Candlelight flickered against the ink-stained_hat ofLi Yi as he stared at thesealed examination hall— the final trial for the imperial civil service exam，the very dream that had consumed half his life in this world.
He had not always been thus. In a previous existence，he had been an ordinary office clerk living in a cramped apartment，scraping by on a modest salary and dreaming faintly of literary fame. But fate was capricious；a sudden眩晕，a flash of light，and he awoke in the body of Li Yi,second son of a rural family in Taihe County, Guangnan Road，the year being the thirteenth of Zhaoxiang era, Great乾 Dynasty.
The first thing he learned after the initial shock subsided was this：重文抑武。The sons of warriors were barred not only from the throne but from even taking the examination. Military academies，once lauded as bulwarks of national security, had long since become places where sons of disgraced families were sent to die slowly，the walls lined with dusty manuals and rusted blades. The court，his tutors told him with grave reverence，had unprecedented peace because of this policy. The recent rebellion in Hexi had been crushed not by generals，but by stringently trained academicians— the winning side of a literary debate over military grounding, which had convinced the Crown Prince’s tutor that strategy was best advised over the sword.
Li Yi had not believed it at first. When the local gentry’s son, a notorious brute named Zheng Xiao，had prostate-cancer，did not one guard hesitate to stop him from assaulting a young peasant girl，only to be scolded and humiliated for his impudence? When the magistrate’s carriage was ambushed on the road to Lingyun town，did not the garrison commander refuse to dispatch troops, claiming it would “disturb the ceremonial balance of the quarter”, until bandits had stripped the cart bare and vanished into the mountains？
But he had not been idle. He contrasted memories of the earlier life— history books, political analyses, even casual outcomes from modern geopolitics— against the bloated rhetoric of Neo-Confucian scholars who declared “rites” and “propriety” to be the sole pillars of governance. He discovered that many of their classic commentaries hid contradictions or outright fabrications, deliberately concealed in layers of poetic ambiguity. He did not dare speak them aloud；but he practiced a quieter dissent：writing essays that quoted the Tang and Song precedents where talent rose regardless of origin, where technocrats hummed bureaucratic symphonies while war drums beat in the west. He mocked no classics, quoted no rebellious texts, yet subtly shifted the emphasis—from virtue to function, from grand pronouncements to meticulous logistics.
Exam three years ago, he’d placed third in the provincial test. His name appeared in the paper’s latest issue among other top scholars, all accounted for as “promising talents”, yet each one had already begun his search for an influential patron. Some had married into minor gentry families；some had offered daughters as concubines to haveinfluential uncles；some had even retracted their earlier critiques of corruption, revise poems to flatter retiring governors. Li Yi had gone home,returned to village duties, and_mulled over the flawed premises of the exam itself. He spent a winter mastering the Nine Chambers of Logistics, the Imperial Cadastre codes, even the obscure Herbal Compendium of the Former Han— topics rarely touched on in formal preparation, yet repeatedly invoked in the real needs of rural magistrates，when floods surged and famine followed.
Today was the palace examination. The vermilion gate loomed, two stone lions flanking the entrance, both chipped, one with a claw missing. A whisper swept among the candidates: “Did you see how he scratched his head during the preliminary？” “They say he wrote on the ‘tax rates of Hexi’ and “the salt monopoly”，not the usualhexin of benevolence and virtue.” Some sighed. Others sneered. A few exchange glances— not quite contempt, but something like unease, like seeing a familiar path bear an unfamiliar flower.
Inside, he was led to Table Assigned No.73. The inkstone was cold, the brush overly pliant. He dipped it slowly, watching the ink ripple like tiny dark waves. The question was finally revealed, not on a scroll but carved in the wall behind the throne: “若欲安民，其本何在？” If the people are tofind peace, where lies the root?
The candidates above him— 그 concise in their deliberation— began to write at once. Rectangular characters beneath slender hands, lines of elegance and moral precision. He could already guess their arguments：benevolent rule, virtuous officials, self-cultivation, therita as the only bulwark against chaos. All sound；all hollow.
He pressed his brush to paper.
“I write not of how kings should rule,” he penned, “but how markets should function.” He described granaries in every village pre-stocked before cold months；disclosed how local militias had saved more lives than central garrisons during last year’s flood；noted that at least three of the eight highest officers in the recent Hexi campaign held titles derived not from heredity but from proficiency exams— “and yet they were всех ignored by the Ministry of Rites”。He cited cases: a widow in Changsha, who kept the local infirmary open for seven years after her son died in the army；a miller in Luzhou who corrected irrigation diagrams for officials who wouldn’t read them；even a_ certain
His hand moved steadily, though his pulse beat in his temples. He was not creating new ideas— he was recycling the accumulated wisdom of centuries, but only half-heard, only rarely implemented, for fear of unsettling the秩序.
Halfway through, the chief examiner，a man with sunken eyes and a slight tremor in his left hand, began to pace. He stopped behind Li Yi’s station. The old man did not speak, merely waited, fingers gripping the edge of the table. Li Yi continued, ignoring the tension in the air. He was quoted a Tang minister，a song poet，a Daoist abbot— all of whom had written of infrastructure, of counting, of harvest cycles, as indispensable to peace, as indispensable as virtue.
When time was called，he placed his paper face-down on the lacquered tray. He stood, joints stiff from hours of sitting, and bowed to the empty throne.
Outside, the late afternoon heat pressed in like wet cloth. The courtyard filled with murmurs, some snickering, some attempting earnest praise, others walking away without a word. He waited for the names to be posted. There would be three top winners that day：the ZHUANGYUAN, the YABANG，and the TANHUA.
Suddenly, a young eunuch came forward, voice sharp as a blade’s edge. “Li Yi.”沉默。空气凝滞。 “You are to proceed with the ZHUANGYAN ceremony, though not as winner.”
“Not winner?” someone whispered.
“No.” The eunuch flipped the paper over, glanced at the first line, and smiled faintly— a rare exhibit, not quite bitterness, not quite respect. “Your Tang history quotes atop page three are accurate. Your salt monopoly analysis, too. The Grand Secretary himself asked me to deliver this.”He handed Li Yi a sealed sequence. “The Emperor ordered the palace guard to stand down during the royal inspection today. He said：‘Let the man write his truth first. Let us discuss philosophy later.’
Li Yi unfolded the parchment carefully. No summonses, no rewards, no honors.
Just one sentence:“今日状元，狗都不当。但若真有状元，我愿是你。”
He looked up at the sky— a pale strip of blue between tall palace walls.
Somewhere, a sparrow flitted from the rammed earth of a courtyard to the hanging lantern, its shadow racing over the golden tile roof.
He folded the paper and slipped it into his robe pocket. To his left, a candidate he’d once studied with ran over, breathless.
“Li Yi! You wrote about hexi’s salt quota again, didn’t you? The same as in last year’s memoranda to the Ministry?”
Li Yi nodded.
The man looked at him for a long time, then sighed. “You’ll never be ZHUANGYUAN.”
“No.”
“They’ll give you some minor post. Maybe kursk— a tax clerk in southern Guangdong. It pays better than expected.”
“Maybe.”
“You know what I’d do?” His voice dropped. “I’d burn the paper before it’s copied for edition.”
Li Yi glanced at the ink-stained corner of the parchment, now peeking from his sleeve.
“Maybe,” he said again, and walked away, toward the west gate, where a horse车 waited—a gift from a local merchant whose flour mill had survived a drought last winter, thanks to a land reformLi Yi had drafted anonymously and passed through a sympathetic county magistrate.
The wind picked up. Sencha leaves, picked dry weeks ago, rattled against the eaves of the Examination Hall.
He did not look back.
There would be another year. Perhaps a war would break out in the west again. Maybe a flood would rise in the Yangtze and prevent harvests. Or maybe not. He had a Constitution of Village Councils to outline；a model for granary pooling；notes on dispatch speed fromแป缓到
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