After she transmigrates into the body of a concubine-born daughter, her stepmother packs her off from the start to become the concubine of a sixty-year-old country gentleman.
Shen Zhi neither cried nor made a fuss. That very night, she climbed over the wall and ran away.
Luckily, she was bound to the imperial examination System, “Little Ke.”
Little Ke: “Suggestion: Disguise yourself as a man and take the imperial exams. Success rate: 0.3%.”
Shen Zhi: “That’ll do.”
In her previous life, she had earned a master’s degree in classical literature and had tens of thousands of books in her head. Memorizing texts? She never forgot a thing. Writing policy essays? She could cite the classics with ease.
But she never imagined that pretending to be a man would be harder than the exams.
She had to take long strides, lower her voice when she spoke, and keep even her laughter from getting too bright.
She practiced the “Manners Correction” feature with Little Ke hundreds of times before she just barely passed.
First in the county exam, first in the prefectural exam, first in the provincial exam.
Everyone said Shen Zhizhou was a once-in-a-century prodigy.
Only Shen Zhi knew she walked a knife’s edge every day.
One look, one gesture, one ill-timed cough could ruin her beyond redemption.
But she wasn’t afraid. She wasn’t doing this just for herself.
She would pass the highest imperial examination, stand at the very top, and shatter with her own hands the ironclad rule that “women may not take the imperial exams.”
