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Chapter 486: 241: Establishing Counties and Recruitment_3

Upon hearing this, Lu Yuan couldn’t help but laugh out loud.

The next day, the news that the imperial examination would be held and five hundred juren would be selected quickly spread throughout Changsha City.

Although it was only half of the originally anticipated number of one thousand, many people were quite disappointed.

Nevertheless, even with this reduction, selecting five hundred juren in an imperial examination was still a pretty high number, much higher than the mere hundred or so recruited in previous years for each prefecture.

Well, yes, this was a regular imperial examination, not an Enke.

After all, Lu Yuan’s Changsha State had its roots in the original Yue Country court, with the majority of its system being carried over except for some fundamentals.

Under the system of the Yue State court, every year, each prefecture held an imperial examination to recruit juren in order to supplement the shortage of officials.

However, the number of people being recruited each year was allocated to each prefecture according to the number of officials lacking in the central government and the local prefectures and counties calculated by the Ministry of Personnel.

After each prefecture received their quotas, they held the imperial examination to determine the number of successful candidates accordingly.

Under these circumstances, quota distribution to local areas was always scarce. For example, a place like Dongting and Southsea would only recruit twenty or thirty people in a year when the quotas were low, and barely more than a hundred people when they were high.

There were limited vacancies for official positions, so it was natural to fill one gap after another rather than recruit an unlimited number.

Lu Yuan’s behavior of opening Enke exams and recruiting more than two thousand people in two years, a number that would have taken decades to recruit in the past, was indeed an anomaly.

This time, recruiting five hundred people was less than the previous one thousand or even the last imperial examination.

However, compared to previous years, it was still a tenfold difference.

With such treatment, what more could the scholars complain about?

So after the news of the imperial examination spread, many scholars in the city began to prepare happily and enthusiastically.

At the same time, various real and fake exam papers and vague tips from examiners emerged in the city like bamboo shoots after the rain.

Despite many people knowing that these things were mostly fake, a large number of scholars still flocked to them.

Of course, there were also those who were pragmatic and less well-off, who started cramming by reviewing various classics and past examination papers, trying to make an extra effort before the exam.

Under this atmosphere, merchants selling stationery, writing materials, and books in Changsha City suddenly made a fortune again.

Meanwhile, restaurants and local people also made a lot of money from food and accommodation.

The reason was simple.

With the exam approaching, many people wanted to eat and live better before the exam to maintain their best condition in order to face the upcoming imperial examination.

In this way, the scholars had hope, and the businessmen and citizens had profits.

Just before the upcoming imperial examination and the king’s wedding afterward, the whole of Changsha City was full of joy, and everyone felt happy.

Under this happy atmosphere, Lu Yuan also felt extremely happy.

Because with this wave of enthusiasm, he had harvested a great deal of Qi Luck.

Accompanied by the continuous victories in the Northern Expedition, the momentum of the national fortune of the Changsha State began to rise day by day.

In this ascending trend, the people, officials, military officers, scholars, and martial artists of the country gradually became loyal.

The sense of identity with their status as Changsha people also gradually strengthened.

And this was just the first wave.

“When the immigrants I moved from Hanzhong and Xichuan prefectures gradually settle down and start normal production in their new homes, and when the newly-opened seven prefectures truly stabilize,

Only then will the Qi Luck I have gathered truly soar.

By that time, doubling the amount may not be out of the question.”

Thinking of this, Lu Yuan couldn’t help but look forward to it.

This time, the scale of the population he had relocated from Hanzhong and Xichuan prefectures was not small by any means. A rough estimate would be around two million people in fifty thousand households.

If the population from the four prefectures of Xiangyang, the three prefectures of Xichuan, and Tianmen Prefecture in Dongting were also included, the population increase of Changsha State after this Northern Expedition would have exceeded the original two million people.

As for the exact increase, Lu Yuan was not yet clear.

The immigrants were still being resettled.

To know exactly how many people there were, they had to wait for them to settle in the local prefectures and counties, then have the local officials count the numbers and report them to the higher-ups before an accurate number could be determined.

As for the eight prefectures north of the river, they were all still under military control. The officials for these prefectures and counties were still being selected in the court at this time.

They wouldn’t be able to take up their posts until after the imperial examination and the new year, at the earliest.

Before these officials took office, getting a clear count of the population in these territories was practically a fantasy.

Thus, at this time, Lu Yuan could only know that after the Northern Expedition, he not only expanded his territory by eight prefectures, nearly doubling it, but also probably increased his population by around three million people.

More specific details and numbers would have to be sorted out in the future.

Time passed slowly as they waited.

On the fifteenth day of the twelfth month of the eighth year of Hongdao, the imperial examination was held in Changsha City, with over eleven thousand scholars participating, and finally, five hundred people were selected.

The selection ratio was about one in twenty.

Then, just when a large number of scholars had failed the exam and were ready to pack up and return home, the news that the Changsha State would hold another Enke in the third month of the following year and recruit eight hundred people came.

As a result, many scholars who had lost their ambitions in this exam were overjoyed and shouted in praise when they heard the news.

Some, who were too desperate and suddenly saw hope again, even sang praises of King Changsha’s wisdom in the streets, restaurants, and rooms of study, with no end to their compliments.

Through this wave of boosting morale after initial suppression, Lu Yuan once again harvested and increased his Qi Luck to a great extent.