Among the several essays I had already seen, two discussions were quite good and received very reasonable rankings. Emperor Huian nodded in satisfaction, but when he saw the one marked as "exceptional" further back, only pure surprise and delight remained in his eyes.
After evaluating the one marked as superior, Emperor Huian had no more interest in the remaining three essays. He nodded to the Grand Scholar to indicate that he had no objections to the evaluation results and returned the examination papers and outcomes to him.
The Grand Scholar, seeing the thousands of students stretching their necks, eagerly awaiting the outcome, did not keep them in suspense and declared, "In this palace examination, there is one 'exceptional,' four 'superior,' two 'medium,' and three 'inferior'... Zhao Gao, Qin Hui, and Wei Zhongxian are 'inferior'... Meng Haoran and Du Fu are 'superior'... Mo Qingze is 'exceptional'!"