They Jilted the Broken Scholar, So I Married Him novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: The Pre-test

Lanxi's POV

Chengzhi told me everything on the way to the county hall, walking fast, with his brush case under his arm.

I had one question, and I asked it at the canal bridge.

"Did she say what she would do if you refused?"

"She said the stall stands on her father's land."

I had to stop in the middle of the lane for a moment.

"Then we will have to be quick," I said. "She sent us ginseng first."

"A very good root," Chengzhi said, and for the first time since the snow I saw him nearly smile. "I told her so."

I took his arm after that.

I didn't care who in the lane saw it.

The county hall had a stone courtyard with a covered gallery on three sides.

The candidates sat on mats in the open under the eaves, each with a low desk.

The examiners sat at the far end at a long table, and the clerk with the register sat beside them.

Half of Willow Lane had come to stand in the courtyard behind a rope.

I saw the cobbler's wife, and the three aunties from the dumpling stall, and, near the back with his hands in his sleeves, the soup man who had come to my stall every morning for a year.

My mother was not there.

She was minding the stall, and she had told me, quite firmly, that she would hear about it from someone who could stand it.

Bai Zhiyuan sat in the front row in his dark blue silk.

He turned once and saw Chengzhi, and the smile he gave was warm and sorrowful and showed all of his teeth.

The Hua carriage stood at the gate.

Ruolan sat in the gallery beside her father in a rose-colored cloak, and she did not look at me at all.

"Candidates will be examined in order of rank," said the chief examiner, a lean man with a gray beard. "Master Bai Zhiyuan."

Zhiyuan rose and bowed.

"I was at the prefect's table when you spoke," the examiner said. "I wept, I admit. The Board of Rites will want to hear the whole of On the Rising River. Take it from the beginning."

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