At the exact hour of Chen, the drums and horns resounded in unison from the Tower of Mingyuan.
The desolate horn blasts pressed down from the towering city walls, carrying the frosty breath of late autumn, tearing apart the low-hanging clouds above the capital.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Three muffled signal cannons rose one after another from the battlements, exploding in the sky, shaking the overnight frost off the high walls of the examination compound until it fell in a flurry.
Thus, under this stern martial clamor, the Autumn Examinations of the Great Qian Dynasty—held once every three years—commenced.
“Stand back!”
Dozens of elite soldiers, armed with armor and weapons, wielding water-and-fire staves, surged out from the gate in formation.
They took their positions along both sides of the street, planting their staves against the ground in unison.
The family retainers, servants, and idlers who had gathered to see the candidates off were startled by this show of force, backing away again and again until they were driven a full ten paces back, leaving an expanse of empty ground.
Upon the high platform, the chief examiner sat behind a large desk. His face wore a mask of frosty severity; he was stern and unsmiling. By the faint light of the goat-horn lanterns flanking him, he opened the roll book and summoned the scholars in order.
One richly dressed candidate, who refused to remove his undergarments for fear of the cold and protested briefly, was instantly restrained by two burly soldiers and struck solidly across the back with water-and-fire staves. His screams shattered the dawn.
The examinations of the Great Qian Dynasty followed the old systems of previous dynasties, with rules as strict and unyielding as iron.
To pass through this dragon’s gate, a man had to first shed the refined dignity of a scholar, lay bare both his flesh and his pride, and allow the ironclad rules of authority to grind him down.
The cries of the punished scholar made the candidates waiting in line tremble in silence, not daring to utter a single complaint.
The inspection process was tedious and harsh—what could be called an indiscriminate humiliation.
At the wind-swept mouth of the street, several soldiers stood before wooden tables.
Those scholars whose names were called were forced to undo their headdresses and remove their warm outer robes before the crowd, leaving only their undergarments.
The ninth-month wind was as sharp as a blade, stinging the skin and causing real pain.
Those soldiers, with calloused hands, moved roughly.
Their fingers picked through the scholars’ coiled hair, tapped at the seams of their shoes, and even aggressively kneaded into the folds of their undergarments, all to guard against anyone smuggling in cheat sheets written in tiny script.
Many of these scholars, accustomed to composing poetry and prose in teahouses and taverns, priding themselves on their lofty integrity, had never endured such suffering or public disgrace in their lives.
Some turned purple with cold, their teeth chattering uncontrollably. Others burned with shame and fury, shaking so badly they could barely stand.
The pride built up through years of literary study shattered completely beneath the bone-chilling wind and the threat of the staves. Before even setting foot on the path ahead, many had already had their spirits broken.
The line moved slowly forward, and at last, it was Xu Zijin’s turn.
He said nothing, stepping up to the table.
Following the rules with swift, precise movements, he untied his hair ribbon, letting his hair fall loose, and then removed his patched, faded blue cotton gown, its edges frayed.
The soldier in charge of the inspection looked him over at his humble attire.
Though beneath his gown Xu Zijin was wearing a fine wool sweater prepared by the Xu household—completely invisible from the outside—the soldier took him for nothing more than a poor scholar who couldn’t even afford a lined jacket.
The soldier didn’t even bother to lift his eyelids. He snatched the bamboo examination basket from Xu Zijin’s hand and upended it onto the wooden table.
Everything clattered out in a mess.
A coarse stone inkstone, a few cheap brushes, and some dried provisions wrapped in oiled paper rolled across the table and onto the ground.
The soldier stuck out his thick, chapped fingers, picking up and snapping apart each of the coarse grain cakes, grinding them into pieces, and carefully sifting through the crumbs for any hidden note scraps.
After the inspection, the soldier, grimacing with disgust, brushed aside the crumbled food, now mixed with the dust from the table, with a careless sweep.
“Such a cheap, worthless lot—there’s not even a single silver coin to be dug out of this basket. Why bother coming here to meddle?” The soldier wiped his hands on his robes and let out a rude snort from his nose.
Bending down, he pulled a wooden plaque from the bamboo tube beneath the table that held the tickets for the most wretched examination cubicles, and tossed it forcefully onto the surface.
“Take your plaque and get inside while you still can! Don’t freeze to death here tonight and make trouble for us brothers!”
The plaque rolled twice on the table before stopping, revealing the character “Stinking” etched on its underside.
Xu Zijin extended a hand with clearly defined joints, his two fingers firmly pressing down on that plaque.
Reading the carving on it, his expression showed not a flicker of emotion.
Silently, he gathered the soiled crumbs of the grain cakes and the scattered brush and ink back into his basket.
Slowly, he pulled his gown back on, smoothing the lapels, and picked up the basket. Following the servant assigned to guide him, he stepped over the high wooden threshold, turned around, and disappeared into the deep, shadowy passageway.
Beyond the dragon’s gate, the alleys of cubicles were a chaotic maze.
Rows upon rows of low, dilapidated shacks lined the path, their roof tiles in disrepair, and white frost creeping out of the cracks in the brick walls.
The deeper one went into these alleys, the lower the ground sank.
This narrow lane, never touched by sunlight, was slick with moisture and green moss.
The guide soldier stopped at the very end of the lane. With visible impatience, he pointed with the tip of his sheath at a cramped brick cell, signaling for Xu Zijin to enter.
This was the most hopeless spot in the entire examination hall—the base-level cubicle.
It was pressed against a high wall, with only a single wall separating it from the latrines used by thousands of scholars in the alley beyond.
The northwest wind howled through the broken roof tiles, carrying a nauseating, pungent stench and the sour rot of years past, seeping in like water through every crack.
In previous years, many scholars assigned to this spot had been so overpowered by the foul odor that they retched, lost their composure, and even failed to put down a single word. Not a few had to be carried out of the exam hall on stretchers.
Xu Zijin had not even stepped inside when, from a neighboring cell, a scholar who had just settled in heard the commotion and poked out half his head.
When he saw that the one given the worst spot was a thinly clad, shabby-looking scholar, the man drew his neck back slightly, a hint of secret relief crossing his face.
In this brutally cold and miserable exam venue, knowing someone else had drawn the lowest cesspit of a cell somehow made his own drafty, leaking room seem less unbearable.
“Brother, that bottom cell stinks like no other. Stuck right next to the night bucket for three whole days—truly, what a lucky draw you got.”
The man puffed white breath into the cold air, his words laced with condescending disdain and undisguised schadenfreude.
“Look at you in that thin, threadbare coat. If you can’t stand the draft through the night, take my advice: ring the bell early, hand in a blank paper, and give up. Your reputation matters less than your life. Don’t lose it here and anger the examiners by dirtying the place with your corpse.”
To the taunts and pity, Xu Zijin paid no heed.
He turned, the hem of his robe brushing through the mud at the doorway, and stepped steadily into the cramped cell, no more than four feet square.
The walls were slick with slimy moss, and the low wooden beam pressed down, making it hard to breathe. If he wanted to lie down and rest, he couldn’t even stretch his legs.
Xu Zijin gave no thought to the filth and the biting draft. He set down his exam basket, pulled out a clean felt mat from the bottom, smoothed out its four corners, and laid it neatly on the damp, cold brick floor.
Then, he placed a coarse stone inkstone, a stick of pine-soot ink, and three weasel-hair brushes in order on the two broken wooden planks that served as a desk. Every movement—lifting, placing—was clear and deliberate, steady without a single fault.
He knew better than anyone: even the worst conditions in the exam hall could not compare to the danger of a blade at his throat. Such hardships would not unsettle him.
From a hidden compartment in his basket, Xu Zijin took out several pieces of smokeless silver-thread charcoal, carefully wrapped in oilcloth. Xu Youde himself had packed these.
He placed them into the dusty clay brazier in the corner and lit them with a fire starter.
In less than half an hour, a steady warmth spread from the bottom of the brazier. The finest silver-thread charcoal burned clean, emitting no smoke at all, only a rich, enduring heat.
A few dim red embers flickered among the ash, and waves of warmth rose, turning the frost on the ground into steam that soon dried away.
The fire not only drove off the stench carried by the draft but also banished the damp cold completely.
What had been a hopeless dead end now became, because of the flame, a shelter where one could write in peace.
Clang!
From the Mingyuan Tower, the harsh sound of a bronze gong pierced the morning mist, pressing down layer by layer over the thousands of exam cells.
Footsteps approached from afar. The chief examiner’s attendants carried the red-wax-sealed exam papers, walking along the corridor and delivering them one by one according to the cell numbers.
The venue fell into solemn silence. No one dared to speak above a whisper.
When the attendant reached the bottom cell, he drew out a sheet of fibrous paper printed with the first policy question for this year’s autumn exam and slipped it through the gap in the wooden barrier outside the cell.
The light paper landed silently on the wooden plank before Xu Zijin.
Xu Zijin lowered his eyes. His gaze swept over the neat lines of the official script inscription—barely a dozen words, laying out the conventional formulas by which the empire selected its scholars.
He murmured to himself.
No different from past years.
The Great Qian’s exam hall still circled within the worn-out shell of outdated classics and commentaries.
All they wanted was the same old clichés, served up in new vessels.
From the neighboring cell, where the scholar who had mocked him sat, came the sound of hurried, scraping ink-grinding. That man was already sketching frantically on scratch paper, toiling to piece together ornate phrases, trying to craft a dazzling article to win the examiner’s favor.
Xu Zijin sat upright on his felt mat. Lifting his sleeve with his right hand to bare his wrist, he dipped the purple weasel-hair brush into the ink pool.
The clear water turned the pine-soot ink to a glossy, jet-black pool.
He lightly brushed the tip against the edge of the inkstone, letting it drink its fill.
His right wrist hung in the air.
The brush tip hovered half an inch above the white paper. There was not a tremor.
No hesitation. No draft.
His wrist lowered.
The ink touched the paper.
