No matter if you are a human or an immortal, you can still farm for me after traveling through time!

Time passes by peacefully and quickly as the calendar turns over and never comes back.

After Qingming Festival, the last cold wave in the country slowly faded away and the temperature gradually rose.

Now is the busy spring farming season. People inside and outside Chang'an are busy cultivating the land and naturally have no time to go shopping.

The industry entered the off-season just half a month after the store opened. Looking at the empty streets, Ji Qingyue did not feel anxious. Instead, he was happy and comfortable. He decisively closed the store and drove a carriage with Li Sanlang to tour Chang'an City.

At present, people are still in a wait-and-see stage regarding Ji Qingyue's store, and customer flow is still in a downturn. Except for the first day of opening the store when he was very lucky and successfully sold giant pumpkin seeds at the price of two gold coins, he has not made any more deals since then.

People's initial impression of the seed shop still remains on the first day's "one seed for one gold". Now he is a foreigner in charge, and he doesn't feel as close to people as the Chinese. And this shop...

It doesn't look like an ordinary seed shop.

As early as the beginning of opening the store, Ji Qingyue had done a complete plan and analysis. Because he did not intend to take the civilian route, he was destined to not be able to do "high-volume" business.

The customer group he is looking for is not ordinary people, but wealthy people with a strong sense of curiosity.

Nowadays, insufficient funds lead to some deviations in store location selection. It is normal for customer flow and turnover to remain at a low level before the store becomes famous.

Spring has arrived, and the crops in the painting are in their prime growth period, and a new round of transplanting will soon be needed.

After several rounds of marketing, Ji Qingyue was no longer worried about not gaining fame.

What's more, he has the trump card of giant pumpkin.

"Sanlang, did the young master from yesterday send his servant again?" Ji Qingyue was sitting in the carriage, chatting with the driver Li Sanlang.

He stayed in the painting yesterday and did not come out. He was a guest entertained by Li Sanlang.

The young man who bought the giant pumpkin seeds sent people twice to confirm the sowing time. Therefore, Ji Qingyue and Li Sanlang finally found out the identity of the young man from the servants.

It turned out to be someone from the Yuchi family.

At the beginning of the founding of Dali, more than twenty dukes were conferred. These nobles rose and fell in Chang'an City for hundreds of years. Now there are less than five dukes who have inherited the title and are quite influential. One of them is Duke Yuchi. The other dukes' families either completely disappeared in the torrent of history or were demoted and squeezed to the edge of power and unable to return.

The current Duke of Yuchi is already seventy years old, and that young man is the second in line to inherit the title of Duke.

The reason why the first-in-line heir was ignored and the second-in-line heir was valued more was because the first-in-line heir, that is, the father of this young master, was in very poor health. He summoned the imperial physician every few days and it seemed that he was not even healthier than the old duke.

The rumor was spreading in Chang'an that, judging from the situation, the old duke's legitimate son might die before the old duke passed away.

Therefore, the title of Duke can only be inherited by the legitimate grandson of the old Duke.

This young man is the grandson of the old Duke - Yuchi Zhengming.

Ji Qingyue and Li Sanlang drove a horse-drawn carriage from the southwest of the city to the northeast, entered Changlefang and headed for the first temple in Chang'an - Fu'an Temple.

During the three-year ban on Buddhism, although Fu'an Temple was not ordered to close, it was no longer as glorious as it was in its heyday.

Even so, there is still no shortage of people burning incense and adding oil to the temple, because the temple enshrines countless tablets of princes and nobles and eternal lamps. The pilgrims who come to the temple do not worship Buddha, but only worship their ancestors, which makes ordinary pilgrims like Ji Qingyue and Li Sanlang particularly different.

Of course, they are neither here to worship Buddha nor to pay homage to their ancestors.

The two men walked into Fu'an Temple and were fortunately not driven away by the novice monks in the temple. Instead, they were kindly granted their request to visit the temple.

Fu'an Temple is worthy of being the number one temple in Chang'an. Its years of accumulation obviously cannot be eliminated by a three-year ban on Buddhism.

Golden Buddha statues are common, and the more than ten-meter-high gold-inlaid murals are brightly colored, with hundreds of colors outlining a vivid and moving picture.

Precious colors are priceless.

Ji Qingyue and Li Sanlang walked deeper into the Buddhist hall until they entered the tower.

The Tallinn is composed of hundreds of tomb towers, standing quietly among the pines and cypresses.

The two found the tomb tower of Master Lingji effortlessly through the plaque and inscriptions on the tower.

Master Lingji was a Duke and made great contributions to Buddhism. The Duke's Mansion and Fu'an Temple jointly built a tall and magnificent stone pagoda for him, with countless inscriptions engraved on the base.

The stone pagoda is a hexagonal, seven-story, dense-eaves brick pagoda with five exquisitely carved finials on the top, a circular flying relief on the first floor, a circular wheel seat on the second floor, a circular lotus seat on the third floor, a platform-shaped stone on the fourth floor, and a spherical gem on the top.

The relief carvings on the tower are equally exquisite and intricate, including relief carvings of lotus, humans and animals, flowers and plants, lions, the Bagua diagram, the eight Buddhist treasures under a cloud-like disk, ties and other patterns.

On both sides of the tower gate are carvings of majestic sword-wielding guardian warriors, and the locked stone door is neatly arranged with door nails.

Among the entire pagoda forest, Master Lingji’s stone pagoda is the tallest and most exquisite.

The inscription on the tower records the information of the spiritual master in detail.

The tower master Lingji, surnamed Yuchi, given name Yunling...

Chang'an City has witnessed the birth, death, rise and fall of countless families over hundreds of years. The Yuchi family has stood until now not because of their huge power and tenacity, but because they happened to choose the right path when facing life and death crises several times.

One of these times was during the heyday of Buddhism. He led his family decisively away from the center of power and transformed himself from Duke Yuchi into Master Lingji.

After reading the inscriptions on the tomb tower, the two were basically able to confirm the true identity of the Lingji Mage.

After leaving the pagoda forest, Ji Qingyue and Li Sanlang planned to leave Fu'an Temple and go somewhere else for a walk.

Suddenly, two novice monks stopped the two of them and explained, "Amitabha, a distinguished person has come to visit the temple. Please wait here for a moment, both donors."

If they wanted to leave Fu'an Temple, they had to pass by the Buddhist temple. Now, because there were people in the Buddhist temple, outsiders were not allowed to approach. They knew that Chang'an was full of nobles and had many rules. Adhering to the idea of ​​"less trouble is worse than more trouble", the two of them stood there and waited obediently.

Not long after, there was a noise coming from the front, and many maids and guards were running around the Buddhist temple. There was order in the chaos, and everyone was doing their job.

It looks like the noble person in the Buddhist temple is about to leave.

Only after the noise completely disappeared did the novice monk let the two people leave.

……

An exquisite and compact carriage drove out of Fu'an Temple, with four guards holding poles in front to clear the way. The carriage soon merged into the traffic flow and disappeared.

A flag with an emblem printed on it was hung on the frame of the carriage, indicating that the people driving the carriage were the women of Zuo Pushe Lu's family.

The person sitting in the carriage was Lu Lu, who was going to Fu'an Temple to burn incense.

"Miss, guess who I saw just now?" Tu Lun, who was sitting in the car with him, talked to his young lady to relieve his boredom.

After escaping danger from Shandan and returning safely to Chang'an, Lu Lu did not mention to anyone the dream she had on the way. In the dream, she died in Shandan's Liancang Mountain. Every time she recalled it, it seemed so real.

After returning home, she changed the frequency of burning incense from once a month to once every ten days, and today was the day for her routine incense burning.

Today, when Lu Lu went to burn incense, she was dressed very simply, without even a single extra hairpin in her hair.

It was chilly in spring, and when entering the temple, Tu Lun held his young lady's shawl in his arms the whole time. He only put it down after getting on the carriage.

Tu Lun asked his young lady with great interest: "Miss, guess who I saw in the temple just now?"

Lu Lu finally gave the maid a look and said, "No guessing."

Tu Lun didn't dare to act rashly, and took the initiative to answer: "I just met Sanlang Li from Shandan in the temple!"

"Who?" Lu Lu thought for a long time before realizing who the "Sanlang Li" that Tu Lun was talking about was. "He must be here to take the exam."

Hearing his young lady say this, Tu Lun immediately realized that the young lady had a good impression of Li Jia Sanlang. It was Li Jia Sanlang who first discovered the abnormality in the carriage, which enabled them to find out the traitor lurking around the young lady so early.

"Just now I saw a foreigner standing next to him. Out of curiosity, I asked the monks in the temple and found out that Li Jiasanlang and the foreigner came together." Tu Lun was a little puzzled: "Isn't he a candidate for the imperial examination? How could he be so close to the foreigner?"

Tu Lun's words reminded Lu Lu, and she asked, "Tu Lun, is Brother Yuchi still busy planting pumpkins?"

Rabbit wheel nodded.

One day, the eldest son of the Duke's Mansion suddenly came to visit. As soon as he arrived, he got straight to the point and begged the young lady to borrow the Cang Shui Qiu.

When the young lady asked the reason, Master Yuchi said enthusiastically that he wanted to plant pumpkins, and he wanted to borrow Cangshuiqiu to help plow the land before sowing.

Young Master Yuchi believes that the Cangshuiqiu, a highly spiritual creature, will definitely bring a good harvest to the land!

"I remember Brother Yuchi said that he bought the seeds from a Hu merchant's shop in the south of the city at the price of one gold per seed." Lu Lu seemed to be thinking about something. "He also mentioned that there was no clerk in the Hu merchant's shop. Instead, a scholar who was preparing for an imperial examination was the one who was looking after the shop."

Tu Lun realized it later and looked at his young lady in disbelief: "Could it be that Master Yuchi is talking about Li Sanlang and that Hu merchant? Li Sanlang is a scholar after all, how could he associate with a Hu merchant!"

Ji Qingyue and Li Sanlang, who were being talked about by the master and servant, walked out of Fu'an Temple and went straight out of Changlefang, strolling towards their residence in the south of the city.

Chang'an City was so huge that it would take an hour or two to drive a carriage slowly across the city.

……

As the day of the results announcement approached, the atmosphere in Chang'an City changed again, and a sense of anxiety gradually spread.

Even though Li Sanlang didn't say anything and remained calm, Ji Qingyue could feel his inner uneasiness.

After the nine-day Spring Examination, Ji Qingyue stood in the square in front of the Imperial Examination Hall waiting for Li Sanlang.

The moment the gate of the Imperial Examination Hall opened, Ji Qingyue seemed to see the end of the world.

The people who walked out of the Imperial Examination Hall did not seem to be examinees, but rather soulless walking corpses.

The candidates endured nine full days of torture in the Imperial Examination Hall, not only suffering physical torture but also mental devastation.

The mental state of the candidates is on the verge of collapse.

Many candidates staggered to the Gongyuan Square, and fell to the ground unconscious without any warning the next second.

Compared to their weak bodies, what shocked Ji Qingyue was their dull and lifeless eyes.

After leaving the Imperial Examination Hall, the candidates' tense nerves were like taut strings that broke in an instant. Countless dazed candidates could no longer hold on and squatted on the ground crying and wailing.

Too difficult! How could the test questions this year be so difficult! !

Ji Qingyue was looking for Li Sanlang in the crowd. When he found Li Sanlang, he was walking steadily, but his face was terribly pale, as if he had seen something very scary in the Imperial Examination Hall.

Ji Qingyue carefully helped Li Sanlang into the car, hoping to quickly leave this mentally devastating hellhole.

On the way home, Li Sanlang gradually recovered. He forced himself to stay awake and spoke to Ji Qingyue with a wry smile.

At the beginning, Li Sanlang could still half-jokingly and half-seriously narrate the interesting things that happened in the Imperial Examination Hall. Later, the atmosphere in the car fell to the bottom, and Li Sanlang looked more and more decadent.

"There are nearly six thousand candidates taking part in the spring examination this year, and it is said that only a hundred will be admitted..." Li Sanlang sat limply in the car, and when his voice reached Ji Qingyue's ears, he was already barely able to breathe.

Ji Qingyue had long anticipated that this year's spring examination would be difficult, but he only guessed at one major difficulty: "too many candidates and a low admission rate." He did not expect that the emperor would set a second difficulty - increasing the difficulty of the test questions!

Increase the difficulty! Go to the extreme of your strength!!

This is the main reason why countless candidates feel frustrated.

I can't understand the question! I can't write it!

"It is difficult to write poems and essays, and I don't know what to say about policy papers..."

Ji Qingyue's curiosity was immediately aroused. What kind of question could cause so many candidates to suffer mental breakdown?

"Strategy No. 1: Extravagant expenses are increasing."

Just as Ji Qingyue was quietly waiting for Li Sanlang to continue speaking, Li Sanlang did not speak for a long time. Then he suddenly realized that the four words "浮费变广" were the title.

Candidates must not only understand the questions, but also correctly answer the questions contained in the questions.

"Strategy 2: The emperor's politics and the emperor's heart."

"Strategy 3: The Way to Safeguard the Country and the Army."

"Strategy 4: The method of Bei Luoshimen."

Fomalhaut?

After careful consideration, Ji Qingyue could somewhat understand the meaning of the first three questions, but what exactly did the fourth question mean?

Li Sanlang looked numb and obviously had not yet recovered from the shock of the imperial examination.

"Folmalagh is a star in the sky."

Ji Qingyue was very shocked. The exam content actually involved knowledge of astrology? !

Li Sanlang sighed softly and raised his head: "Brother Ji, do you still remember what you told me about falling into a painting by accident when you went to Jiangnan?"

of course I remember.

Ji Qingyue clearly remembered that he fell into the painting and landed in a salty lake. It was dark at the time, and there was nothing but pitch-black darkness and bone-chilling coldness.

In this environment, the only thing Ji Qingyue was looking for was light.

He subconsciously searched for any light source that could be captured by the naked eye.

The faint light in the stone tower was not discovered until the end, and the first thing he saw was the starry sky.

There was no reference object around to determine the direction, so Ji Qingyue had to float on the water and tried hard to memorize the height, position and brightness of the bright stars in the sky in his mind, so that he could find the stone tower in reality one day.

Ji Qingyue didn't understand why Li Sanlang brought up this matter at this time: "What does this have to do with 'Bei Luo Shi Men'?"

"Brother Ji gave the star map to my second brother, who then gave it to me, asking me to find the answer. I took the star map and looked through all the astronomical records, star maps, and star scriptures in the academy..." Li Sanlang stood up, regained some energy, and spoke more vigorously, "Finally, I found a star called 'Beiluoshimen'."

It turned out that the Li Erlang brothers had done so much without his knowledge.

"Brother Ji, you once said that when the moon was at its zenith, you saw a very low bright star, almost touching the mountain range."

Ji Qingyue nodded. Until now, he still clearly remembered that the star was very bright and dazzling. Among all the stars, its brightness was definitely ranked first or second.

Li Sanlang used a little strength to support his body, so as not to sway with the carriage. "It was autumn at that time, and Foshimen was a bright star in the southern sky during the autumn season."

"The stars are no different from the sun and the moon, but their positions are different at different times. The moon is at its zenith, but the star is still hovering on the horizon. This is a very rare situation."

"Season, time, location, brightness... Combining these conditions, we can determine that this star is Fomalhaut."

"The further north you go, the closer Fomalhaut is to the ground."

So that's how it is. Ji Qingyue suddenly understood, but the doubt in his heart was still not resolved: "What does Bei Luo Shi Men in the test question mean?"

At this time, Li Sanlang smiled with relief: "I have to thank Brother Ji and Brother Er this time. By chance, I read through all the astronomical records and was fortunate enough to understand the meaning of Beiluo Shimen."

Beiluo Shimen, "Shimen" refers to the military gate, "Bei" refers to the north and "Luo" refers to the sky's fence, that is, the defense facilities. Its most literal meaning is the gate of the northern military camp.

"The reason why the government chose the topic 'Bei Luo Shi Men' is because they want to know how the examinees understand military affairs and what strategies they have."

Ji Qingyue was ashamed. In order to understand a question, he had to go through several twists and turns before finding the problem.

No wonder some people say they can’t understand the questions.

"What about the other one?"

Li Sanlang lowered his head and then burst into laughter.

"The last question..." Li Sanlang crossed his legs, slowly raised his head, and his eyes met Ji Qingyue's gaze.

Li Sanlang suddenly changed his dejected attitude, and his expression was full of pride and confidence: "Let's talk about cotton."