The evaluation method of the Imperial Examination has its own set of procedures. Although the emperor is the chief examiner, the emperor will not personally review these hundreds of articles one by one. So in fact, eight readers will conduct the preliminary evaluation, and then select ten articles to be submitted to the emperor for review.

.

The eight reviewers will read through all the policy answer sheets. There is no need to write comments, just mark them. The quality of the articles is divided into five grades, using five marks: circle, pointed, dot, straight, and cross.

To evaluate. For example, those who think the article is good will mark a circle, and those who think the article is poor will put a cross to evaluate. In this way, after the eight readers have completed the evaluation, the ranking can be evaluated based on the statistics of the five marks, and the top ten will be taken out.

Send the name to the emperor's royal mantle.

This process actually takes several days, so the results of the palace examination will have to wait for several days before the list is announced. The days before that are the last days for the new scholars who were listed in this spring to become ordinary people.

…

On the morning of the second day of the imperial examination, Chunni was planning to send someone to Sanyuanfang to inform her father about Fang Zian's high school scholarship. But who knew that before she even left the house, Lao Zhangtou came from Sanyuanfang with a beaming face.

Originally, during this period of time, Lao Zhangtou was very dissatisfied because Chunni rarely went to the noodle shop to help with the preparation. Chunni invited him to come to the house several times, but he refused to come. On the contrary, Chunni

Ni went to visit him several times. Every time Chun Ni went back, Lao Zhangtou complained that she had forgotten her father after getting married and would not come back to help him. He also said that Fang Zian had not come to see him for so many days, which was not true at all.

She looked down on him as her father-in-law and had no respect for him at all. Chunni went there several times and listened to what he said every day. She quarreled with him angrily twice and got sulky several times.

But today, Lao Zhangtou took the initiative to come, and he was smiling all over his face. The wrinkles on his face seemed to be about to explode, and his mouth could not be closed from the smile.

"Let me tell you. Back in Sanyuanfang, I said that Zi'an was not a thing in the pond, and I was right. When my Chunni got married, some people said that I was blind and that I was looking for someone with no money and no power.

My son-in-law also gave his daughter as a concubine. They don’t know that I have set my sights on Zi An Bineng’s high school career and his career. These people don’t understand anything and have no vision. Bah!”

In the main hall of the back house, Lao Zhangtou boasted in front of Fang Zian and Chun Ni, which made Chun Ni frown.

"Dad, can you please stop saying a few words? Whether my husband passes the imperial examination or not, whether he will be successful or not, does it have anything to do with whether I want to marry him? Even if my husband fails the examination, I am still willing to marry him. Can you, old man, not do it?

You are talking nonsense. What you are saying is that my father and daughter are very scheming. They married my husband in advance so that he can become a Jinshi. What do you think of me when you talk like this?"

"Oops, I said the wrong thing." Lao Zhangtou then realized that he had spoken without thinking, and Fang Zian felt a little uncomfortable. So he looked at Fang Zian in panic, fearing that Fang Zian would be unhappy.

Fang Zian didn't care about these words. He knew that his father-in-law was like this. He just liked to brag. He didn't have any bad intentions and he was pretty good to himself. If he won the imperial examination, could he not be allowed to brag?

"Father-in-law, the neighbors in Sanyuanfang should all know about this," Fang Zian said with a smile.

"Everyone knows, everyone knows. Of course they know about such a big event, and this is the first Jinshi produced by Sanyuanfang in ten years. Everyone is very happy. They are all noisy

They were clamoring to come see you and beg for a drink. Anyway, I refused them all. With so many people, how much money does a glass of wine cost per person? Don't waste the money." Old Zhangtou said.

Fang Zian smiled bitterly and said: "I just wanted to congratulate you out of kindness and just drank the wedding wine. It didn't cost a few bucks. Besides, wouldn't this make you look good? I know that when Chunni married me, some people said weird things, which made you very embarrassed."

Well. Let's do this, Chunni, you and your father-in-law go back to Sanyuanfang, put out a flowing banquet and treat everyone to a banquet. First, I would like to thank the folks in Sanyuanfang for their usual care, although they don't take much care of me.

But at least they helped when my parents passed away. Secondly, they also had a long face and told them that it was not a loss for you to marry me. My father-in-law’s noodle shop will do better in the future, and others will not dare to bully him.

. It only costs one or two hundred taels of silver, which is a big deal."

Chunni smiled and said, "Is this necessary?"

Fang Zian said: "This is etiquette. After all, we are from Sanyuanfang, so we have to leave a reputation, understand? In the eyes of others, we are called not forgetting our roots, and we are called wealth and wealth but not forgetting our neighbors. This is a good reputation, understand.

What?"

Chuni suddenly understood, nodded and said: "Then just listen to your husband, I will go back with dad to take care of this matter in a while."

After Chunni and Lao Zhangtou left, Fang Zian packed up and headed out. He hadn't been to Su Heng's place for many days, and he didn't know how Su Heng's progress was. While he was busy with the results and the palace examination these days,

He didn't even show up, so Su Heng must be very dissatisfied. Taking advantage of the gap between the results of the palace examination, he had to go and see the progress and come up with an idea together.

Half an hour later, Fang Zian had already ridden outside Su Heng's small courtyard in the forest. After getting off the horse and knocking on the door, Sister-in-law Su quickly opened the courtyard door and said with a smile: "Hey, Mr. Fang, you are here.

My husband said yesterday that you were nowhere to be seen and I don’t know what you were doing. You should go to the backyard. He is very busy these days."

Fang Zian hurried to the Su family's backyard. The backyard was in a mess. There were bricks, mud, and wood everywhere. It was a mess. In the open space in the northwest corner of the yard, a clay circle blast furnace had been erected. Tall bricks

The stone chimney is three to four feet high, and the entire stove looks like a gourd with a straw inserted into it, which is really strange.

Fang Zian immediately spotted Su Heng who was busy on the top of the blast furnace with several craftsmen. His hair was disheveled and his clothes were dirty and covered in mud. He didn't look like a master at all. Su Heng's son was standing below.

Su Lei saw Fang Zian. The boy had a good relationship with Fang Zian because Fang Zian rescued him last time. Fang Zian often came to Su's house some time ago, and he became very familiar with the boy.

"Brother Fang, you are here. Dad, dad, Brother Fang is here." Su Zheng shouted loudly.

Su Heng squinted his eyes and saw Fang Zian walking towards him in clean clothes. He was furious. He shouted, "Fang Zian, are you really the one to be the shopkeeper?"

Fang Zian hurriedly apologized, but Su Heng just said a few words about the craftsman, then climbed down from the ladder and came to Fang Zian.

"Hey, this stove is so majestic. This is the first time I have seen a gourd-shaped iron smelting stove. Thank you for your hard work, Master Su." Fang Zian said with a smile.

Su Heng glared at him, washed his hands in the bucket, tidied himself up a little, called Fang Zian to come to the thatched shed in the middle of the yard, took a few sips of tea and said, "If you don't come here, what will happen to me?" I don’t know whether I should build the stove or not.”

Fang Zian asked hurriedly: "Why?"

Su Hengdao: "What's the use of building it? The owner ran away, and the cooperators were nowhere to be seen. There was not even a person to discuss it. Also, you said you paid for all the costs. This stove cost two thousand taels of silver. Why don't you Do I have to pay from my own pocket?"

Fang Zian was surprised and said: "Two thousand taels of silver are gone? Just build this?"

Su Hengdao: "What do you mean? You dislike my furnace? Let me tell you, this smelting furnace is a secret of my family. Don't you see that it is different?"

Fang Zian smiled and said: "It looks like a gourd, why is that?"

Su Hengdao: "The raw materials we want to make require special refined iron. Can you also see that it is shaped like a gourd? That means there are two smelting chambers. Do you understand? First, go through the upper layer to smelt and remove the impurities. Then enter the lower furnace chamber two. After smelting for the first time, you can smelt all kinds of refined iron you need by adding the required things inside. Do you think this gourd shape is good-looking? Just the inner furnace liner is different. It is coated with sifted fine sand and mud. It was brought from the Huangni River, which flows directly from the canal in the north. I asked the craftsmen to pound all the fine sand into dust for a whole day, pass it through a sieve and mix it with the clay of the Huangni River. The inner wall of the furnace can withstand higher temperatures. The temperature must be high enough to smelt the required refined iron, do you understand?"

Fang Zian naturally didn't understand, but after hearing what he said, it seemed like he was putting a lot of effort into it, so he should be right. In short, he could only listen to Su Heng in terms of specific operations. It's just that the money was spent a bit quickly. That's okay. I haven’t done anything yet, and I’ve lost several thousand taels of silver. If this continues, I’m afraid the little money I have on hand will be wiped out soon.

"You came just in time. The stove is going to be lit tonight, and you must be there. In addition, I have to ask you to buy charcoal. It must be good pine charcoal, at least one or two thousand kilograms. This stove will burn itself first. Only after the furnace has been burnt to a fire-resistant level can formal smelting be carried out. It must be burned for at least a day and a night. Two thousand kilograms of pine charcoal is almost enough."

"Two thousand catties of pine charcoal?" He clicked his tongue and shouted, "Can't we use firewood? Pine charcoal is too expensive."

Su Heng looked at Fang Zian with disdain and said: "If you don't want to build your steam engine, just say so. The firewood is not strong enough to evenly harden the furnace liner, so it is impossible to smelt fine iron and steel, and the parts cannot be made. I don't care. , if you can’t get charcoal, this matter can’t continue.”

Fang Zian scratched his head and was speechless, so he could only nod his head and said: "That's all, I'll just buy it. What else do you want? I'll buy it too."

Su Hengdao: "I'll go buy iron ingots with you tomorrow. The raw materials in iron ingots from different places are different, so you can't buy them blindly. We have to buy them carefully. For example, the iron ingots produced in Nghe An County contain a lot of copper. This After smelting, this kind of iron ingot has a tougher texture and is very ductile, but the hardness is slightly lower. It is very good for making boilers because it is not easy to burst. It contains various irons with different compositions, each with its own characteristics, some are brittle and hard, and some are not easy to burst. It's soft and tough and can be used for different purposes. When smelting it, you can't just cook it in one furnace. You have to smelt it according to its characteristics. Do you understand?"
Chapter completed!