Shao Yanzhe reacted swiftly, stepping backward to the left while simultaneously raising his foot to kick Shao Ran squarely in the chest.
Shao Ran’s movements faltered, and he fell backward, propelled by the force of the kick.
At that moment, the temperature in the entire schoolroom plummeted abruptly, and a crimson figure slowly materialized in the room.
When Shao Ran saw who it was, his face instantly contorted with terror.
Just before he hit the ground, he vanished into thin air.
As Shao Ran disappeared, more and more students began vanishing from their seats.
Shao Yanzhe realized the crimson figure must be the beautiful woman Fuzi had mentioned. He looked up, and when he clearly saw her face, his pupils contracted sharply.
Yun Weiyue?!
The beautiful woman in red had an identical face to Yun Weiyue!
Perhaps Shao Yanzhe’s gaze was too intense, attracting the beautiful woman’s attention. She slowly lifted her eyes to meet his, her crimson pupils filled with anguish and resentment.
That single glance filled Shao Yanzhe with boundless fear.
The next moment, darkness enveloped Shao Yanzhe’s vision. When his sight returned, he found himself in an unfamiliar place.
Before he could survey his surroundings, he clutched his chest – his heart was pounding rapidly beneath his skin, accompanied by a faint, stabbing pain.
His face instantly turned pale, and fine beads of sweat formed on his forehead.
He guessed the cardiac pain was likely caused by his brief eye contact with the beautiful woman – after all, she was the master of the Soul Severing Curse.
Fortunately, the stinging sensation in his heart gradually faded, allowing him to finally examine his surroundings.
He found himself in a narrow space measuring 1.3 meters deep, 1 meter wide, and 2 meters high. Three walls were made of brick, while the front featured a desk board holding several scrolls of white rice paper.
After looking around, he recognized this as the examination cell where ancient scholars took the Imperial Exam.
He recalled that to enter government service through the Imperial Exam, scholars had to take tests in these cramped spaces for three days and nights, forbidden to leave except for toilet breaks.
When he first learned about this, he had complained that one couldn’t even stretch their legs to sleep in such places, and those with claustrophobia would be unable to take the exams.
He wondered who designed such architecture, suspecting the designer must have harbored deep malice toward Imperial Exam candidates to create such torturous conditions.
Of course, some might consider merely entering these examination cells an honor.
Shao Yanzhe never imagined he would get to experience this “honor” in advance.
Looking outside, he saw students across from him unrolling scrolls of rice paper and carefully reading the contents.
He quickly realized this must be the illusion Fuzi had mentioned – the beautiful woman was making them take the Imperial Exam here, with their survival determined by final rankings.
Thinking of the beautiful woman, Shao Yanzhe’s thoughts drifted again.
She shared Yun Weiyue’s appearance – were they originally the same person, or twins?
He was certain Yun Weiyue had remained in the painting scroll the entire time; even when she hid behind the bookshelf, he could vaguely see the hem of her clothing.
Moreover, the illusions at Wenyuan Academy had continued while Yun Weiyue was in the painting scroll. So were they truly just two people who looked alike?
Suddenly, a red figure appeared in the examination cell, staring intently at Shao Yanzhe, who was visibly distracted.
Shao Yanzhe jolted instantly, quickly lowered his head, and reached for the topmost scroll of rice paper.
After unfurling it, he carefully read the questions. They weren’t particularly difficult—roughly at the level of the Xiucai examinations.
He had long memorized all the texts from his original body’s memory, and after enduring Yun Weiyue’s relentless drilling with practice questions, though he might not match the top-tier Xiucai candidates, he was certainly capable of passing.
Coincidentally, he had encountered similar questions before. Merely reading them now, the answers began forming clearly in his mind.
Shao Yanzhe directly picked up his brush and started writing responses in the blank spaces of the exam paper. His strokes were steady, the flowing ink forming uniform characters that gradually coalesced into coherent essays.
At some point, the red figure vanished without notice.
A scholar seated opposite Shao Yanzhe was the first to notice her departure. He glanced up subtly and saw the young man across from him already writing briskly on his exam paper.
He couldn’t help shaking his head slightly. Still too easily frightened—panicked by that presence into hastily scribbling answers. If mistakes were discovered mid-way, there’d be no chance for corrections.
Yet he couldn’t offer warnings, so he buried his head in drafting answers on his own rough draft paper.
Across from him, Shao Yanzhe maintained rapid writing speed.
The exam consisted of four sections: Four Books Essay, Five Classics Essay, Test Verse, and Policy Essay. The first two posed little difficulty for Shao Yanzhe—he completed them within half an hour.
Poetry composition might seem challenging for a modern person, but once one grasped tonal patterns, rhyming schemes, and avoided taboos, it actually became the simplest section.
After brief contemplation, Shao Yanzhe directly composed a five-character regulated verse on the paper.
With the Test Verse completed, only the final Policy Essay remained.
The essay topic was “On Strategies for Eliminating Banditry and Pacifying the People.” Having written on similar themes before, he needed only to modify certain classical allusions.
In merely another half hour, the final policy essay was fully drafted.
Shao Yanzhe set down his brush, scanning the answers covering his exam paper.
In truth, he felt complete confidence in his compositions, certain no errors or omissions existed.
This review was merely following his teacher’s repeated admonitions.
Tucking his hands into his sleeves, he noted approximately one hour had passed since the exam began.
Typical Xiucai examinations lasted three to five hours. Was he supposed to spend the remaining time idly?
Just as this thought emerged, the familiar red figure materialized before him again.
The exam paper on his desk abruptly appeared in her hands. The red-robed woman—who shared Yun Weiyue’s features—fixed her crimson eyes on the document.
Her gaze swept across lines of standardized Guange Style calligraphy until reaching a particular section. Her pupils abruptly constricted, fingers tightening imperceptibly around the rice paper.
This sudden emotional fluctuation caused a momentary waver in the Illusion under her control. She stabilized it immediately, reasserting dominance over the phantom realm.
None of the ordinary examinees noticed anything amiss.
The woman in red, her emotions in turmoil, had all her attention fixed on Shao Yanzhe. Thus, she failed to notice that the moment the Illusion fluctuated, a black cat had slipped in with stealthy steps, hiding in a concealed corner before she could detect it.
After reviewing Shao Yanzhe’s exam paper, the woman in red eyed him up and down with keen interest, her dark crimson gaze making his heart race nervously.
The next moment, a small mountain of rolled-up rice paper appeared on Shao Yanzhe’s previously empty desk—he estimated it was ten times the amount of the previous exam.
“Finish before the exam ends, or I’ll kill you!”
With those words, the woman in red vanished.
Shao Yanzhe: …
The scholar across from him, having seen and heard everything, cast a sympathetic glance his way before lowering his head to focus on his own paper, deliberately slowing his writing pace for fear that the woman in red might notice their speed and assign them extra papers as well.
Unable to resist, Shao Yanzhe could only resign himself, rolling up his sleeves and picking up the brush to begin answering the questions.
His mind raced, and his writing speed increased noticeably.
At that moment, he suddenly felt as if he had been transported back to high school—back then, to get into his dream university, he had slept only a few hours a night, rising at dawn and grinding through practice questions until he felt nauseous.
Compared to that, these mere ten exam papers seemed almost trivial.
Shao Yanzhe chuckled softly and began filling in the answers on the blank papers.
From high noon to sunset, nearly five hours seemed to pass in the blink of an eye.
Just before the gong sounded, Shao Yanzhe set down his brush.
He looked up to relieve his sore eyes, only to meet the astonished gazes of three pairs of eyes across from him, staring as if he were a monster.
He gave them a slight nod, then gently massaged his right wrist with his left hand to ease the stiffness.
As the gong rang, all the exam papers on the candidates’ desks vanished simultaneously, reappearing on the desk before the woman in red.
It was then that the candidates noticed the woman in red had taken the seat reserved for the Imperial Exam proctor.
They didn’t dare stare at her for long; ever since she had dragged them into this Illusion, they had known her identity and were filled with dread toward her.
They could only steal occasional glances out of the corners of their eyes, watching as she flipped through their papers one by one, their hearts pounding harder than during a real Imperial Exam.
Soon, all the papers were graded, and a sheet of white rice paper appeared above the examination hall, covered in red characters.
Everyone instinctively looked up. Strangely, though the paper was too far away to read clearly, the moment they gazed at it, the content became vividly clear in their minds.
“This exam is over. The last-ranked candidate will stay!”
The woman in red’s voice echoed throughout the hall.
Those who saw that their rank wasn’t last breathed sighs of relief, their faces full of relief.
The woman in red swept her gaze over their expressions and smirked maliciously, “I look forward to seeing you all again tomorrow!”
At her words, the relieved expressions on the candidates’ faces stiffened, and then they were transported back to the real Schoolroom.
“Phew! Made it through another round!”
“When will this kind of life ever end?”
“Wah! What am I going to do tomorrow?”
The students of Wenyuan Academy wore gloomy expressions, their hearts filled with dread about their fate in the upcoming examination.
“Eh? Where’s Shao Yanzhe?”
A student sitting in front of Shao Yanzhe’s seat had wanted to vent his worries to someone, but when he turned around, he was startled to find the seat empty and couldn’t help exclaiming.
The student’s cry snapped Fuzi out of his own troubled thoughts. Hearing the words, his heart tightened, and he immediately stood up to search for any sign of Shao Yanzhe.
“Hahaha! I succeeded!” Shao Ran’s voice rang out, ecstatic to the point of madness.
Instantly, everyone’s attention shifted to him.
“What did you do?” Fuzi demanded, his face darkening.
It was then that they remembered—just before entering the Illusion, Shao Yanzhe and Shao Ran had gotten into a physical altercation.
As Shao Yanzhe’s Fuzi, he knew better than anyone the extent of Shao Yanzhe’s knowledge. Even if he wasn’t among the top students, he would never have been left behind in the Illusion due to a bottom ranking.
Putting together Shao Ran’s words and demeanor, he suspected that Shao Yanzhe’s entrapment in the Illusion was the result of some trickery on Shao Ran’s part.