Starting boy Ma Kongqun

Chapter 321: Three strategies to pacify the captives, three yuan to achieve victory

On the fifth day of March, the list will be released. Because the apricot flowers are in full bloom, it is called the "apricot list".

For all those who came to the bottom of the list, the first thing they saw was naturally the top position. The two bright words "Ma Ji" caught their eyes. Some people admired them, some envied them, and they also hated them, but there was no one. People suspected that Ma Jicai was not worthy of his position, and further suspected that he was under the shadow of his teacher Gu Yong.

With the turmoil after the year, Ma Ji's name has become known all over the world, especially the essay "Eight Sentences of the Dragon Matchmaker", which won him a high scholarly reputation.

As his reputation grew, the poems and essays written by Ma Ji when he was in the south of the Yangtze River began to be circulated in the capital. Many people who saw him praised him and praised him, thinking that his talent was world-class, and "the best in Jiangsu and Zhejiang" was no longer enough.

Under Ma Ji, there is Zong Zimei, Ning Caichen is ranked eleventh, and Jia Fengzhi, who returned from fairyland to the world of mortals, is ranked nineteenth.

For a time, there was an endless stream of people visiting Ma Ji in the name of congratulations, and many people were speculating whether Ma Ji could continue to win the number one position and become the second person to win the honor of "three consecutive titles" since the founding of the Yu Dynasty. .

Gu Yong was originally worried that his disciple was too young and had an unstable mind, and would be lost in the praise of everyone, which would affect the subsequent palace examination. However, seeing that Ma Ji only received the visitors on the first day of the results, The next day, he hung a wooden sign outside the house saying "Prepare for the exam, no visitors allowed". He closed the door and concentrated on studying, and he felt relieved with joy.

Three days later, the results of the martial arts examination were also announced, and Wang Shixiu topped the list.

March 15th is the period for the civil examination.

Li Hui looked at the time and announced that the exam would begin.

Among everyone, Zong Zimei, Ning Caichen, and Jia Fengzhi were relatively calm.

At that time, an internal official transferred the test questions to the officials of the Ministry of Rites, who then handed them to each candidate one by one and guided them to take their seats.

After receiving the order, the candidates unsealed the test questions and only glanced at them. Many of them frowned and dropped their faces.

Emperor Qin, Wu of Han, Zong of Tang, Yuzu...these masters of great talent and strategy could only suppress the barbarians on the northern grasslands for a while. No one has ever fundamentally solved this problem, but where do they start?
But no matter how difficult it was, even if the question had to be answered, after some hard thinking, some people bit the bullet and started writing.

Most people did not expect that Dayu had just won a great victory in the north, and even the enemy chief Botu Khan was proclaimed in front of the battle. Seeing that peace in the north was in sight within a few years, his majesty was looking forward to Shu, thinking of settling down once and for all.

More than 300 tributes who were famous in the Xingban went straight to the Fengtian Hall in the imperial city, where the examination room had been set up by officials from Honglu Temple and Guanglu Temple as early as the day before.

Li Hui issued an order to issue the test questions he had drafted himself.

Then all the officials left, leaving only the examination room officials present.

This is just because although the test question this time is about current affairs as usual, the proposition is "How to eradicate border dangers on the grassland?"

Not long after, Long'an Emperor Li Hui entered the Fengtian Hall in his regular clothes and sat down. All the officials and candidates saluted him together.

The officials of the Ministry of Rites directed the candidates to line up on the east and west sides of His Highness Danqi. Ma Ji and Zong Zimei were at the head of the two lines. All civil and military officials also attended the ceremony.

In fact, they don't know much about this aspect.

But the first two often heard Ma Ji and Wang Shixiu discussing military strategies. Many times they used the prairie barbarians as imaginary enemies to deduce. Although most of them were limited to war, they also had many insights that they could refer to.

The latter was living in the house of his "nephew" Fu Tianchou, and this aspect was also covered in his daily chats with Fu Tianchou, the minister of the Ministry of War.

As usual, Li Hui only needs to attend the opening ceremony and can leave after the exam starts. But this time, he stayed in the hall, looking at every candidate in the hall seemingly casually, but when he glanced at Zong Zimei, who was sitting in the front row, he always stayed a little longer than others.

When he saw Zong Zimei, he only showed a slight hesitation at first, but soon he seemed to have made up his mind. Judging from his flying brushstrokes, it must be the spring of literary thoughts, and he immediately showed a subtle smile.

Then he looked at Ma Ji, who was also sitting in the front row, and saw that he had written most of a piece of paper in a flash. Although he couldn't see the content of what he wrote, he could only see the leisurely look on his face and the calmness with which he wrote. , you will know that you are already confident.

The prescribed end time of the palace examination is before sunset, and candidates will also receive a free lunch at noon.

But Ma Ji stopped writing early because he didn't want to put too much pressure on other candidates and just sat down to relax.

It was not until noon, when some candidates had completed the test questions and were carefully checking and proofreading, that he raised his hand to call the examiner to collect his test paper, stood up and walked out leisurely.

Shortly after Ma Ji, Zong Zimei also turned in before lunch.

After watching Zong Zimei leave in the palace, Li Hui also ordered Chen to go to the study room to handle the official duties that had delayed him for half a day.

Before sunset, all candidates' test papers have been handed in. The examiner has completed the collection and sent them to the sealing officer for sealing.

There is one big difference between the palace examination and the provincial examination and the general examination, that is, the sealed examination papers do not need to be transcribed and are directly forwarded to Dongge.

Early the next morning, seventeen examiners appointed by Li Hui entered the East Pavilion and began to review more than three hundred examination papers.

Since there was only one day for grading, they did not have time to review the papers in detail. After roughly sorting out the good and bad, they selected the ten papers that were recognized as the best and submitted them to Li Hui for review, and he decided on the top candidates and their rankings.

As usual, the selected test papers will be read to the emperor by the examiner.

But this time Li Hui skipped this step and directly went through the ten test papers one by one.

When he saw that the second test paper contained Zong Zimei's handwriting that he had secretly memorized, he was completely relieved. First, he read the test paper carefully and saw that some of the opinions in it should be limited to Although he was a little immature due to his own experience, it was generally considered a good strategy for the country. Even after reading it, he found it somewhat enlightening and couldn't help but praise it greatly.

Then Li Hui looked at other test papers, and the second thing that attracted his attention was Ma Jina's calligraphy, which is both unique and unique in poetry.

He reviewed it carefully and saw that this article was called "Pinglu Ce", which proposed three strategies for the proposition of "eradicating border dangers on the grassland":

One is called "military expedition". He advocated taking advantage of this great defeat of the Northern Barbarians to send troops deep into the grasslands as soon as possible to completely break up and cripple the barbarians. It also mentions several military strategies. Although they are all in a few words, they are concise and concise, and they are closely related to the military situation. They are by no means empty talk.

The second is "enfeoffment". He advocated that after conquering the grassland, we should not abandon it and implement a system of enfeoffment. The grassland should be divided into hundreds of large and small territories. The leaders of the Northern Barbarians should be ennobled, but officials should be stationed in Dayu. The Northern Barbarian herdsmen should keep their own territory and strictly prohibit cross-border nomadic herding. , thus turning the Northern Barbarians into a piece of loose sand.

The third one is "respecting religion". It advocated promoting Tibetan Buddhism on the grasslands, giving preferential treatment to monks, and attracting young and strong men who lived in poverty to become monks. On the one hand, they used Buddhist teachings to soften their temperaments, and on the other hand, they used precepts to restrict them from marrying and having children, which invisibly reduced the effect of Ding.

An article of about a thousand words made Li Hui read it over and over for half an hour.

After a long time, he pondered for a moment with a somewhat complicated expression, and immediately marked Ma Ji's test paper as the top one, Zongzi's beautiful point as the second place, and randomly selected one of the papers as the third best.

On the day when the list was released, everyone saw that Ma Ji had indeed topped the list and achieved the reputation of "three yuan and the third place", and they all praised him for a while.

(End of this chapter)