Chapter 151: Zhang Heng's Examination Paper: Genius is Merely the Threshold to Meet Me

Only a few dozen miles southwest of the battlefield, the mission’s fleet, which had been taking refuge in Qingshui Port for many days, was sailing at full canvas in a double column through the night, led by a five-masted sealed ship serving as the flagship and lead vessel.

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh...

Chief Envoy [The Painter] Luo Wenlong, feeling this was still not enough, drove his personal soul-artifact [The Divine Brush] to continuously paint the wind in mid-air, forcing the entire fleet to accelerate steadily until it reached its theoretical speed limit.

A staggering ten knots!

That is 18.52 kilometers per hour, exceeding the running speed of an ordinary person—simply defying the natural order.

"Lord Luo, you gave the order for the fleet to set sail without a word, drifted on the ocean for the better part of a day, and now suddenly rush through the night toward the territory of the Eastern Sea Kingdom—what on earth are you trying to do?

As the Deputy Envoy, surely I am qualified to know?"

Deputy Envoy Jiang Wenyuan hurried over to demand answers in an urgent tone.

Luo Wenlong wore a cold, expressionless face and did not answer his question. Instead, he merely waved a hand at the guards beside him, who had already donned armor and entered a state of combat readiness.

The guards stepped forward and instantly surrounded Jiang Wenyuan.

To pacify the exterior, one must first secure the interior. Since their allies in Pinghu Port had already made their move, there was no need to let this leaping, self-righteous purist gentry faction continue making trouble.

Jiang Wenyuan was startled and shouted sternly:

"What are you trying to do? I am the Deputy Envoy personally appointed by His Majesty. On what grounds do you, Luo Wenlong, dare to arrest me?"

Luo Wenlong said indifferently:

"Upon investigation, Deputy Envoy Jiang Wenyuan has harbored bandits, accepted bribes, communicated with the enemy, and colluded with the rebel leader Mao Haifeng! You are placed under provisional detention, and afterward, I shall personally request the Emperor's sacred judgment!

Guards, take him into custody!"

Previously, Luo Wenlong had chosen not to move against Jiang Wenyuan and his purist faction.

On one hand, he wanted to avoid alerting the enemy and letting Mao Haifeng perceive anything unusual about the Tongmu people; on the other hand, he was bound by certain constraints. As long as one wished to survive in the imperial court, it was impossible to assassinate a colleague in private.

The [Aura of Bureaucracy] was there—serving simultaneously as a shield and a shackle, not something just anyone could break through.

Even now, he did not dare to ambush executioners to commit direct murder. Instead, he intended to first fit the purist faction with [Spirit-Binding Locks] to seal away all their extraordinary arts and magical techniques, placing them under house arrest.

Once he killed the [Black Qilin] Mao Haifeng and secured direct evidence, he would report back to the imperial court and charge him with treason.

"Absurd!"

Jiang Wenyuan was almost angry enough to laugh. Luo Wenlong had not even changed a single character, transplanting the exact same accusation that the Censor Wang Bengu had used to frame Viceroy Hu Ruzhen for colluding with the King of Jinghai straight onto him—merely swapping the name of the King of Jinghai for Mao Haifeng.

Yet... he truly could not withstand an investigation!

On the surface, he had come under the imperial court's orders to offer amnesty and pacify the merchants and pirates of the Eastern Sea. In reality, however, he carried a mission from the purist faction to sabotage the peace talks.

In their eyes, the interests of their political faction were far more important than the interests of the state and the Emperor.

Wang Bengu might have framed Hu Ruzhen falsely, but this time, Luo Wenlong was truly not framing him.

Though Jiang Wenyuan had no idea what had gone wrong or how such a classified message had been leaked, how could he possibly allow himself to be captured without a fight and await the Emperor's judgment?

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the five-hundred-shi war-command vessel [Jinjiang], belonging to the troops under his own command, where the Thousand-Man Commander [Tower-Ship General] Li Jingjiang was also approaching to make an arrest.

A surge of panic gripped his heart.

No longer daring to hold back his trump cards, he pulled out a scroll of yellowed paper.

Every scholar who had ever passed the imperial examinations would find this extremely familiar—it was an ancient examination paper of considerable age.

"You want to arrest me? It won't be that easy!

You claim I accepted bribes and colluded with the enemy? I say that you, Luo Wenlong, are the one colluding with the enemy, and I shall personally submit a memorial to impeach you!"

Before Luo Wenlong could react, Jiang Wenyuan hurled the treasure lent to him by his teacher, Grand Secretary Xu, straight ahead, and it automatically unfurled into a long scroll.

Having weathered several centuries, the characters upon it still pierced the paper like iron hooks, their eight corners radiating a sharp, brilliant light. The intense fragrance of ink and scholarship forced the surrounding guards to recoil a step.

By the time they recovered, drew their blades, and rushed forward, they found that an invisible threshold seemed to have materialized before them. No matter how they stepped or leaped, they simply could not cross it.

Meanwhile, Jiang Wenyuan retreated calmly, effortlessly passing through the heavy encirclement of guards and leaping aboard his own five-hundred-shi war-command vessel.

Even the Thousand-Man Commander Li Jingjiang was powerless to stop him.

Furthermore, when that examination paper floated upward from Jiang Wenyuan's head to hover above the entire warship, the vessels attempting to approach from the surroundings encountered the same invisible threshold as the guards, unable to advance even an inch.

Although Luo Wenlong did not possess the extraordinary arts of [Hoarding Rare Commodities] or [Listening to Thunder], he immediately recognized the words written on the side of the examination paper: "First Place in the First Tier: Zhang Heng."

He instantly identified the identity of this talismanic soul-artifact—[The Treasure of a Prefecture: The Examination Paper of Zhang Heng]!

He could not help crying out in shock:

"Is this the examination paper of Zhang Heng, the top-ranking scholar who outshone all others in the millennium of imperial examinations?

His examination paper ought to be preserved within the Tribute Examination Hall! How was it secretly stolen away by you purists?

You are using public instruments for private gains—what crime deserves such punishment?"

Later generations often harbor biases against the imperial examination system, which endured for over a millennium, believing that those selected by it were nothing more than bookworms who only knew how to quote classical texts and compose poetry.

In reality, it was precisely the bureaucrats nurtured by this imperial examination system who were capable of simultaneously handling scriptural interpretation, policy design, military command, and fiscal reform.

They could pass down knowledge through turbulent times, compile encyclopedias during prosperous eras, and maintain the integrity of the Chinese cultural lineage across multiple divisions, even eventually assimilating foreign races.

Bookworms certainly existed, but there was also no shortage of pragmatic statesmen who applied learning to practical use and united knowledge with action.

Moreover, this relatively fair channel of upward mobility was entirely unique in the world for a considerable span of history.

"A peasant in the morning enters the Son of Heaven's hall by evening"—this was the romance of an entire civilization.

Candidates preparing for the exams not only had to memorize hundreds of thousands of words of the Four Books and Five Classics, but also had to firmly remember relevant commentaries and model essays by famous masters. They had to weave the rhythms of poetry with current politics, interpreting specific sentences and characters of the Four Books and Five Classics by citing historical precedents.

That is why the *Scholars* states: "Those who write good eight-legged essays can write poetry whenever they wish to write poetry, and rhapsodies whenever they wish to write rhapsodies; any form of writing is effortless for them."

At most, only two or three hundred jinshi were selected every three years. Those who managed to stand out under such a system were, at the very least, outstanding talents of their era capable of skillfully utilizing the system!

One can easily imagine the immense value packed into the title of the top scholar (*Zhuangyuan*).

The examination with the highest value of all unquestionably belonged to the second year of the Jiayou reign of the Northern Song Dynasty, presided over by Ouyang Xiu, hailed as the dragon and tiger imperial examination of the millennium.

This single cohort produced twenty-four eminent figures who merited independent biographies in official histories, among whom nine became prime ministers, three entered the Eight Masters of the Tang and Song Dynasties, and one was Zhang Zai, who uttered the famous "Four Sentences of Hengqu."

Yet, formidable as these twenty-four individuals were, not a single one managed to enter the top three places of the palace examination.

The person who truly won the highest honor of the top scholar was none other than: Zhang Heng.

Master Dongpo evaluated him thus: "This man's talent is such that no one within a hundred years can even see his back; genius merely catches a glimpse of his threshold."

Why is he far less famous than figures like Su Shi?

Perhaps because he spent his entire life actively working at his post rather than being... exiled to Lingnan?

Chinese literary circles have largely been a literature of demoted officials for much of history. To put it bluntly, regardless of whether one belonged to the delicate or bold school, their influence simply could not compare to the exiled school.

Against this backdrop, Zhang Heng's examination paper naturally became legendary through the ages, well-known to scholars and literati.

Even many young children who had just begun learning to write characters knew the most basic ability of this examination paper:

*[Genius is merely my threshold; absolute exclusion of fools!*

*One must possess a title of 'genius' recognized by many to even be qualified to approach the master holding Zhang Heng's examination paper.]*

Just like now, an examination paper that had suppressed a millennium's dragon and tiger cohort hovered above the five-hundred-shi warship, effortlessly repelling the approach of everyone present.

This proved that everyone else present was a fool.

Even Luo Wenlong and Li Jingjiang, two mid-level officials in their early thirties of the fifth rank, were no exception. In the eyes of that examination paper, they fell far short of being called geniuses.

The Thousand-Man Commander [Tower-Ship General] Li Jingjiang refused to accept this and was unwilling to give up. Standing at the bow of his ship, he formed hand seals and chanted incantations:

"Winds muster on the left, fire chariots march on the right. Illuminate the three realms, transforming into a crimson fortress. The base of the Eight Trigrams arrayed on all four sides. Haste like the legal statutes!"

With a single breath, he spewed out a hundred zhang of rosy light, transforming it into thick chains and continuous ramparts that locked his fleet together, attempting to encircle the Jinjiang within the center.

The spiritual resonance of this [Tower-Ship General] was tied entirely to [Connected Fortresses], and he practiced a unique extraordinary art called the [Rosy Tower and Connected Fortresses Incantation].

It allowed him to assemble the tower ships under his command into a continuous maritime great wall. The more tower ships there were, and the more low-ranking [Tower-Ship Generals] assisting in the spellcasting, the stronger the combined fleet would become.

A fleet composed of a hundred tower ships could charge headlong across rivers and seas, violently crushing reefs to dust without breaking a sweat.

However, Jiang Wenyuan had already activated the literary dragon-ascending art a step ahead.

Reciting famous poetic verses brimming with literary Qi, he stirred the Dao Qi into response:

*“Leaving Baidi in the morning amid colored clouds, a thousand-li trip to Jiangling is made in a day. The gibbons on both shores cry ceaselessly, while the light boat has already sped past ten thousand mountains!”*

Colored clouds and the cries of gibbons surrounded the warship, which suddenly accelerated, breaking past its theoretical speed limit, and surged forward to plunge into the thick of the fiercely contested main battlefield.

"No one on my side would have leaked the secret; the problem must have originated on Mao Haifeng's end.

My honored teacher's mission must not fail. We must borrow Mao Haifeng's strength to set things right!

If we 'outspoken ministers' offend the Emperor, the worst that can happen is demotion, a court beating, building our reputation, and later being re-employed. But if we are abandoned by the lords of the purist faction, moving a single step in the Great Zhao will become impossible, and life will be worse than death."

The mere thought of the consequences of failure made Jiang Wenyuan shudder involuntarily.

He gripped the volume of military strategy tightly to his chest.

Behind him, Luo Wenlong and Li Jingjiang, whose faces were equally grim, hurriedly drove their extraordinary arts in unison:

"We must pursue them! We cannot let them join forces!"