But as a side note, in the current climate, cheating probably only gets you as far as the tongsheng exam. Beyond that, unless it’s your closest family, no one would dare take the risk.

After returning home, Butcher Miller had already been invited over, biting into a cow’s ear with a sharp knife and slaughtering three fat pigs. The famous opera troupe Saifengxian from He Cang had already started setting up the stage. Groups of people gathered in the front yard, puffing on dry tobacco, plates piled high with fried peanuts and sun-dried melon seeds were served, shells littering the ground. The servants of The Allen Family all wore beaming faces, the whole place was bustling and noisy, the clamor never ceasing. It was clear that a three-day banquet was inevitable.

A round-faced middle-aged man was surrounded by the crowd, dressed in a maroon satin robe embroidered with five bats. The tailor’s craftsmanship was impeccable, but on his overly plump body, it looked a bit ill-fitting. Still, he was grinning so widely his eyes were nearly invisible. This was none other than Jason Allen’s cheap father in this life, Mr. Allen.

In his previous life, Jason Allen had been an orphan, always longing for familial affection. When he transmigrated, he inherited the original owner’s memories, so Mr. Allen’s doting care since childhood was vivid in his mind, and calling him “father” came without any psychological barrier.

When Jason Allen saw the old man, he sighed, parted the crowd, and pulled his father aside to a quiet spot, then said bluntly:

“Dad, how much silver did you spend for me to pass the tongsheng exam?”

“Wha… what are you talking about!” Although Mr. Allen’s tone was already starting to sound guilty, he was still stubborn.

Jason Allen shrugged and said:

“If I go check the account books at the counter, I’ll know everything. What’s the point of hiding it from me, Dad?”

It had been nearly a year since he transmigrated. Jason Allen had tried his hand at managing the household accounts, making them neat and orderly. With a few simple promotional tricks, the family business was booming. At this point, Mr. Allen knew he couldn’t hide it, so he held up two fingers.

“Two hundred taels?!”

“A bit more than that…”

“Could it be two thousand taels?”

“That’s what I first reported, but the academic director spat right in my face…”

“Are you crazy! Twenty thousand taels just for a tongsheng! Did we sell our shop in Yicheng too?”

When Jason Allen heard this, he was truly shocked and angry.

“My son, you don’t know—our family may look prosperous on the surface, but when it comes to social dealings, no scholar wants to suffer the indignities we do…” Mr. Allen immediately began to complain, but his small eyes on his chubby face kept sneaking glances at Jason Allen’s expression.

He had doted on this son since childhood, and as the only male heir for three generations, when Jason Allen used to be a playboy, he could still put on a father’s stern face and say a few words—of course, he could never bear to actually hit him. But after Jason Allen transmigrated, he turned over a new leaf, and with a few clever moves, the family business flourished. Now, Mr. Allen couldn’t muster any fatherly authority at all.

Faced with this, all Jason Allen could do was smile wryly and sigh—what else could he say? Just then, the steward came over to ask about something, and Mr. Allen immediately seized the opportunity to escape, straightening his face, coughing, and strolling out. At the door, he suddenly remembered something, turned back, and said:

“Oh, right, Wang Bo just came back and said that everything on the list you made last month has been bought and placed in your study.”

“Those things have arrived?” Jason Allen was overjoyed. Ever since he took the child scholar exam, his confidence—bolstered by his doctorate in his previous life—made him certain he would pass. The next step, of course, was choosing an academy.

After all, this was ancient times, and information was far from abundant or accessible. There were certainly no overwhelming admissions advertisements, so most tongsheng and xiucai chose academies based on one principle: the closer to home, the better, to save on travel expenses.

Jason Allen certainly didn’t agree with this blind, arranged-marriage style of school selection. Having struggled through the terrifying “graduate equals unemployed, jobless and living off parents” reality of his previous life, he knew that choosing the right school was crucial.

So he had his employees from various places collect all sorts of miscellaneous notes, poems, autobiographies, and so on, written by scholars of this era. From the scattered records in these materials, he could deduce and reconstruct the characteristics of the major academies.

“Hmm, this person named David Grant wrote a poem saying that when he studied at Wude Academy: ‘His mind flowed like a spring,’ but when he became an official, he felt dried up. Maybe he was exaggerating, but combined with other notes, many people say the same thing—Wude Academy must have something unique about its feng shui.”

After reaching this conclusion, Jason Allen picked up a brush and quickly sketched a table on the xuan paper beside him—he actually made an EXCEL spreadsheet! This was a habit from his previous life. Back then, Jason Allen was obsessed with data analysis, even earning dual PhDs in data science and analytics from MIT.

The saying Jason Allen trusted most was: data doesn’t lie. What is revealed behind the data is the most profound! So now, he was trying to quantify these famous and mysterious academies through data analysis.