The Ming emperor knew that the wide disparity in the results between north south Chinese scholars were due to his own doing of destroying the northern economy and killing many northern Chinese elites in the Lan Yu massacre case. The Founding General Lan Yu and his subordinates were mostly northerners. So the Ming emperor had to appease and buy the hearts of the rest of northern Chinese to prevent revolt by northern Chinese when they protested on the so called unfair results of TOP scholars being all southerners when it was based on meritocracy and nothing unfair about it. The poor southern Chinese examiners and Hokkien TOP scholar became the unfortunate sacrificial lambs.