The Daoist Imperial Examination: Who Says Exams Can’t Make You an Immortal?

The Great Yu Dynasty, under the rule of the Red Emperor. Three hundred years ago, the Red Emperor reformed the realm, establishing the Daoist imperial examinations. They judged candidates primarily by their “fortune,” supplemented by the Three Classics and Five Canonical Texts. From then on, every cultivator in the land began their journey through the examinations: child scholars opened their wisdom eyes, licentiates gathered literary energy, juren wielded imperial edicts, and jinshi were appointed as immortal officials. Each examination was a redistribution of the realm’s fortune by Heaven’s “Celestial Net.”

Li Yu, an overworked corporate drone from the twenty-first century, transmigrated after dying suddenly. When he opened his eyes, he found himself facing the most humiliating moment of his life: the tofu shop owner across the street had come to break off the engagement. His fiancée, Yao Caiwei, was calling it off, and the Zhao family, whose head was a county commandant, had sent a matchmaker to ask for her hand in marriage to their son.

His father, Li the Butcher, slammed the table in fury, while his mother, Madam Wang, wiped away tears. Before Li Yu could even process what was happening, a burning heat spread across his chest. A blue wooden token tucked inside the Li family’s ancestral Butcher’s Handbook was growing hot against him.

Then a voice, so calm it hardly sounded alive, rang out in his mind:

[The Dao Notes have finished binding to their master. Host’s current fortune: pale white, almost nonexistent. Fifteen days until the county examination. Would you like to view a projection of the current examination situation?]

Li Yu: ? I’m being dumped, and you’re asking me about an exam?

But he still tapped “Yes.”