Ning Chen said, "It really is too much of a coincidence. And it goes beyond that — in a lot of small tastes, they match each other to a strange degree."

"Too many coincidences stop being coincidence." Geng Jing frowned slightly as he finished. "But Zhou Anshi is a northern scholar."

Ning Chen gave a cold laugh. "It's precisely because he's a northern scholar that nobody would suspect him."

Geng Jing said, "Isn't he afraid we won't have this cleared up before the imperial examination, so the imperial examination gets put off?"

Ning Chen shook his head. "He isn't. Didn't the Lord Grand Commandant go to court today to cry injustice?"

Geng Jing's eyes narrowed to points. "You mean somebody put him up to this?"

Ning Chen said evenly, "That's hard to say... But a Grand Commandant who ought to be holding great power is sitting idle at home these days. That can't sit well with him, can it?"

"He finally waited until Old General Chen couldn't take the field anymore, and then I popped up... If I were him, I'd be sick to death over it."

"Zhou Anshi isn't short of learning, but he spends his days with his books... He could never have come up with a scheme like this on his own — the kind where you put yourself into the game as one of the pieces." (TL Note: 以身入局, "entering the game with oneself as a piece" — a modern phrase for a scheme in which the schemer makes himself part of the bait.)

Geng Jing thought for a moment, then said in a low voice, "At court these days, officials from the southern gentry clans outnumber officials from the northern gentry clans... If we can't get to the bottom of this, it's the best thing that could happen to the northern gentry clans!"

"First, three students have died one after another, and one of them died at the gate of the prince's residence. That does enormous damage to your reputation... Someone could impeach you over it and pull you down from the chief examiner's seat."