Chapter 12
Chapter 12: Face to Face, Yet Unrecognized
Little Nan had fought her way through exams to this retest, and for the first time she felt time truly pressing down on her shoulders.
She sketched her ideas as she went, scratching a rough outline onto draft paper. Once she had the structure—beginning, turn, and close—she immediately started writing on the official sheet.
She was so focused that when Gu Yan shifted beside her and blocked the sunlight, she didn’t react at all. Her head stayed down, her brush moving without pause.
This wasn’t an act. She genuinely couldn’t spare attention for anything else.
The time was simply too tight.
All the way to now—so much hardship, so much fear.
Whether she could earn that licentiate could decide the life or death of all five siblings. To them, it mattered more than Mount Tai.
No matter what, she had to write this essay—and write it well.
No matter what, she could not fail at the final step.
Gu Yan stopped and studied her closely.
Her eyebrows were too thick, probably drawn on. Her brother’s brows had to be thicker than hers. These were drawn badly—did she do it herself, or did her sister do it for her?
She was too thin, too dark. Her hair hadn’t even been properly combed, a mess of stray strands.
And those hands—small, black, like chicken claws.
Something soft and aching rose in Gu Yan’s chest.
Back then, when she stayed with him and endured until the very end, her hands had been a little better than this. Her childhood must have been far, far harsher than she ever said.
The sunlight stayed blocked.
So this person was standing there, not moving.
Little Nan’s heart jolted. She stopped her brush and lifted her head cautiously, looking up.
When she finally met his gaze, Gu Yan’s spirits surged. He smiled, bright and pleased, as if he had been waiting for this moment.
The sun struck his golden crown and splendid robes, flared across the fabric, and spilled straight into Little Nan’s eyes.
Facing the morning sun, her vision filled with dazzling gold. His crown shone like dawn clouds, a faint halo outlining him—crown blazing, hair a dark mass beyond it.
The glare stabbed at her eyes. Little Nan blinked once, lowered her head again without expression, and the paper in front of her seemed to swim with jumping sparks.
She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand and blinked hard a few times until the flashing eased. Then she bent back over her work and wrote even faster.
That stick of incense was short and thick and burned frighteningly fast. She had to give everything she had.
This essay was the key to whether she could become a licentiate—the key to her family’s life and future.
She flicked him one quick glance, then went back to her paper as if he were nothing at all.
Gu Yan’s smile froze. Shame and irritation surged together. He pressed his lips tight and swept a swift look around.
The examinees all around them were writing furiously. No one looked up. No one looked at him.
Only then did Gu Yan’s chest loosen. He narrowed his eyes at Little Nan for a moment longer, then snapped open his folding fan and strolled on.
Lu Xiu would never treat him like this. This girl was… something else.
Little Nan wrote and recopied at top speed. The incense burned down to a tiny nub.
When it went out, twenty or thirty clerks surged forward. Ruthless as an autumn wind sweeping fallen leaves, they stripped papers from the examinees’ hands.
In front of the Hall of Great Achievement, wails rose everywhere.
Writing an essay in the time it took one stick of incense to burn—how was that even possible?
Did he think everyone was some great talented scholar from the Wei family?
Did he think everyone could dash off a thousand words the moment they mounted a horse?
It was outrageous.
But the examinees only dared to howl. They did not dare curse.
That was Education Commissioner Wei—Talented Scholar Wei.
Barely an hour later, the retest results were posted.
This new list held barely half the names of the previous one.
Li Xue Dong rose from thirty-seventh on the last list to twenty-first.
Hong Zhen Ye fell from ninety-seventh—and dropped off the board entirely.
After confirming the rankings, Little Nan seized Li Jin Zhu’s hand and turned to run.
Once the earlier list had been posted, Li Wen Hua had lost track of Little Nan and Li Jin Zhu. Only when the second list appeared did Li Jin Zhu tug his sleeve as she passed. He finally spotted them and hurried after them back to the inn.
“How did it go?” Li Wen Hua asked, half walking, half running to keep up. “All I heard were numbers—no names.”
“We’ll talk back at the inn,” Li Jin Zhu said, dragging Little Nan along. Both of them kept their heads down, moving fast.
“If you didn’t pass, you didn’t pass,” Li Wen Hua blurted, voice tight. “Those licentiates all have backgrounds. Where would ordinary people find a place among them? Tomorrow morning, first thing, we go home. The fields are busy.”
He said it like scolding, but his heart twisted as he spoke.
This trip—plus the prefecture exam back in April—had chewed through nearly ten taels of silver.
Ruined. Just ruined.
Back at the inn, Little Nan went straight into the room. Li Jin Zhu stopped, turned, and smiled at Li Wen Hua.
“On the road there were too many people, so I couldn’t explain, Third Uncle. Xue Dong placed twenty-first. Tomorrow he has to keep testing.”
“Huh? What?” Li Wen Hua froze. “Twenty-first? That’s… that’s incredible! Ah! Our Xue Dong is something else!” His eyes went so round they looked ready to pop.
“Third Uncle, keep it down,” Li Jin Zhu warned quickly. “Teacher Gao said we can’t show off. If we get too loud, we’ll lose our good fortune.”
“I know, I know!” Li Wen Hua nodded so fast his whole body bobbed. “Don’t worry. Go—go make Xue Dong a bowl of tea. I’ll buy something good to eat. What does our Xue Dong like? Or—no, no—tonight we go out to eat! Right, right, he still has exams tomorrow. Then I’ll have the shopkeeper make a few good dishes!”
The fourth round of the academy exam, the big retest, was—according to Teacher Gao—second only to the main session.
It began again in the dead of night, around three in the morning. Like the retest the day before, the desks were set up in front of the main hall.
When daylight fully arrived, they handed out five sets of prompts and papers: one Four Books essay, one Classics passage, one regulated test poem of five characters and six rhymes, a memorized legal passage of at least two hundred characters, and two Investigation of Things prompts.
Teacher Gao had said the big retest usually offered more than one essay question—you could choose one.
But Little Nan scanned all five sheets and every scrap of paper and saw no mention of “choose.” No one announced any choice either.
This Education Commissioner liked to break patterns and torment examinees. Little Nan didn’t dare discard anything on her own. After one quick pass, she lowered her head and started writing.
Gu Yan followed behind Education Commissioner Wei, strolling slowly as he watched.
The examinees were visibly tense.
This retest had twice the content of the main session, but not even half the time.
That Education Commissioner—like a devil in human clothes.
Gu Yan paused by Little Nan’s desk again, tilting his head to watch her for a heartbeat, then moved on.
The fifth exam that afternoon had only one prompt: either a regulated poem or a fu—you chose one. Little Nan chose the regulated poem.
Gu Yan stopped by her desk. He watched her grimace as she forced rhymes into place, then glanced at the two lines on her draft paper.
His face betrayed him. Both eyebrows jumped up at once.
Lu Xiu was famous for poetry and verse—words like spring water, fine lines in abundance, elegant and clean. But these two lines… could this really be called a poem?
Something felt off.
When the incense burned out, Little Nan finally squeezed a regulated poem onto the page.
Her talent for poetry was as dry as a dead tree in the desert.
After handing in, Little Nan stayed pressed close to Li Jin Zhu, standing under an old tree with her heart in her throat, waiting for the list.
That morning she had nearly failed to finish. That poem in the afternoon…
If it could be called “poetry,” it would be an insult to the word.
She was worried.
A burst of gongs rang inside the examination compound, and the crowd surged.
Li Jin Zhu and Little Nan rose on their toes together.
This year’s list was more than half shorter than usual. The moment it was pasted to the screen wall, someone began reading it out loud.
When Li Jin Zhu heard “sixteenth place, Li Xue Dong,” her eyes went wide.
“Go!” Little Nan tugged her. The two of them shoved through the crowd and ran for the inn.
Hurry back. Hurry and change clothes.
Hurry, hurry.
—
Gu Yan truly followed Education Commissioner Wei for two full days—early in, late out—watching each exam with careful attention.
That alone left Education Commissioner Wei astonished. When Gu Yan readily agreed to attend the flower-hairpin celery-plucking banquet the day after next, Education Commissioner Wei’s eyes actually reddened. He kept patting Gu Yan’s arm, so moved he couldn’t speak.
No wonder Gu Yan’s eldest sister—usually so stingy with ink—had written such a long letter. This nephew of hers really had grown sensible.
Gu Yan shot a look at his uncle dabbing at his eyes, then stared up at the ceiling, wordless.
The first time he recited the opening of the Three Character Classic, the first time he read out a poem, the first time he wrote an essay—his uncle had cried exactly like this.
As his mother always said: her brother’s tears came far too easily.
“Eldest Young Master,” Education Commissioner Wei asked with a careful, flattering smile, “I heard from your mother that you broke off the match with the Shi family? Such a good—”
He met Gu Yan’s slanting look and hurried to explain himself. “It was your mother. She wrote a long letter—this thick, this long. That miss from the Shi family was raised by your mother’s own eyes. You and she grew up—”
Gu Yan snapped his fan shut and answered with earnest seriousness, “We’re too familiar. We know each other too well. If I marry her back into the family, it’ll be boring.”
“Ah?” Education Commissioner Wei froze, then fell silent.
What kind of answer was that?
“My marriage needs Uncle to worry about it?” Gu Yan asked. “If Mother is discussing anything, she’d talk to Aunt. That letter was written to Aunt, wasn’t it?”
Education Commissioner Wei shot him a hard look and snorted.
This nephew was excellent in every way—except for his hobby of stabbing straight at sore spots.
Gu Yan tapped him with the fan. “Over there—who stays in the county and who gets assigned to the prefecture. Uncle should worry about that. That’s your real work.”
“There are fixed rules,” Education Commissioner Wei said, and the two of them walked, one after the other, toward the long table on the other side of the room.