Chapter 49

At around the hour of You (around 5 PM), another group of clerks came to sell candles to the candidates. They carried two baskets of white candles and went from cell to cell, asking if the candidates needed any.

No words were needed; a shake or a nod of the head was enough to communicate.

The candidate who had been intimidated by Zhao Hongrun earlier seemed to be waiting for this batch of white candles.

Finally, the clerk carrying the basket approached this candidate, waving the white candles in front of him, as if asking if he needed any.

The candidate glanced at the clerk and silently made a gesture.

The gesture was quite interesting: he extended his index finger with his left hand and spread out his right hand, indicating that he wanted six white candles.

Seeing this gesture, the clerk seemed to understand and first handed over one white candle from the left basket, then took out five more from the other basket, placing them on the examination desk one by one.

The candidate glanced at the white candle from the left basket, placed it to the right of the other five, then randomly picked one from the five and placed it in the bowl, making a "please" gesture to the clerk.

The clerk understood and took out a fire tong from the basket, lighting the candle for the candidate.

The clerk left, and the candidate continued to sit at the desk, seemingly engrossed in thinking about the questions.

A single white candle could burn for about half an hour. The candidate lit the five white candles one by one, which took about two hours, bringing the time to around the hour of Hai (around 9 PM), just before the hour of Zi (midnight).

By the time it was nearly midnight, it was very late. Most of the candidates in the cells of the Confucius Temple had already curled up on the stone beds covered with straw mats, wrapped in dirty, thin, and moldy cotton quilts.

However, some candidates had not yet fallen asleep, such as the one mentioned earlier.

At this moment, even the exam supervisors holding torches rarely came here, and most of the nearby students had already rested. It was then that he finally picked up the last white candle.

This white candle seemed to have some peculiarities, but from the outside, it looked no different from the previous five.

The peculiarity lay in...

"Snap."

With a slight crack, the candidate broke off the lower half of the white candle.

It turned out the peculiarity was inside the lower half of the white candle.

The candidate listened carefully, and seeing no movement around, he quickly pulled out a very thin roll of paper from the center of the lower half of the candle, where the wick should have been. The paper was about as thick as the tip of a chopstick.

He carefully unfolded the roll of paper, which grew larger and larger until it became a palm-sized sheet.

On the paper, someone had written densely packed, tiny characters with a mouse hair brush.

If the other candidates had seen it, they would have been shocked, for the paper clearly contained the answers to today's exam questions.

Seeing no one around, the candidate quickly copied the tiny characters onto his answer sheet, finishing in a short while.

Then, he placed the paper on the candle flame, quickly put it in the bowl, and broke the hollow lower half of the candle, placing it all in the bowl.

The paper burned quickly, leaving only warm, soft candle wax in the bowl. He pressed the hard pieces of broken candle into the thick layer of wax.

When the last white candle burned out, the wax it produced covered the wax in the bowl, forming a large, thick, opaque white wax block, erasing all evidence.

Thus, the candidate went to sleep on the stone bed, waiting for the examiners to collect the papers the next morning.

A perfect act of cheating, flawless.

What he did not expect was that on the roof of the cell, a small tile had been removed, and a pair of eyes silently watched his every move.

Not until the candidate lay on the stone bed and fell asleep in an uncomfortable position did the eyes disappear.

Shortly after, the owner of the eyes quietly went to the side hall of the Confucius Temple, waking up the Eighth Prince, Zhao Hongrun, who was sleeping soundly on the bed.

Indeed, the owner of the eyes was none other than Wei Jiao, Zhao Hongrun's bodyguard.

Other royal guards were also present, tasked with covering for Wei Jiao, pretending to patrol the area to avoid drawing attention to him lying on the roof of the cell.

For this, Wei Jiao had changed into a black night suit.

"Bring me a basin of clear water."

The awakened Zhao Hongrun yawned and said.

One of the royal guards immediately scooped some water from a bucket in the corner and poured it into a basin.

Zhao Hongrun got up, walked to the basin, and splashed his face with the cold water, making his sleepy eyes gradually become bright.

"How was it?" He asked in a low voice, sitting down on the bed.

Wei Jiao bowed and replied in a low voice, "As the prince predicted, there was indeed something written on the white candle." He then recounted everything he had witnessed, making Zhao Hongrun repeatedly exclaim in surprise.

It had to be said that the meticulousness of this cheating method was so rigorous that it left him amazed.

Whether it was the method of delivering the cheat sheet, the timing of the cheating, or the method of destroying the evidence, it made Zhao Hongrun feel as if he had lived a wasted life.

'It seems the Ministry of Personnel has a sophisticated cheating system...' Zhao Hongrun thought to himself.

Based on his judgment, there were certainly more than just one candidate cheating in the exam. Among the over 2,600 candidates, there must be similar cases of cheating, though he had not yet caught them.

From the method of cheating, Zhao Hongrun deduced that the number of people involved in the cheating must be considerable. First, there must be people writing the answers, the tiny characters on the paper, and they must be more than one person. After all, if the cheating candidates wrote the same answers, wouldn't it expose them?

Second, the clerks selling the candles, who might just be intermediaries, but more likely were following orders from above. In that case, their superiors might be the examiners of this exam.

"What is the prince thinking?" the royal guard He Miao asked curiously.

Zhao Hongrun looked at him in confusion, "What?"

"I mean, since we have caught them, why doesn't the prince report them?"

"Where's the evidence?" Zhao Hongrun countered.

"The evidence is..." He Miao started to speak, but then realized that the evidence of this cheating method was destroyed on the spot, leaving no trace.

"Isn't there still the evidence of the clerks distributing the candles?" the royal guard Zhou Pu reminded, thinking he had a good point.

Zhao Hongrun smiled and shook his head, "Don't you understand the concept of sacrificing a pawn to save the king?... Even if you catch the clerks distributing the candles, what can you do? If the officials claim it was their subordinates acting on their own, even with the testimony of the clerks, it might not be enough to bring them down. Don't forget, they have the support of the Crown Prince."

"Even intercepting the batch of problematic candles won't work?" the royal guard Shen Yu asked, frowning, having just woken up.

"It could, but the impact wouldn't be strong enough..." Zhao Hongrun shook his head and then a strange smile appeared on his face, "If we're going to play, let's play big."

"..." The royal guards looked at each other, not understanding their prince's intentions.

After all, they were his trusted confidants, so Zhao Hongrun didn't hide anything. He called the royal guards closer and whispered his plan to them. They all stared in shock, their faces showing a mix of awe and excitement.

"Go and prepare!"

"Yes!"

Wasting no time, the royal guards went to prepare, while Zhao Hongrun returned to the bed to sleep. It wasn't that he was lazy; he just needed to get enough rest to carry out the plan.

When the sun was high in the sky, Zhao Hongrun finally woke up.

The first thing he did was to bring two royal guards to the exam hall, using the convenience of patrolling to memorize the questions for the final exam.

The final exam was "Chenlue," a policy question, which could be divided into five categories: "Case Judgments," "Construction," "People's Livelihood," "Finance," and "Music Bureau." Each category had two case questions, and candidates were required to answer the questions they were confident in, with no limit on the number of answers.

Of course, the more questions a candidate answered correctly, the more options they would have for future official positions; conversely, if they only answered questions in one category, they would be assigned to that department, with very limited options.

There were no other restrictions.

After memorizing the questions, Zhao Hongrun pretended to patrol the exam hall for a while and then returned to the resting room.

By this time, the other royal guards had already prepared the ink, paper, and brushes.

Zhao Hongrun thought for a moment and then began to write two short and exquisite articles on the "People's Livelihood" category of the five exam questions.

After about an incense stick's time, the two articles were completed.

He carefully reviewed them, made some minor adjustments, and then put down the brush.

"Bring me a mouse hair brush."

A royal guard quickly handed him the mouse hair brush and arranged the palm-sized pieces of paper in front of him.

Zhao Hongrun took the mouse hair brush and carefully copied the articles he had just written onto the small pieces of paper in tiny characters.

For several hours, he hardly took a break.

Writing tiny characters with a mouse hair brush was already extremely tiring, and he had to copy dozens or even hundreds of them. By the end, his right hand was so sore he could barely lift it.

"That's it." After finishing the last copy, Zhao Hongrun put the mouse hair brush aside and instructed the royal guards Gao Kuo and Zhong Zhao, "You two take these to the Ministry of Works immediately. Ask the skilled craftsmen to replicate the white candles and hide these papers inside. Make sure to have them ready and delivered to me by dusk."

"Understood!" Gao Kuo and Zhong Zhao, who had already understood the prince's plan, carefully wrapped the papers in cloth and hid them in their clothes before quietly leaving the Confucius Temple.

'If hundreds of candidates in the exam hall write hundreds of identical answers... I'm sure it will be a very shocking scene, heh!'

Shaking his sore right arm, Zhao Hongrun smiled maliciously.

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