53 My Historical Mission

Stepping into the main hall, they found the sky was still only faintly bright. Ordinarily, the interior would have been rather dim, but the lanterns and candles lining both sides illuminated the entire room as bright as day.

As Wei Guangde and the others walked in, they saw Magistrate Tang seated on the dais, alongside several scholars dressed in traditional scholar robes. Wei Guangde recognized one of them instantly—it was none other than Scholar Gao Xiang.

"Wei Guangde, Lin Tianti, Liu Shizhen, and others from Madang Town... all vouched for by Stipendiary Scholar Gao Xiang."

After Wei Guangde and the five of them bowed respectfully to Magistrate Tang on the dais, an official holding a dossier loudly proclaimed their guarantor.

"Vouched for by Stipendiary Scholar Gao Xiang."

As soon as the official finished, Scholar Gao Xiang stepped out from the crowd, bowed slightly toward Magistrate Tang, and repeated the declaration in a clear, ringing voice.

With the guarantor process concluded—the official ceremony uniting mutual guarantees and stipendiary backing for the five men—they walked out of the main hall to find their respective examination seats.

Wei Guangde had already been informed of his approximate location and quickly found his desk. He sat down and took out his writing brush, inkstone, paper, and ink stick from his examination basket to prepare for the upcoming test.

The "paper" was actually the official examination booklet issued during registration, akin to modern answer sheets—over a dozen pages of red-grid xuan paper, each page containing fourteen columns with eighteen characters per column, accompanied by several sheets of scratch paper. The handwriting had to be in the formal cabinet style, neatly executed within the red grid.

With several hundred candidates participating in the county examination, the guarantor verification process could not be completed in a short time. Wei Guangde settled in and watched the continuous flow of candidates entering and exiting, until finally, the last group of examinees emerged from the main hall.

Since the seats around the desks were now fully occupied, these late arrivals quickly located their designated spots.

Wei Guangde’s seat number was Tian-12. The "Tian" series seats were situated directly beneath the eaves of the main hall, making them arguably the best locations, sheltered from wind and rain, allowing candidates to test with peace of mind.

The first session of the county examination was the primary round, where the admission criteria were relatively lenient; those whose essays flowed logically and clearly were accepted, granting them eligibility for the subsequent prefectural examination. Whether to participate in the remaining sessions was entirely up to the candidate.

Due to its critical importance, the questions for the primary round were formal and rigorous, requiring two essays on passages from the Four Books, one essay on the Five Classics, and a five-character, six-rhyme patterned test poem.

Once all candidates were seated, the examination questions were promptly posted. After the magistrate set the topics, scribes copied them onto large wooden gate panels, which bailiffs carried around the examination compound so that every candidate could view the questions.

Wei Guangde, having readied his brush and inkstone, swiftly copied the prompts onto his scratch paper. As he wrote, a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth—these were subjects he was thoroughly familiar with; his mother's incense-burning prayers at the temple had truly worked.

Wei Guangde had already spotted the first question for today's county examination: "The Master said to Yan Yuan: 'Use it, and it functions; discard it, and it lies hidden. Only you and I have this.'" The quote came from the *Analects*, Chapter *Shuer*.

Well, upon seeing this, Wei Guangde knew that the county examination questions were indeed relatively straightforward; anyone who had studied the Four Books should easily recognize the source.

What did this phrase mean? Essentially, Confucius was telling Yan Yuan, "If my services are employed, I will act proactively; if not, I will retire into seclusion. Only you and I are capable of this!"

The second question was drawn from the sixth chapter of the *Great Learning*: "The extension of knowledge lies in the investigation of things; meaning, in order to extend our knowledge, we must engage with things and thoroughly examine their principles."

Reading this question, Wei Guangde felt a slight ripple in his heart, sensing something somewhat intriguing about it.

What struck him as peculiar was not that the question itself was flawed, but rather that this passage leaned heavily toward Wang Yangming's School of Mind. For Magistrate Tang to include such a prompt was rather thought-provoking.

Wei Guangde had first heard the name Wang Yangming the previous year from Master Sun, though the old teacher had harshly condemned him, branding his teachings as heterodox and deceptive.

However, this did not stop Wei Guangde from recalling the man. Concepts like "the unity of knowledge and action" and "the investigation of things" seemed quite famous.

Later on, he heard from other sources that when Prince Ning rebelled years ago, Wang Yangming had allegedly participated in suppressing the uprising, though by now, the man had long since passed away.

Yet even though the man was gone, the School of Mind he founded continued to circulate widely among literati circles, gradually standing toe-to-toe with the dominant Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism.

Naturally, because the School of Mind was newly established, its influence fell far short of orthodox Neo-Confucianism, and it faced hostility from the traditional faction.

Wei Guangde turned his head slightly to glance toward the main hall. Although he could not see inside, he wondered silently if this "rule-by-inaction" magistrate might actually be a follower of the School of Mind—otherwise, why would he pose such a question?

There remained one question from the Five Classics, chosen at the candidate's discretion from five options, along with one five-character, six-rhyme patterned test poem.

For the Five Classics question, Wei Guangde naturally chose *The Book of Documents*, which he had specialized in, and would answer the corresponding prompt.

Having attended the county examination preparations, he had naturally read through all the Four Books and Five Classics. As for memory and comprehension, that depended entirely on the individual.

When Wei Guangde initially chose among the Five Classics, unlike the Four Books—where all had to be thoroughly mastered—one only needed to excel in a single classic. Uncertain of how to choose, he had simply swallowed them whole and read through the entire set.

As Wei Guangde understood them, the Five Classics of Confucianism addressed different realms: *The Classic of Poetry* explored human emotionality; *The Book of Rites* examined societal structures; *The Book of Documents* focused on political governance; *The Spring and Autumn Annals* dealt with historical memory; and *The Book of Changes* tackled metaphysical questions.

*The Classic of Poetry*, *The Book of Changes*, and *The Spring and Autumn Annals* were immediately discarded by Wei Guangde as beyond his capacity to master.

The remaining two—*The Book of Rites*, concerning societal issues, and *The Book of Documents*, concerning political issues—were read repeatedly until he finally settled on *The Book of Documents*.

Perhaps due to a sense of ingrained detachment, Wei Guangde always felt slightly out of place in this era. Though he had been here for over a year, a lingering sense of unaccustomedness remained; deep down, he still yearned for his computers, smartphones, and the internet...

Choosing *The Book of Documents* stemmed from his hope that, by leveraging insights from several hundred years in the future—especially the vast reservoirs of information unlocked by the information explosion—he could think deeper and see further than the people of this era.

With such an advantage, the decisions he made would surely surpass most contemporaries.

If nothing else, Wei Guangde had long since resolved in his heart that if his arrival in this era was destined by the heavens, then he must bear a mission.

What was that mission? Wei Guangde had pondered it for a long time. Certainly, it wasn't just to enjoy ancient wealth and luxury with a house full of wives and concubines.

Thinking of the countless Qing dynasty dramas he had watched until he was sick of them, Wei Guangde felt his purpose must be to bring an end to that dark historical trajectory, especially since the era he had transmigrated into felt somewhat awkward and transitional.

Whether Nurhaci had been born yet, he did not know; the final emperor of the Ming, Chongzhen, was seemingly still a distant prospect.

Generations of emperors separated him from the fall of the dynasty, and Wei Guangde truly had no clear timeline. But it did not matter—he would simply find a way to deal with the pigtails in Jianzhou beforehand, ensuring that the tragedy of later history never repeated itself and that the Han Chinese dominion would never fall to foreign hands.