NOVPUBSong Lian, who returned home for lunch at noon, had barely set foot in the house when he heard these outrageous words. He slipped off his boots and chased after Song Yu, delivering a beating, and even Li Nuo found it difficult to intervene.
Indeed, Li Nuo had also considered the idea of sending his second uncle to the Ministry of Justice for reflection.
However, being adept at both driving chariots and archery could be considered special skills.
But Li Nuo was uncertain whether understanding the rituals of Daxia truly counted as a special skill.
If it did not, then there was of course no need to haul his second uncle off to the Ministry of Justice.
Moreover, the Ritual Department was the simplest among the Six Arts, similar to the political studies for the modern graduate exams, requiring nothing but rote memorization and not much thought.
Ace this subject would be difficult, and failing it would not be easy either; he could just memorize on his own. He had passed the Law and public exams on his first attempt, so memorization was quite his forte.
Zhou Yu bowed to Li Nuo and said, "Brother Li, I have to go to the Horse Field to practice driving, so I shall take my leave."
Li Nuo, noticing several figures slowly approaching from not too far off, said, "There’s no rush to practice driving. Stay here and finish the lesson before leaving."
Zhou Yu looked puzzled: "A lesson? What lesson?"
It was naturally a lesson in Mathematics.
A few days earlier, Li Nuo had resumed giving lectures to several of the old masters at Qingfeng Academy.
A partial genius like Zhou Yu taking the Imperial Examination was essentially gambling,
He was betting that no one in the Horse Riding subject could surpass him.
If his bet was correct, he would become the top scholar in Horse Riding. If wrong, he would have to look for another path.
But gamblers rarely ended well.
In each Imperial Examination, if they faltered in their own performance, or if another dark horse emerged, they would have no choice but to return home and take over the family business.
However, Zhou Yu was different from these partial geniuses.
His Horse Riding skills were among the top tier, and his Shooting results were also quite good, though not as exceptional as Horse Riding.
If that were all, it might have been enough.
But his knowledge of Law was also extremely good, and if he could improve in Mathematics as well, even if he fell short of being first in Horse Riding, as long as his overall scores were in the top hundred, he could still secure an Advanced Scholar position.
Zhou Yu had helped him so much; of course, Li Nuo had to consider his prospects too.
With a double-safety net, if he still didn’t pass, then it simply wasn’t meant to be, and there was nothing Li Nuo could do.
At least he would be without guilt.
Zhou Yu, kept here by force by Li Nuo, listened to the class in a daze.
His Mathematics was poor, even worse than Song Yu’s.
What Brother Li was teaching was completely unfamiliar to him; if not for the fact that the senior scholars listened with extreme seriousness, nodding from time to time, Zhou Yu would have suspected that he was talking nonsense.
As the lesson ended, Li Nuo saw the bemused look in Zhou Yu’s eyes and said to the masters, "This is Zhou Yu, a friend of mine. He isn’t very strong in Mathematics, so I beg the masters to take some trouble in teaching him. Hopefully, his Mathematics can be improved before the Imperial Examination..."
Mr. Chen bowed and replied, "Mr. Li, rest assured, there is still half a year before the Imperial Examination. We old fellows are idle anyway and will definitely try our best to teach him."
They had all felt guilty for not having been able to get him into the academy the last time.
Mr. Li was not easily asking them to do another favor, so of course they had to do it perfectly and impeccably.
Mr. Lu looked toward Zhou Yu and asked, "Young man, what grades do you usually get in Mathematics?"
Zhou Yu snapped back to reality and said, "B-..."
Mr. Xu frowned slightly but still said, "B- is indeed a bit low, but it’s not beyond help. With half a year left, reaching A+ might be a bit difficult, but raising your grade to A should not be a problem..."
Zhou Yu was taken aback by these words. What outrageous claim was this old man making?
Half a year to improve from a B- to an A+? He had studied Mathematics for more than ten years; how could he not know whether he had that potential?
Li Nuo bowed to the masters and said, "I entrust him to you, gentlemen."
The old masters, all of who set the Mathematics questions for the Imperial Examination, would uphold their professional ethics in Li Nuo’s belief; they would not deliberately leak questions to Zhou Yu, but their teaching would inevitably have some subtle influences on him.
That was all he could do to help Zhou Yu.
After Zhou Yu and the old masters left, a figure bounced and jumped in from outside, did twenty backflips, clapped her hands, and said to Li Nuo, "Brother Nuo, please play the piano for me, I want to hear you play..."
Though the Law Code granted prodigious abilities, allowing one to easily master skills others struggled for a lifetime to learn, its downside was also evident: its effects were very short-lived.
Once the time limit passed, regaining those abilities would cost one’s life.
Even a single day’s loss was too much for Li Nuo to bear.
Li Nuo stretched out his hand and said, "I’ve just finished teaching them, my hand hurts, I don’t want to play the piano..."
The little girl sweetly replied, "Then let’s not play, I’ll massage it for you..."
Mumu’s hands were soft, and Li Nuo sat in the yard, enjoying the hand massage from the little girl. 𝓃𝓸𝓋𝓅𝓊𝒷.𝓬𝓸𝓂
Until another little girl appeared in the yard, saying angrily, "Song Ning’er, what are you doing again!"
To this day, Li Nuo could not distinguish between Mumu and Ning’er.
The current Ning’er had shed her former arrogance and was just as courteous and polite as Mumu; her progress in Martial Arts was also exceptionally rapid, making it even harder for Li Nuo to tell them apart.
But there was no need to really distinguish.
There was no point in picking out Ning’er each time; next time she would only impersonate more convincingly.
Her impersonating Mumu simply meant she wanted him to play with her, and although not discounting the slight mischief of pretending to be her sister in her heart, it was harmless.
The two twin sisters competing for his attention also had a silver lining.
Each sister took hold of one of Li Nuo’s hands, exchanged glances, huffed, and turned their heads away, but the massage movements continued unabated.
