After the Emperor Ordered the Military Nobles' Sons to Take the Imperial Exams

As the illegitimate son of a family renowned for its imperial exam scholars, Cui Xiu was exceptionally talented. He became a Triple Talented Scholar at just ten, but his father and stepmother joined forces to suppress him. They feared he would surpass them and take the family's resources.

After being reborn, Cui Xiu discovered he was living in the storybook The Farmboy's Road to Success in the Imperial Examinations.

In the book, a farm-born young man passed the imperial exams, rose to great heights, and repeatedly won the affection of wealthy young women.

His foil was Cui Qianting, the second son of a declining duke's family. He was known for his talent from a young age, but was over thirty and had repeatedly failed the exams. In the end, he drank heavily and committed violent crimes, bringing disgrace upon the entire ducal family.

And Cui Xiu's current identity was Cui Qianting's illegitimate son.

He was only three.

Cui Xiu: "…"

Cui Xiu's heart sank. He planned to survive until adulthood before making any other plans.

But after spending time with them, he realized this family wasn't anything like the storybook version:

The ducal family had fallen into decline because his grandfather had won countless military victories and was hailed as a God of War. He had even forged an imperial edict in public to select a new emperor, angering the previous emperor to death.

His eldest uncle, who had inherited the title, had an iron certificate of merit in each hand and used them like bricks, ready to smash them against the emperor.

His father, it was said, had killed the entire family of the emperor's favorite concubine.

For a moment, Cui Xiu was grateful to be living in a storybook. Only in a fictional world could such an outrageously powerful family... could such a family be tolerated by the emperor.

But the emperor's way of tolerating them was pretty underhanded. He ordered the Cui family to pursue official careers through the imperial exams, claiming that it had been the God of War's wish for the Cui family to trade military service for civil office. The Cui family shut themselves away to study and wouldn't open their gates again until one of them passed the provincial exam!

Cui Xiu had assumed that with his legitimate elder brother, the heir to the title, he wouldn't be needed. Surely no one would expect anything of a three-year-old.

But he never imagined that four-year-old Cui Xiu would be forced into the county-level exam hall.

Before the exam, his uncle, the duke, earnestly instructed him, "Xiu Xiu, just hand in a blank paper. We need to show them our attitude."

Cui Xiu: "…"

After being dragged along year after year just to make up the numbers, Cui Xiu couldn't take it anymore.

Keep making me a token candidate and I'll start controlling my score!

Theme: Family bonds require mutual effort.