Chapter 742 Shocking Four Seats (3)_1
Among the several essays I had already seen, two discussions were quite good and received very reasonable rankings. Emperor Huian nodded in satisfaction, but when he saw the one marked as "exceptional" further back, only pure surprise and delight remained in his eyes.
After evaluating the one marked as superior, Emperor Huian had no more interest in the remaining three essays. He nodded to the Grand Scholar to indicate that he had no objections to the evaluation results and returned the examination papers and outcomes to him.
The Grand Scholar, seeing the thousands of students stretching their necks, eagerly awaiting the outcome, did not keep them in suspense and declared, "In this palace examination, there is one ’exceptional,’ four ’superior,’ two ’medium,’ and three ’inferior’... Zhao Gao, Qin Hui, and Wei Zhongxian are ’inferior’... Meng Haoran and Du Fu are ’superior’... Mo Qingze is ’exceptional’!"
No sooner had the words been spoken than a buzzing sound of discussion rose in the great hall, mostly expressing astonishment at Mo Qingze’s ’exceptional’ grade.
In Great Chu, whether it’s the autumn or spring imperial examinations, as well as evaluations at academies and schools, they all use the rankings of ’inferior,’ ’medium,’ ’superior,’ ’special,’ and ’exceptional’ to judge the students’ performance.
From this, it is evident that attaining ’exceptional’ is no easy feat. There are two firm requirements for receiving ’exceptional’: one, no more than three mistakes on the examination script, and two, an essay that is impeccably argued and enlightening to read. Especially the latter point, if one evaluator deems it ’exceptional,’ that would be one thing, but to be unanimously awarded ’exceptional’ by more than a dozen people is simply unimaginable!