It was already late at night, and the entire Yang Mansion had already fallen into darkness, and only some lights in Yang Cong's study were still shining.

Yang Cong sat at the desk, staring blankly at the several eight-legged essays in front of him, his brows frowned into a Sichuan-shaped font.

It’s not that he couldn’t understand what these articles were written. After all, Yang Cong had also “studied” the Four Books and Five Classics for more than ten years. Not to mention that he was very talented and well-educated, he could still understand ordinary articles.

Problem, he can't find the rules of eight-legged essays!

Of course, if you understand it from the perspective of format and regulations, it is nonsense to say that eight-legged essays are irregular.

The format and regulations of the eight-legged essay are quite regular, and it is not an exaggeration to describe these rules as pedantic and rigid.

So, how rigid is the eight-legged essay?

First of all, the topics of the Eight-Legend Essay must come from the "Four Books and Five Classics", which means that you don't need to guess the questions of the imperial examination, but must be excerpted from a sentence in the "Four Books and Five Classics".

For example, "Isn't it a saying to learn and practice it from time to time?", "Knowing it means knowing it, and not knowing it means not knowing it means knowing it.", "Heaven moves vigorously, and a gentleman strives for self-improvement.", etc., these may be used as questions for the imperial examination.

Then, the format of the eight-legged essay is very strict. The whole article must be divided into eight parts: breaking the topic, following the topic, starting the lecture, entering the topic, starting the stock, Chinese stock, back stock, and bundling stock, and the last four parts, starting the stock, Chinese stock, back stock, and bundling stock, which is the main text that formally explains your point of view. Each part must be composed of two parallel and parallel words, and a total of eight-legged essays are combined, and the name of the eight-legged essay comes from this.

Of course, these eight-part essays are not divided into eight paragraphs, and then the next four paragraphs are four pairs of parallel and parallel texts. The imperial examination has strict regulations on the format and content of each paragraph.

For example, when solving a question, you must use two to three sentences to figure out the essence of the question; when following the question, you must use three to five sentences to continue solving the question and further explain the question.

To give a simple example, if you use the title of "Learn and practice it from time to time", how can you write a qualified eight-legged essay at the beginning?

Two sentences to solve the problem: Learning and progressing the times will make you pure.

The three sentences follow the title: It is not only because of learning but not learning, but also learning but not learning from time to time, but it is not like that of a pure scholar.

It is right to write this way. You cannot explain your own arguments at the beginning, nor can you talk a lot. The first two paragraphs must be strictly followed in the format of the eight-legged essay to solve the topic and follow the topic.

As for the first talk, simply put, what I am talking about is. I will start talking about it, because the previous question solving and the following questions explain the meaning of the question, and there is no one's own discussion. From this point of view, you can explain your own arguments. Therefore, this point of view also means to trigger the discussion.

There is also the following topic. Simply put, I understand the topic, that is, I will further explain my argument based on the topic and the explanation in the above lecture. As for why I understand this way, please see the discussions on stocks, medium stocks, back stocks, and bound stocks below. This topic roughly plays a role of intermediate transition.

The last stocks, medium stocks, back stocks, and bound stocks are the main text, which means elaborating on your own argument in detail.

These four paragraphs are the most test subjects, because each paragraph must be composed of two parallel and parallel words, and must also pay attention to flatness, tiltness and rhyme like writing poems and couplets.

For example, when describing the sea and the octopus, you can't simply say that the sea is vast and boundless, and the blue water is endless, as if connecting to the sky and the octopus in the sea.

According to the format of the eight-legged essay, it should be written like this.

The sea, you are all water.

Octopus, you are all legs.

Of course, writing like this is just a matter of format, and the content is seriously inconsistent with the regulations, because the eight-legged essay also has strict requirements on the content of the article or the description method.

There is another most important rule in the Eight-Legend Essay, that is, the entire article must be spoken in the tone of ancient sages and sages such as Confucius and Mencius, which is the so-called sages who make words on behalf of others. They are absolutely not allowed to be freely used. They can write whatever they want, and they can't use allusions of love, flowers, snow and moon to blaspheme saints.

This is really deadly, because the ancient sages and sages basically carry them when they speak, so it is just like auxiliary words. If you want to write something that looks like the ancient sages and sages, you have to add these auxiliary words everywhere. It would be fine if you add it well, but if you add it well, you would be a joke.

For example, if the description of the sea and octopus was written completely according to the requirements of the eight-legged essay, it would roughly become like this.

The sea is vast and endless, and the sea is full of water.

The fish in the chapter are absurd and unrestrained, and outside the body, they are all legs.

This format is rigid and numerous rules, which is the most criticized thing about the eight-legged essay.

For example, the first two or three sentences solve the question, the third or four sentences follow the question, and even the number of sentences is determined to be dead, how can people perform?

For example, the main text of the eight-legged essay is like writing couplets. It must be neatly matched and explained your own point of view as if you were writing couplets. Isn’t this a waste of everyone’s time?

What's more, the eight-legged essay has regulations on the number of words in the entire article. According to the Ming Dynasty, test papers with more than 500 words will be abolished, with 500 words. Four paragraphs of almost nonsense should be written according to the format requirements. How can this view be clearly discussed?

Also, the whole article must be written in the tone of ancient sages. How difficult it is to be a human being. Many ancient scholars have taken the wrong medicine and are full of mouths. In fact, it is not that they like to speak like this, but that the imperial examination requires them to use this tone!

In short, in terms of format and regulations, eight-legged essays are quite regular. So, why did Yang Cong think that these eight-legged essays cannot find any rules?

The main reasons are that all candidates know these formats and regulations!

The rules he wanted to find were rules that all scholars in this era didn’t know, or in other words, what he wanted to find was a shortcut to the imperial examination.

Simply put, you can do a good eight-legged essay without having to read the "Four Books and Five Classics" like the nerds of this era.

This method is naturally not so easy to find. He carefully compared several eight-legged essays for a long time, but still had no clue.

He only felt that these eight-legged essays were either pedantic or rigid, with no meaning at all, and they all made people fall asleep when they looked.

These articles are indeed not very good, because they were all asked by him to Mr. Yan after dinner with shamelessness. In other words, these eight-legged essays were written by those poor scholars who were classmates with him.

In fact, the county school is not only explaining the "Four Books and Five Classics", but Mr. Yan often asks the students below to write eight-legged essays.

However, he just sets questions and rarely explains them, and does not teach students to summarize the rules of eight-legged essays. He just lets you write them yourself and show them for him after writing them.

After reading it, he felt that he would read it in public to commend it. If he didn't write it well, he would criticize it, that's all.

These so-called good writings are naturally written by poor scholars. They can all be admitted to scholars, and they must be much better than those of Yang Cong and others in their eight-legged essays.

Yang Cong used to be the type of bad writing, but the eight-legged essay he wrote was not bad enough. Therefore, Mr. Yan said that his qualifications were OK, and as long as he worked hard, there would be no problem with passing the student exam.

It’s not that he doesn’t want to work hard at this moment, he just doesn’t want to work hard according to the methods of scholars in this era. If he wants to work hard according to the methods of scholars in this era, he probably has to study for a few years before he can get into a scholar.

Moreover, even if he works hard all his life, it is hard to say whether he can pass the imperial examination or not.
Chapter completed!