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At night, Yu Shu lit up the candlestick on the desk and took out the list of candidates given by Liu Tan. She studied it while thinking about countermeasures.
Liu Tan's intention was for her to select the best and rank these people in first, second, and third place. However, she didn't know how to judge people at all, so how could she judge whether these people's future was good or bad, let alone speculate which one of them was likely to enter the Honor Roll.
Helpless, Yu Shu stared at the list for half an hour. Finally, she had a brainwave and came up with a compromise.
Since she couldn't see their future, she would have to see if their luck was good or bad. The next list would be released on February 26th. She would calculate the misfortune of all the people on the list on that day using her Time of Misfortune Law. She would eliminate the candidates who would have minor disasters on that day, and the rest would naturally be those who had good luck. Although this couldn't be accurate, a person's luck and future were closely related. This method of eliminating the bad and keeping the good was much more reliable than her randomly choosing.
Yu Shu takes out a large piece of white paper and prepares an abacus. She compares the birth date and the eight characters on the register. Because she only needs to calculate a specific day, the progress is very fast. She can determine a person's time of misfortune in a short time. There are more than 30 people on the register. Yu Shu originally wanted to wait for a while and solve it in one go. However, halfway through the calculation, there is an unexpected problem —
She had calculated a total of six people's horoscopes, and the result actually predicted that misfortune would happen to all six people on the day the results were released.
What was even stranger was that the "calamity" of these six people all showed the same value. It was a value that Yu Shu had never seen before. She could not find any corresponding calamity from the values that she had recorded before.
In other words, on the day the results were released, all six of them would suffer the same kind of misfortune.
This kind of event with such a low probability did not make sense.
Yu Shu didn't believe it. She looked through the name list given by Liu Tan with a strange expression. At first, she thought there was a problem with the eight characters of these six people, so she reversed the order on the name list. Starting from the last person on the name list, she calculated the eight characters of two people.
This time, it was back to normal. In the end, it indicated that on the day the results were released, the two of them did not suffer from any illnesses or disasters.
This time, Yu Shu was even more confused. She frowned as she looked at the eight people whose time of misfortune had been calculated. She seemed to feel that something was wrong, but she couldn't tell what it was. She stared at the name list for a long time, and suddenly noticed that next to each candidate's name, there were two small inconspicuous characters. The first six people that she calculated had the word "Dayan", and the next two people that she calculated had the word "Imperial Examination".
Yu Shu was stunned. It was as if a string in her brain had snapped, and her eyes lit up. She gripped the name list tightly, dipped her finger in her saliva, and quickly flipped through the pages. When she reached the seventh person, who was also a candidate with the word "Dayan", she held a pen in her hand and quickly used the formula of the Time of Calamity.
Then, the eighth person …
The ninth person …
By the time the tenth person had finished counting all the people on the name list, the sky outside had turned from dark to dawn. Yu Shu finally stopped writing. She grabbed a thick stack of paper and examined the densely packed numbers on it. Her eyes were red from working too hard, and the corners of her mouth curled into an extremely excited smile: "Ha … Hahaha, so that's how it is, so that's how it is!"
There were a total of 32 people on the name list. There were 21 people who participated in the Dayan Examination, and 11 people who participated in the imperial examination.
On the day the results of the Dayan Examination were released, a total of 18 people met with the same unknown misfortune. They were all coincidentally Dayan examinees, and there was only one person who had a known misfortune, and that person was a scholar who participated in the imperial examination.
However, among the 21 examinees, only three people had a smooth omen on the day the results were released.
Yu Shu boldly hypothesized that if the same "unknown misfortune" that caused 18 people to meet with the same "unknown misfortune" referred to failing the imperial examination, then the other three people who had no misfortune that day were most likely high school graduates!
This conjecture made Yu Shu so excited that her face and ears turned red. She stood up and paced around the room. She hadn't slept all night, but she wasn't sleepy at all.
If her conjecture was true, then her Time of Misfortune Law would have a new use, and it could be used as a type of physiognomy!
For a guest, was there anything more wonderful than this?
"Wonderful, wonderful!"
The more Yu Shu thought about it, the more she felt that it was possible. She couldn't contain her excitement, and only calmed down after drinking half a pot of tea. She couldn't wait for the day the results were released, so that she could verify whether her conjecture was right or not!
Yu Shu's good mood continued until the day the results of the physiognomy course were released. She had drafted the name list and presented it to Liu Tan two days in advance. But, she was afraid that it would be too disgraceful if it came true. So, Yu Shu paid attention to it. She didn't write all three names on the list. Instead, she only chose one name to write at the forefront. Then, she added two names to make up the number.
What Yu Shu didn't know was that after Liu Tan received her name list, he had privately discussed it with Helan Chou. Coincidentally, he only kept the first person on her name list, along with the other two candidates who had a good background. After writing down the three people, he sent someone to exchange their name cards. The day before the results were released, the names were sealed and pasted in Qiongyu Tower, waiting to be revealed.
On the 26th day of the second month, Yu Shu was sent to the guesthouse by a horse carriage as usual, and sat in a sedan chair with Liu Tan to watch the Twin Suns Gathering.
It was just after dawn, and the sun was completely red. As always, there was a sea of people on the Spring River. Yu Shu sat in Qiongyu Tower, leisurely playing with a pink teacup, her eyes looking down at the arena below.
Today was the day of the martial arts competition. The time for the results to be released had not yet arrived, so the two people currently fighting on the arena were the two martial artists who had won the previous competition. One used a whip, and the other used a pair of hammers. It was a very interesting fight.
"Ninth brother, I heard that after you returned to the capital, Imperial Father assigned two bodyguards to you. They are both first-rate experts. How do they compare to the two people downstairs?" The one speaking was Eighth Prince Liu Du. He and Liu Tan were sitting next to each other.
"The people Imperial Father assigned are naturally good," Liu Tan said ambiguously.
However, there was someone who did not let him go. Sitting a few seats away, Liu Yi did not know how he overheard their conversation. He suddenly sighed and raised his voice, saying, "This martial arts competition is getting more and more boring after watching it for a few days. Since Ninth brother has experts by his side, why don't you ask them to go down and show us something new!"
A cold light flashed through Liu Tan's eyes. How could the bodyguards assigned by the Imperial Father be entertainers? If he really did ask them to go down, wouldn't he be humiliating himself? With his mind clear, Liu Tan did not fall for the trick. He smiled at Liu Yi from afar, avoiding the topic and dwelling on the trivial. He said, "Eleventh brother is still young and will inevitably find the Twin Suns Gathering boring. It is normal for him to not be able to sit still. Since there are Qiankun and Qiankun, why don't you go down and take a stroll around and find something delicious to eat and play with?"
When Yu Shu heard this, she almost laughed out loud. Liu Tan was not much older than Liu Yi. Such a child-like way of talking, wasn't he secretly cursing Liu Yi for being ignorant and incompetent and purposely disgusting?
She had been watching from the sidelines for the past few days in Qiongyu Lou and had become accustomed to the secret fights between the princes. It was common to see a battle of tongues and needles hidden in silk floss. As for Liu Tan, who was always being attacked, he never fell into a disadvantageous position.
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