A major event took place in the capital, starting a treacherous court battle in the seventeenth year of the Dajing dynasty.
To put it plainly, this incident is big enough to save Ren Anle, who is living under the glare of the people of the capital.
Two nights ago, at the end of the autumn exams, several drunken Confucian scholars fought for the top prize of the most popular courtesan, Lin Lang, at Ling Xiang House. One of the scholars fell from the second floor and died on the spot. The guards heard the news and took the Confucian scholars who had gathered to cause trouble back to the Da Lisi for interrogation.
The case was at the foot of the emperor, and most of the candidates involved in the examination were candidates for the examination. In addition, the official of the Da Lisi, Pei Zhan, happened to be at the home of the left minister of the revenue, Qian Guangjin, for a banquet, so the trial had to be held overnight by the deputy minister of the Da Lisi, Huang Pu, who was staying behind. However, at the last moment of the palace ban, Huang Pu entered the palace late at night. The court was not expecting Huang Pu to enter the palace late at night and ask for an audience with the Emperor, something that had rarely happened in the sixteen years that Emperor Jia Ning had been in charge.
[ Palace ban, a Chinese word. Firstly, it refers to the prohibitions in the palace.]
The court's lamps were burning for half a night. The courtiers who had been informed of the news could not figure out why a minor minister of the Da Lisi would dare to enter the palace in the middle of the night to alarm the saint over an insignificant case of a fight between Confucian students.
Could it be that Ren Anle, who came from afar, not only disturbed the stagnant waters of the capital, but also brought the unrelenting banditry into the Da Lisi with her?
The next day at the court meeting, when an enraged Emperor Jianing slammed a copy of a memorial presented by Huang Pu over the head of the Ministry of Confucian Rites in charge of the imperial examinations, the ministers realised what had happened.
The Da Lisi Temple interrogated the brawl case overnight, but the coroner found a cheat sheet full of answers to the examination questions in the sleeve of the candidate who had stumbled to his death. Thinking that the candidate had finished the imperial examination and gone to a flower house for fun, forgetting to destroy the evidence of fraud. The coroner was alarmed and presented the evidence to Huang Pu, who searched the candidates and found the cheat sheet on three other candidates, one of whom was the son of the right minister of the Ministry of Revenue. It was only then that he felt the seriousness of the situation, so he asked Pei Zhan to return and went to the palace overnight to report the situation.
The court was in an uproar when the matter was brought to light. The imperial examination is held once every three years, and is a fundamental part of the process of recruiting wise and talented people in Dajing, so the fraud in the imperial examination will not only shake up the court, but will also make the scholars of the country condemned. In the twenty years of its existence, such a scandal had never occurred in the history of Great Ning.
The Emperor Jianing was furious and ordered Dali Temple Qing Pei Zhan to crack the case within three days, seal the examination papers, strictly forbid all candidates to leave the capital, and dismiss Wu Yuan, the right minister of the Ministry of revenue , from his post. He also gave an order that the two cabinet ministers in charge of the examinations should be banned from the government.