Pei Gonggui

This trip to Hanlin, I can't count how many times Pei Jun went to Hanlin in his two lifetimes.

In fact, the Imperial Academy, as the place where the imperial court examines and discusses the system, elaborates documents, and discusses political affairs, has been a place for gathering literary scholars and cultivating talents since ancient times. It is expensive, and it can be used as the best stepping stone on the road to promotion in the future. In addition, the Hanlin official blog, economics and history, and knowledge of classics and government, and the transfer to a real job is full of the Confucian saying that "reaching the world will benefit the world", which makes " "Dian Hanlin" has become a practical and glorious grace, which is often the lifelong wish of scholars and Confucian scholars.

As for the people of the world who study ginseng, their talents are high or low, and they have always read them from the Hanlin with only a few thin papers. The important task of choosing officials among the thousands of people who are like crucian carp crossing the river, this experience is reincarnated, like flowing water steaming into clouds, and the clouds turn into rain, without end.

Although Pei Jun has always known this truth, when he entered the Imperial Academy at the age of 19, he never imagined that one day the person sitting in the examiner's seat for grading papers would be himself.

At this time, he was sitting in the carriage, listening to the noise of people and the sound of wooden wheels on the street outside the curtain, and felt that the scene in front of him was like a scene, so that he seemed to be able to hear Zhang Ling's solemn expression on the way to Chunwei with all the prison students. When I asked him to get into the car and sit together, I told him in a low voice:

"Ziyu, you must take the exam well in this subject, so that you will have no worries when you get promoted in the future."

At that time, Pei Jun was clutching the cloth on his knees, and nodded his head carelessly. When he raised his eyes, he saw the cold face of Zhang Ling, who was sitting opposite him. Contains deep expectations.

This gaze tightly bound Pei Jun's mind during the nine-day exam, and he didn't know how to face Zhang Ling's inquiries and estimates after he took the exam, so he made an appointment with Mei Liu and Lao Cao to go out of the city for half a month. He returned to Qingyun Prison only on the day when the rankings were released.Standing in the bustling front yard at that time, only the ceremonial staff sent by the Ministry of Rites to read the list in the prison read out in a drawn-out voice:

"Xinke Huangbang, No. 17 in Beijing Examination Chunwei, Pei Jun..."

At that moment, the heated discussions among the young talents around him stopped in astonishment.Among the crowd of people whispering sideways to him, Pei Jun saw Zhang Ling's increasingly cold face not far away.And when he walked back to Zhang's house silently behind Zhang Ling, all the expected severe reprimands and harsh reprimands were poured on him as expected.

He was ordered to kneel under the stone steps beside the ancestral hall, and Zhang Ling raised his voice and scolded him angrily: "... I, Zhang Ling, have only accepted you as an apprentice for ten years. Look? But you are fine--on weekdays, the wind sings the scriptures and righteousness, and the sir is used as a paradigm to train the sentient beings in the prison. Which one is better than the poems and edicts? Today, they didn’t even enter the top ten, and they were just mere mediocre Seventeenth! Seventeenth...Pei Ziyu! You are trying to disgrace me, Zhang Ling! On the second day of the palace examination, what will the emperor and all the officials think of my Zhang family and you? Don't even think about getting promoted in the imperial court, Mo Ruo just get out of here now!"

And after years of suffering, it was like a mountain torrent breaking the embankment. Pei Jun finally stood up and shouted coldly: "Get out! Anyway, what Master loves most in this life is face. He asks students and sons to learn. It's just for the sake of your Zhang family's reputation! If you are so knowledgeable, I, Pei Jun, don't care! I'm leaving early now, so I won't embarrass you in the future!"

Then, under Zhang Ling's glaring gaze, he glanced at Zhang San, Zhang He and Zhang Wei who were silent in the side corridor, and gritted his teeth and said the last sentence:

"From now on... even if I die, I will never step into your Zhang family again!"

After finishing speaking, he ran out of the gate of the Zhang family, wiped his face in the misty spring rain, took off his blue blouse and threw it on the ground. After a few days, he entered the palace examination, and he was determined to answer irrelevant questions in front of all officials and relatives. average peformance.

This caused the courtiers in the palace to really laugh secretly, saying in private that Zhang Ling, a high-ranking disciple, had grown up in ordinary times, but what he saw today was nothing more than mediocre.While whispering to each other, Zhang Ling kept silent, lowered his eyes, and his brows were tightly knit; after the rest of the cabinet commented as usual, they probably guessed that the late emperor cared about Zhang's family's face, and then hinted to the officials: After Jun became Zhonglie, I often heard that he was very knowledgeable in the prison. Now I am afraid that he was too frightened to show his talent and learning when he met the saint for the first time. With such a disposition, he may just be quiet, but he is very suitable to enter the Imperial Academy to compile documents.

Therefore, Pei Jun, a loyal queen and a disciple of a famous family, was thrown into the Hanlin after several considerations. He received a salary that was not high or low all day long, and only worked as a student who collected papers and compiled wind songs in the big and small assessments. He is a petty official who has no merits or demerits, but the world can already point to his backbone and make many comments on him, and the most common ones are:

"Master Zhang Ling is a high-achieving person. Now he doesn't think about health and well-being, but he wants to keep his position and salary. It can be seen that he has no ambitions. He is really stupid. It's a pity."

This was not even as good as Fang Mingjue, who ranked even lower than him in the same period.

Fang Mingjue was ranked in the lower twenties back then, but relying on his teacher Shen Shangshu's relationship, after a lot of bumps and bumps, he still got his wish and was assigned to the Hanlin together with Pei Jun and Yan Yuliang. After entering the courtyard, I was just blind and happy. In the third month of entering the museum, I followed the arrangement of my family to get married and entered the bridal chamber. From then on, I just waited for my children and grandchildren to appear in the world and be perfect in every way. Every day, my face was full of red, and I copied poems, just like this day. There is nothing that makes him unhappy, and it also makes the people around him feel better.

In this way, the apricots in the imperial garden are covered with smoke, the lotus is light with rain, the leaves of the maple trees are shed, and the frost and snow cover their heads again. One year passes and the next year passes.

At that time, Pei Jun always thought that there is nothing wrong with being free and aimless, and the few years in Hanlin were probably the best years in his previous life.

Thinking about it, the imperial city has arrived.Pei Jun got out of the carriage and walked towards Hanlin along the stone path in the imperial garden, letting the pebbles under his feet be uneven under his official boots with thousand layers of cloth. Between the small stones, the garden stone floor is either scarlet or white, but it is also clear and elegant.

The Huiwen Hall where the examination papers are graded is a four-compartment courtyard, located in the northwest of Hanlin, with only a small door in the southeast corner, which needs to be entered from the corridor of the Hanlin Middle Court.When you go in, you can see that the wooden plaque on the lintel is accompanied by an ancient poem, which is called Lanze.After being admitted to the hospital, there was a pond in the courtyard where the lotus leaves had not yet been released, but a few handfuls of fresh green lotus leaves came out of the water, on which dragonflies stood up early, and the unharvested morning dew hung, all of which were fresh and verdant.

The scenery in his eyes was really good, and Pei Junyin recalled that he couldn't help sighing, but he didn't take two steps after crossing the lotus pond, but he saw Cai Yang and several Hanlin scholars walking out from the corner of the corridor, and he could hear the ups and downs of the voice coming from a distance It seems that Cai Yangzheng also pointed out the Spring and Autumn Period, and the scholars from the side did not dare to neglect, and they all responded humbly.

Seeing Pei Jun coming, Cai Yang on the other side stopped his words and said with a teasing smile: "Yo, Mr. Pei is late, what are you busy with so early in the morning?"

Saying this in a rush to mark the examination papers, it means that Pei Jun had already had a different intention and wanted to cheat for personal gain, but Pei Jun only laughed when he heard it, and as he was walking towards the main compartment, he responded calmly and said to Cai Yang: " Oh, don't mention it. My hands are full of things, and I am busy, how can I have the leisure of Cai University?"

Just this one sentence choked Cai Yang, who was still in high spirits just now, so that he couldn't speak for a moment.

In fact, there are two things that Cai Yang is most dissatisfied with in his life: First, he has always lived under the wings of his father Cai Yan, and even when he was in his thirties, he never let him go outside. Second, although he was promoted to the cabinet all the way, he followed the path of being promoted to the cabinet by a Hanlin bachelor, and then promoted year by year. He never held real political power in his hands for a day. He is in charge of Dali Temple, but the person who finally decides everything is his father Cai Yan.In the end, he was just inserted into the cabinet by his father and took a proposed position for the Cai family.

But Cai Yang is not a fuel-efficient lamp. He always wants to light up when he meets people and things, to show that he has real talents and learning, and he doesn't just rely on his father to gain a foothold in the court. It was the idea of ​​Hanlin and Gongxue.It just didn't work out in the end.

Since Pei Jun was still in Qingyun Prison ten years ago, the Hanlin and Gongxue have been under the jurisdiction of Zhao Taibao, and Cai Yang was very fond of it for a time.Although Cai Yang was a man of considerable knowledge, compared to Zhao Taibao, who was over sixty years old and wrote history, his qualifications were still too shallow. Therefore, Emperor Suning ordered before his death: Gongxue, Hanlin Second Mansion, It is a confidentiality of the court. After the new emperor ascends the throne, Zhao Taibao, one of the ministers of Gu Ming, will still be in charge of the two divisions. Others are not allowed to intervene at will.

Zhao Taibao was a conservative person, and he did not have any clear political opinions in the officialdom. He obviously just followed the steps to protect his salary and follow the steps.For many years, Cai Yang often talked about this matter among officials, intending to show that Zhao Taibao had done nothing, because he felt that Zhao had wasted his position of digging gold.It is expected that if the Cai family gets the Hanlin and inherits the palace school, someone will intervene in the assessment and evaluation in the future, and I don't know how it will be like a fish in water--

But left and right are just Cai Yang's thinking.Zhao Taibao can live a long life, and in the future, the Hanlin and Gongxue will not have anything to do with the Cai family.

Pei Jun ignored Cai Yang's subsequent cynicism, seeing that Feng Jiru who was waiting in the main compartment had walked up to welcome him to take his seat, he flashed Cai Yang as farewell, and walked together with Feng Jiru After going to the main room, both of them uncovered the two appointment letters of the chief and deputy examiners, and according to the etiquette, they invited incense to sacrifice to the portraits of Confucius and Mencius in the hall, and then ordered the first sentence:

"Read the papers."