Chapter 59: Jinling City (28)
Minister Pang dared not breathe loudly as he noticed the Prince Regent was reviewing the exam papers.
Why was the Prince Regent angry? Could it be dissatisfaction with these three hundred exam scripts? There were certainly many talented candidates with brilliant writing among them. Was it because the Prince Regent, lacking literary knowledge, simply couldn’t understand them?
Xiao Fu cast a cold glare at Minister Pang. “Are these three hundred red-inked exam papers the results of your day-and-night grading?”
“Your Highness, after the exams finished on the ninth day of the eighth month, the papers were sent to the Ministry of Rites where clerks transcribed them. Once the ink and red copies were checked for accuracy, they were distributed to examiners for marking. On these papers, there are also annotations in green ink… I personally grade around seventy papers daily, starting at dawn until late at night, totaling eight hundred and fifty-five over ten days. The six assistant examiners followed the same schedule,” Minister Pang detailed the timeline meticulously.
Xiao Fu was tired of listening to such explanations; his voice cut cold as a blade. “Did you show favoritism or cheat? Did you admit those unqualified or reject those who should have passed?”
Minister Pang trembled, his shoulders shaking, knowing this was likely an accusation from the supervising censors. This was bad news! He hurried to explain, “Your Highness, I absolutely did not favor anyone! Even though I have relatives taking the exam, once the papers are sealed and transcribed, not even my own father can recognize them. I never once showed favoritism!”
The late emperor had said to appoint talent regardless of kinship. Four years ago, Grand Secretary Xu’s son took the exam, with a closely related deputy as the chief examiner, and the palace exam questions were submitted by Grand Secretary Xu himself. Grand Secretary Xu had tried to avoid suspicion, but Emperor Wen Tai said, “Minister, appoint talent regardless of kinship. Should a gifted person be buried just because they come from a noble family?”
Minister Pang recalled this and kowtowed deeply to the Prince Regent. “Your Highness, please investigate clearly!”
“Investigate clearly? You’ve got to be kidding me,” Xiao Fu snapped, slamming an ivory pen holder against Minister Pang’s face. Minister Pang’s head cracked open on the spot; blood flowed down his scalp. He trembled uncontrollably, unable to utter a word.
The eunuchs standing beside Xiao Fu winced at the sight.
Fuming with rage, Xiao Fu roared, “Get out on your knees! We’ll deal with your crime of favoritism later! I am not the late emperor. If you dare cheat, watch your head, Liang Hong!”
Minister Pang, terrified, covered his bleeding head and crawled away. A eunuch bowed respectfully to the Prince Regent, holding a dust whisk in both hands. “At your service, Your Highness.”
“Summon all assistant examiners to the palace. Where is Commander Han of the Brocade Uniform Guard?”
The previous Commander Huang was long gone. After Emperor Wen Tai’s death, Commander Huang was assigned to guard the imperial tomb and had disappeared.
The new Commander Han was capable, but Xiao Fu intended to curb the Brocade Uniform Guard’s influence and rarely entrusted them with important tasks.
Calling Commander Han over, Xiao Fu ordered, “Retrieve all the red-inked copies and original ink manuscripts from the Ministry of Rites. Bring them to my desk. No one else is allowed to handle them, and the Ministry officials must have no chance to tamper with them.”
Still fuming inside, Xiao Fu rose and paced. “The imperial exams are the only chance for poor scholars to enter officialdom. Yet how many talented men have these dogs destroyed unjustly!”
Liang Hong looked puzzled at Xiao Fu’s fury. If Minister Pang was suspected of favoritism, then a thorough investigation and re-examination would suffice.
Regrading over five thousand rejected papers was a huge undertaking.
It was rare for the Prince Regent to care so deeply about scholars.
But he had ordered a re-examination. Xiao Fu gathered a group of trusted elderly scholars from the Hanlin Academy and summoned over a dozen civil officials to the six-department corridor. Xiao Fu personally supervised their review of the rejected papers.
Hanlin scholars, having read for a lifetime, graded quickly. With Xiao Fu watching closely, they dared not slack for a moment.
When they found outstanding rejected papers, they handed them to Liang Hong, letting Liang Gonggong review a second time before submitting to Xiao Fu.
The inspection of rejected papers took five full days, during which Xiao Fu never left.
Eventually, the old scholars selected fifty or sixty excellent rejected papers. Among them was, of course, Lin Zikui’s essay.
One senior scholar said, “Other rejected papers might be due to examiners disliking personal answering styles, or maybe the ending was strong but the beginning lackluster, or examiner oversight. But this one—I cannot fathom how it was rejected. There are green-ink examiner marks showing it was indeed reviewed.” He was referring to Lin Zikui’s paper, which bore only a candidate number in red ink, no name.
The scholar continued, “This person’s knowledge ranges from astronomy to geography, with deep literary cultivation. I, too, sigh in admiration. Surely it was an oversight that caused this rejection; I can find no other reason.”
Xiao Fu ordered Liang Gonggong to summon the examiners. These examiners had been summoned to the palace several days prior and were now strictly confined, forbidden from leaving.
The examiners couldn’t communicate with each other and none knew what the problem was. Some honestly believed they hadn’t shown favoritism, but Minister Pang was restless, often touching his neck as if his life depended on it.
Wen Shengli couldn’t sleep either. The grading must have been flawed. He had added a single stroke somewhere, but it was so subtle—surely that couldn’t be the cause? When he entered the palace, he saw other examiners too, so the problem might not lie with him.
Days passed in a haze until the door finally opened.
A Brocade Uniform Guard wearing a flying fish robe stood outside coldly. “Grand Scholar, the Prince Regent summons you.”
Wen Shengli thought he would meet the other examiners to discuss the situation but found himself questioned alone. Beside him were only the guards, eunuchs, and above all, the Prince Regent seated arrogantly in his splendid dragon robe.
In court, the Prince Regent’s handsome face often intimidated others from looking directly. It was said he despised civil officials and scholars. Wen Shengli had only recently been promoted from the Deputy of the Imperial College to Grand Scholar. He hadn’t yet graded papers, and wasn’t even supposed to be on this panel.
It was the Prince Regent himself who said, “Examiners shouldn’t all be old men. Appoint two young and two old.”
Finally, it was his turn to be interrogated.
There were no lamps lit around the room. The dim light fell faintly across Xiao Fu’s figure, barely illuminating his face—only his shoulders and the side of his hair caught some of the light.
“Lift your head,” Xiao Fu said in a low, composed voice.
Hearing that voice, Wen Shengli trembled and raised his head slightly, only to realize that the Prince Regent, once so radiant and graceful in the court, now looked like a judge from the underworld.
“Your humble servant greets the Prince Regent—may Your Highness live for ten thousand years!”
“Explain everything about your involvement in tampering with the exam—every detail. If you lie even one word, I’ll have you tossed into the oil cauldron,”
Wen Shengli was startled. Had Minister Pang already confessed—and worse, pinned the blame on him? How could he do that?! He hurried to protest, “Your Highness, I’ve been wronged! I saw it with my own eyes—Minister Pang colluded with subordinates and personally reviewed his own son’s paper. He ordered me to annotate it in green ink!”
Minister Pang had firmly denied all wrongdoing. Now Wen Shengli blurted everything out in one breath.
Xiao Fu said coldly, “What else?”
That voice, cold as a blade, sent chills down the spine.
“There’s… there’s more…” Wen Shengli hesitated. Should he bring up the matter of that tiny additional stroke? It was barely noticeable, and the paper had already been rejected—surely nothing would come of it. So he shook his head and said, “Nothing more. Apart from being forced by Minister Pang’s authority, I did nothing else inappropriate.”
Xiao Fu asked, “So the rejected paper wasn’t your doing? Minister Pang already confessed. If you won’t speak, it’s not just the oil cauldron you should worry about.”
“He—he actually said it?” Wen Shengli hadn’t eaten for days, and his mind was foggy. Now, in utter despair, he had no choice but to confess everything. “Among this year’s candidates, there was one with truly extraordinary talent and a brilliant essay. Minister Pang feared this person would outshine his son and ordered me to find a way to have his paper rejected. When I reviewed it, I spotted a small loophole, so I added a stroke—just a tiny dot—to both the red-ink copy and the original ink copy. But Your Highness, I swear I did not do it of my own will! If Minister Pang hadn’t allowed it, how could I have gotten my hands on the original papers, which were strictly guarded by the Ministry of Rites? How could I have had such boldness? Even if I had ten times the courage, I wouldn’t have dared!”
Xiao Fu slowly closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
“Make him sign and fingerprint the confession. Drag him out and behead him.”
Wen Shengli’s whole body trembled. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Your Highness! Please! I’ve been wronged! It was all on Minister Pang’s orders!”
In previous dynasties, even in major corruption scandals, the most severe punishment was dismissal. Wen Shengli had assumed that his offense wasn’t so serious. At worst, the truth would come out, and he would be demoted or transferred to an outpost. But if things went well, he would have been promoted by the Minister of Rites. What a good deal it had seemed.
There had never been a precedent for execution in exam-related fraud!
Xiao Fu interrogated each examiner one by one.
One examiner swore to the heavens that he had not shown favoritism. When asked about the rejected paper—Lin Zikui’s essay—he recalled it clearly. “The characters for ‘Yu’ and ‘Wen’ were written next to each other, but the character ‘Yu’ had an extra stroke on top. It violated a taboo.”
Xiao Fu asked, “What taboo?”
“Well…” the examiner had no choice but to answer. It was speculation about the emperor’s intentions—they feared that this character might offend the sovereign.
“So just because of one character, you let such an excellent essay get rejected? Wonderful. Truly wonderful!” Xiao Fu sneered. His disgust for pedantic scholars wasn’t without reason. He had all involved parties detained, awaiting judgment, and ordered the Brocade Uniform Guard to bring in Pang Xiang. The Hanlin scholars administered a re-examination, and it became clear that Pang Xiang was nothing but an empty-headed fool with a pinch of knowledge at best.
The next morning, Liang Gonggong announced an imperial decree in court: strict punishment for those involved in exam fraud!
Seven assistant examiners and one chief examiner—Pang Zhuo—were immediately sent to the Ministry of Justice for execution at noon. Wen Shengli’s head had already rolled. The assistant examiners were all demoted one rank and sent to remote posts.
Upon hearing the decree, lORD Xiao nearly fainted right there in court.
Wen Shengli—his son-in-law—had dared to assist Pang Zhuo in committing fraud in the imperial examination!
With that, the imperial cabinet became an empty shell. The civil court of Daye had lost many officials—some executed, others exiled. Only a few aged, frail scholars remained, still stubbornly standing in the Fengtian Hall, pleading with the Prince Regent to reconsider.
“Your Highness, the Prime Minister and Chief Minister have both resigned or been dismissed. Now the Cabinet is reduced to just these few. Please, Your Highness, do not send more talent away!”
Xiao Fu flicked his sleeve and turned to leave. “There’s nothing more to discuss. My decision is final!”
With the Prince Regent’s order in place, the Ministry of Rites dared not slack off, much less tamper with anything. Every red-inked copy was cross-checked with the corresponding original ink copy. Only if the two matched perfectly would the name be unsealed and added to the ranking.
On the first day of the ninth month, the air was crisp and clear. The results were released at the examination courtyard, and scholars swarmed to the announcement.
Mo Liu had been visiting the examination courtyard every day for news. Upon hearing the list was finally out, he rushed back from two streets away to the estate. “Young Master! The list is out! The results are out!”
His wife hadn’t been home in quite some time.
Lately, Lin Zikui had been studying at home. In the past month, he had only seen Zhao Ling twice—and had only spent the night with him once.
It was getting too cold for summer clothes, and he was in the middle of packing them away and organizing his autumn wardrobe when he heard Mo Liu’s voice. He immediately stood up. “The list’s out?”
“Yes! Yes! There were too many people—I couldn’t see clearly, so I ran back to tell you first!”
If you’re loving the tangled fates and slow-burning tension in Peach Blossom Decree, help Ciacia keep the petals falling by buying her a Kofi.
Can’t bear the suspense? Join the Duo-a-cia Tier to unlock up to 5 chapters early—and get ahead of the drama before the next decree drops.
