Chen Yanqiu, associate professor of the Department of History, opened his eyes and transformed into Chen Laoshi, a fifty-four-year-old scholar from the Jing Dynasty.
This body is so weak that it cannot be carried by the shoulders or lifted by the hands. After thirty-eight years of taking the imperial examination, he failed to win even a single child. He is the laughing stock of all the towns and villages. There are eccentric parents who think he is a waste, and an unfilial son who blames him for wasting the family. Fifteen members of the family huddle in a dilapidated thatched hut, drinking grain porridge that is so thin that people can be seen, and not smelling any oil star for half a year.
"Test? Keep taking the test!" Chen Yanqiu squeezed the broken book in his hand. Having studied the imperial examination system in his previous life, could he still be stumped by this childish examination?
But right now, the family must survive first. He carried a bamboo basket and went up the mountain to dig herbs. He exchanged purple flowers for brown rice and astragalus for fat meat to fill the bellies of the children first.
The biased mother scolded him for not doing his job properly? He used the money from selling medicinal herbs to buy rice and meat, leaving the old lady speechless.
The unfilial son mocked him for daydreaming? He slapped him and taught him what filial piety is.
Do the people in the village laugh at him for being useless? He tried to write in another county, and as soon as he was a high school student, the whole village was shocked!
From an old boy to a scholar, from a scholar to a scholar, Chen Yanqiu climbed up despite ridicule. He met a noble man in the government examination and came out on top in the college examination. Even Zhou Xuedao praised him as a "late bloomer"!
Relatives who used to think he was poor came to cling to him, and squires who stepped on him in the past shyly fawned over him. Even the emperor heard about the legend of this "60-year-old Jinshi".
Chen Yanqiu stood on the Jinluan Hall, looking back at the way he came - on his left hand, he saw a whole hall of children and grandchildren around his knees, and on his right hand, he saw a bright future unfolding. He wants to live a different life in this great Jing Dynasty.
