his efforts in the past few days have not been in vain. Especially the tempering of the Holy Ruins. If he had not communicated with the candidates of the Ten Kingdoms, if he had not had the experience of the Holy Ruins and the demon clan, he would not have had such a deep understanding.
Fang Yun was in a good mood and did not go directly to look at the policy essay questions at the back, but instead went to revise his own poem.
As he was correcting his homework, he saw several officers passing by in a hurry. Soon, the officers were carrying an unconscious scholar out.
There were sighs everywhere in the examination room.
Fang Yun was not surprised. During the scholar examination, more than ten people had problems. But after only one day of the juren examination, about seven or eight people had problems.
The subsequent Jinshi examination was extremely challenging, because it not only tested one's speech but also one's behavior. It was very complicated and did not end after one finished the test paper.
The imperial examination is a collision and interaction between thoughts and the sacred way, and one may be disturbed if one is not careful.
There were still two days left, so Fang Yun decided to spend the morning revising his poems and the last day and a half writing his policy essays.
The morning passed quickly, and Fang Yun saw more than 20 young scholars leave on their own initiative. (To be continued...)