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"Oh? The Thirteenth Best Scholar?"
The man surnamed Xue showed a brief look of surprise and doubt:
"With that scruffy appearance of yours, you've also attended the imperial examination at Three Pure Temple? But what does this 'Thirteenth' mean? In all the past selections, there's only been one top-scorer, one runner-up, and one second runner-up. Where does this 'Thirteenth' come from?"
"Not at all, not at all." Jiang Lu shook his head and swayed his neck: "The 'scholar' I explored is not the same 'scholar' you speak of. What I explored is, ahem, those delicate little flowers in the human world. As for the number thirteen, it just signifies the parts that were explored, not a ranking."
"Oh, so you're a gardener, haha," said the man surnamed Wang, who was obviously much slower on the uptake and didn't catch the hidden meaning in the words, and immediately scolded: "You gardener, instead of properly planting and tending to flowers, why come here to bring us bad luck?"
