On March 25th, thirteen days have passed since the Spring Examination, and the intense marking and evaluation has also entered the thirteenth day.

Generally speaking, the Great Song Dynasty Imperial Examination only has two chief examiners and a number of deputy examiners. However, due to the large number of people in the Spring Wei Examination this time, three chief examiners were set up instead of previous years, together with the deputy chief examiners and those who participated in reviewing the examination papers.

The number of personnel reached twenty-seven.

The imperial court requires that the results of the imperial examination be announced within one month, which is the so-called release of the results. However, generally speaking, the results will be released about 15 days in advance. Firstly, it can take care of the examinees' eagerness to know the results without delaying the results. Secondly,

, many examinees come to the capital away from their hometowns. The longer they stay in the capital, the greater the expenses. This is a heavy burden for most examinees from ordinary families. In addition, if there are enough marking staff, it will not take more than a month.

time. The deadline is just to give the examiners enough time to prevent the matter of recruiting scholars for the country from becoming hasty.

The chief and deputy examiners and the court officials involved in grading actually hoped to end this work as soon as possible. After all, the imperial examination of the Song Dynasty was extremely strict. All examiners and officials involved in grading and invigilating the examination had already lost their personal freedom from the time the proposition was finalized and the status appointment was issued.

. This is the lock-up system of the Song Dynasty. Its purpose is self-evident, and it is naturally to prevent the leakage of test questions and to prevent the occurrence of imperial examination fraud. All officials who set questions, supervise and mark examination papers are completely restricted from activities in the Gongyuan and are strictly prohibited.

They have no contact with the outside world. Therefore, about half a month before spring, these people can no longer see anyone, and this period lasts until after all the marking is completed, which lasts for more than a month.

This period of more than a month is very difficult, comparable to being in jail. Therefore, if the grading and admission work is completed one day earlier, they can go home one day earlier. This is also the reason why the results of the major exams are usually completed ten days and a half month in advance.

One of the reasons.

Gongyuan Jinxian Building is the marking place for this exam. It is a three-story building. The uppermost floor is the residence of several chief and deputy examiners. The middle floor is the public room where the chief examiner conducts marking, deliberation and evaluation. The hall on the bottom floor is

In the middle, there are more than 20 officials involved in marking the papers.

The grading process is not complicated, but it is a huge undertaking. The first step is to copy the test papers. In order to prevent cheating on the test papers from marking marks or handwriting recognition, all answer papers will be uniformly written in Guange style block letters.

The words were transcribed on special paper. More than 18,000 examination papers were transcribed day and night by fifty selected students from the Imperial Academy under the supervision of a dedicated person for three days and three nights before all the examination papers were transcribed.

The answer sheets have been transcribed and the numbers are consistent. After that, the marking process officially begins.

Grading naturally does not require the examiners to go through all the answer sheets in person, which would exhaust them to death. The general process is: the examiner explains the general idea of ​​each exam question to the marking officers, and proposes an assessment of the pros and cons.

After the key points, the marking officials will conduct a preliminary evaluation according to the grading ideas given by the examiners. After the preliminary evaluation of more than 18,000 exam papers, only about one-tenth of the excellent answer papers will be left, and these

Excellent answers finally enter the field of vision of the chief and deputy examiners for more detailed marking and evaluation. This is actually the most critical and cumbersome step.

early

During the evaluation, the chief and deputy examiners will patrol and supervise. The chief and deputy examiners will randomly check the answer sheets that have been eliminated in the initial evaluation at any time. Hundreds of them will be randomly checked every day for re-evaluation to prevent omissions and fraud by the marking officials, or due to other reasons.

There will be deliberate mischief for some reason. Each examination paper will have a record of marking, who marked it, when it was marked, and the reasons for elimination. Once there are obvious errors, the markr will be severely held accountable, and even

The interrogation is done. That is no joke.

Although these measures cannot be said to completely eliminate cheating and unfairness, they can basically ensure the fairness of the entire imperial examination scoring and evaluation process and are fair to the vast majority of people. That is a successful imperial examination system.

Entering the thirteenth day of marking, the preliminary evaluation has ended three days ago. The three main examiners and six deputy examiners on the second floor have been reviewing the papers in person for three days in the lobby on the second floor. Most of the more than 1,000 excellent answer papers have been reviewed, and there will be another day or two.

Time will all end. Hundreds of lucky people will be born among them. They will be divided into first, second and third class according to the evaluation results, and all of them will become the lucky ones to become officials.

On the large long table, there are a large number of transcribed answer sheets piled up. Several chief and deputy examiners are concentrating on marking the papers. When they read good articles, they will praise a few times and pass them around to each other to appreciate and criticize.

Most of the time, Wan Qixi and Tang Situi communicated a lot, while Shi Hao, the other examiner, quietly browsed the answer sheet, and from time to time wrote down comments on the answer sheet with the pen in his hand. After all, even if

As an examiner, you have to give reasons for selecting and rejecting candidates, rather than purely based on preference.

The sky is getting dark and the lights have been turned on. In order to end the review work as soon as possible, tonight will be another sleepless night.

"Asshole! Who reviewed this answer sheet? How could he pass such a rebellious article? Brother Yuan Zhong, look at this article, it is so bold. It is a shameless attack on the emperor, the court, and the Prime Minister of Qin! It's actually

Let me pass." In the silence of flipping papers, Tang Situi suddenly said loudly and angrily. Yuan Zhong is Wan Qixi's cousin, and his words were addressed to Wan Qixi.

Everyone was startled and looked up at him. Wanqixi frowned and said, "Master Tang, please don't get excited. I'll take a look."

Tang Situi handed the answer sheet to Wan Qixi. Wan Qixi took it and read it quickly. He frowned and shook the answer sheet, making a clattering sound. "That's unreasonable. It's really abominable. Such an answer sheet can pass the test."

?Fight it immediately. There is such a person among the people, and it is worthy of vigilance. Mr. Tang, it seems that there are some things that need to be more vigilant to prevent such thoughts from spreading. Qin Xiang said that many people have in their hearts the policy of being in conflict with the imperial court.

The sentiment of resistance is strongest among scholars, and it seems to be true. Not only must this person be deposed, but his identity must be found out later to find out who instilled this idea in him and who he learned it from.

These are ridiculous and unethical remarks.”

"What Brother Yuan Zhong said is absolutely true. A thorough investigation is necessary!" Tang Si retreated: "The examiner must also examine it. If the answer sheet passes the test, the examiner also has problems."

"Yes, we need to check too." Wan Qixi nodded while pinching his goatee.

The answer sheet was thrown aside by Wan Qixi, a tall pile of answer sheets.

Among them are all the answer sheets that have been screened and eliminated. Although the owners of the answer sheets lying in the pile of answer sheets have passed the first level, they have been eliminated in the second level, and their fate has been determined.

After reviewing the answer sheet in his hand, Shi Hao was in a bad mood. So far, he was not satisfied with the answer sheets of the candidates. Especially on the last question, few people dared to criticize the ZTE question.

This made Shi Hao very disappointed. The purpose of asking this question was to see what the current scholars of the Song Dynasty still think about the resurgence of the Song Dynasty, and whether he could put forward some good suggestions. At the same time, he also wanted to see if he could put forward some good suggestions.

Let’s see, after decades, how many people in the Song Dynasty still have confidence in the hope of rejuvenation and are still unable to let go of the humiliation of Jingkang? Have you forgotten the pain and suffering that the Song Dynasty experienced in the recent past?

Nowadays, he is content with the current situation. However, the more he reviews the papers, the more disappointed and cold he becomes.

After he wrote the comment with a brush on the back of the article on the answer sheet in front of him, "I can't help but think about myself", he stood up, picked up the answer sheet, walked to the pile of eliminated answer sheets, and put the answer sheet in his hand away.

He went up. At that moment, his eyes glanced at the exposed corner of an answer sheet below and saw a few words written on it.

"...Today, the captive chiefs are mediocre and cowardly, and their political orders are gradually slackened. Sherong, Di, and their superiors in pommel and horse, are engaged in the idle habits of Zhongzhou. The monarchs and ministers are becoming increasingly lazy. Since ancient times, the barbarians and Di have been strong. There has been no change in less than forty or fifty years.

, Ji Zhizhi's timing and personnel should not be far away. If we don't plan for it at this time, even if there are other changes, how can we take advantage of them. In case of captivity and punishment, a new leader will be established; otherwise, heroes will rise together and their careers will be great.

With his surname, the troubles between the north and the south will begin. Moreover, it has been a long time since we crossed to the south, and our fathers from the Central Plains have died day after day. They grew up in Rong, and how did they know that I existed!"

After reading these few sentences, Shi Hao's brows trembled and his face was shocked. He hurriedly stretched out his hand to take out the answer sheet and read it from the beginning with concentration. After reading an article on Zhongxing, Shi Hao was amazed and overjoyed.

"Well written, well written. It's so majestic and wonderful. This is the essence of this question." Shi Hao praised loudly.

Wan Qixi and Tang Situi both turned to look at Shi Hao in surprise, but heard Shi Hao ask: "Who rejected this answer sheet? Isn't this nonsense? Isn't this a joke?"

Wan Qixi and Tang Situi both stood up and walked over. At a glance, they saw the answer sheet with a black cross marked with a black pen. Looking at the article again, they saw that they had severely criticized the answer sheet and said that they must thoroughly criticize it.

After checking the exam paper, his face suddenly darkened.

"It's the decision of me and Master Tang. What's wrong, Master Shi? Do you have any doubts?" Wan Qixi said in a deep voice.

Shi Hao frowned and said: "Can you tell me what's wrong with this answer sheet? The first few articles are quite satisfactory, but the following article on Zhongxing is a wonderful work. It has sincere words, smooth reasoning, and sharp rhetoric. It is a rare masterpiece.

.This is a rare and good article that I have seen so far. Not to mention the top three, at least it is among the first. How did you eliminate it? It is really unreasonable. Isn’t this misleading?”
Chapter completed!