Jing Xingzhi’s Daily Life in Ancient Times - Chapter 74
After the student shouted, the others reacted and hastily hid a few steps away, anxiously opening the bags to check.
In fact, a quick glance revealed the situation in the bags was extremely dire! They themselves were soaked with water. The bags on their backs or in their hands were also drenched. Thinking about it, they knew it couldn’t escape being soaked.
To prevent rain during the exam, students brought a large piece of rain cloth in their exam bags. However, their rain cloths were only haphazardly gathered on one side of the luggage and were not properly spread out.
One student, with an average family background, struggled to prepare everything, including dry food, barely managing to squeeze it into his bag.
Upon seeing the wet and foul-smelling dry food in the bag, his eyes turned red, and he became furious. He pushed back his sleeves and attempted to climb over the wall.
“You’re so blind! Someone is passing by and you splash the dirty water, I’ll break your legs!” he shouted while jumping up on the wall, transforming from a gentle scholar into a reckless man.
One person took the lead, and the others lifted the corners of their robes, climbing over the wall.
Inside the wall, the men who were splashing water discarded their buckets of dirty water and ran towards the other wall, attempting to escape.
The leading scholar’s eyes turned red. He took off his shoes, hurled the muddy cloth shoes at the people on the wall, and shouted angrily, “Don’t run away! Why are you thieves splashing water early in the morning while it’s still dark? Don’t even think about running away today!”
“That’s correct! Everything in our exam bag has been wetted by you, and our entire body is soaked. We can’t go to the Gongyuan to take the exam, don’t even think about trying to escape!
The rules in the Gongyuan were very strict, if the examiners saw them rushing to take the exam while wet, they might be marked as having a ‘bad appearance’ or ‘poor presentation,’ which could directly deny their right to submit exam papers to the exam room.
Even if the exam paper could be seen by the judging officers, no matter how good the test paper was or how brilliant the literary talent, what was the use with the bad mark of poor appearance?
After ten years of studying hard in a cold room, but it was ruined by a few buckets of water, how could they not be angry?
But as they climbed over the wall to catch up, those people also tried their best to escape. Because they were familiar with the terrain and often did manual labor, they ran very fast without looking back, leaving only the desperate figures of a few angry scholars!
As soon as a few scholars climbed over the wall, a man from the owner’s house ran out holding a stick and questioned the scholars who broke into the yard in a state of embarrassment.
“Oh! What are you doing? You are running around and causing trouble in my house at dawn!”
Seeing that he could not catch up, the poor student who climbed up the wall first sniffed and did not answer the questions. He lowered his head feeling aggrieved. He said authentically: “I couldn’t catch up with those throwing water…”
As he spoke, he rubbed the corners of his eyes with his sleeves, obviously crying out of anger. But he had no choice but to wipe away his tears.
There were suppressed sniffs, and the poor scholar’s friends also felt gloomy. They thought this unlucky situation might as well lead to finding a piece of tofu and ending it all*.
[*find a piece of tofu and ending it all: is a Chinese idiom for unfortunate event. In such a troubled situation, they prefer to end it quickly even with absurd method like punching a tofu.]
But as soon as the crying started, it stopped abruptly. The poor scholar stared wide-eyed at the men running back.
Momentarily confused, the scholar couldn’t figure out why these people who had clearly fled were returning. But he couldn’t dwell on it, gritting his teeth and rushing forward again.
“You dare to come back? Even if it costs me my life, I’ll catch a few of you and send you to prison!”
The scholars surged forward again, with Wang Zhuang and others forming a siege to surround and capture them. Five of the water-splashing culprits were captured.
The yard owner was dumbfounded. He couldn’t understand what had gone wrong with the Feng Shui of his yard today, or why this was happening.
.
Wu Dinong was the first to be caught. No longer young, he couldn’t outrun the specially recruited gangsters. Once caught, he felt uneasy and a little afraid they might expose him.
He wondered; how could things deviate from Xing Niang’s plan? She clearly said they could flee after pouring the water. Even if the man named Jing Xingzhi brought two servants, he shouldn’t have been able to catch up.
Yet there were ten people here, including those scholars! He remembered seeing Jing Xingzhi leaving with just one servant!
Also, it was really weird that he had just escaped but was being chased and couldn’t run back.
Could it be the other party had already guessed they would take action and was preparing a backup plan?
Wu Dinong’s brain, which was not very bright, turned quickly for the first time, but now it was useless no matter how fast his mind was. He was caught, beaten, and kicked by the angry scholars to vent their hatred.
Jing Xingzhi helped saving someone, with wet hair now on his head, and made room for several students to deal with the culprits.
Jing Xingzhi took two steps away from the crowd, and Wang Zhuang walked up to him and whispered, “Young Master Jing, It’s all here.”
“Act accordingly,” Jing Xingzhi nodded and whispered back quickly.
After Jing Xingzhi finished speaking, he bent down to open his bag and took a few glances. The arrangement in his examination bag was more elaborate, and everything was tightly wrapped in cut oilcloth and oil paper. Only water droplets accumulated at the bottom of the examination bag.
When Jing Xingzhi raised his eyes again, the dim alley was already brightly lit and crowded with people.