The provincial exam takes place every three years, and Xiao Liulang was fortunate to have qualified for the scholar's exam right after he was promoted to an academician. However, many other candidates had been eagerly waiting for this day for two solid years.
As the provincial test approached, the atmosphere in the academy became unusually intense, even the masters started focusing less on lecturing and more on providing mock tests for the students to solve.
Xiao Liulang would also pose questions for Lin Chengye. His questions were even more profound and tricky than those given by the masters, leading Lin Chengye to suspect that Xiao Liulang stayed up all night flipping through the classics to pick out sentences no one had ever memorized!
One noon, Gu Yan and a monk named Xiao Jingkong went to take a nap in the side house while Gu Xiaoshun was busy carving wood in the courtyard.
Lin Chengye was utterly overwhelmed by Xiao Liulang's exam questions.