Promote the Law

"Ah-choo!"

Sun Shaozong sat alone in the study. He had just spread the draft across the desk when his nostrils suddenly itched. He hurriedly turned his head toward an empty space and let out a tremendous sneeze.

Who was thinking about him again?

Rubbing his nose, Sun Shaozong indulged in some aimless speculation before finally returning his attention to the draft on the table.

From the second day after taking up his post at Dali Temple, he had been considering how to establish his authority and break the deadlock. Though he had already established his prestige during the investigation, he was still far from breaking the deadlock.

What he wanted to break through was not his own isolated and helpless position within Dali Temple, but Dali Temple's awkward standing among the Three Judicial Offices as a whole.

In truth, Dali Temple's current problem could be summed up in four words: a disconnect between top and bottom.

Though it was nominally the supreme guardian of order throughout the realm, Dali Temple had in fact become an office that merely waited, relied, and begged. It had almost no means of restraining local governments and could only wait for them to voluntarily submit difficult cases.

Yet local governments, eager to preserve their political achievements and official reputations, were deeply resistant to this.

And so, back and forth, Dali Temple became like duckweed drifting in the wind, with scarcely any foundation to speak of.

Once it lost its practical significance, Dali Temple's status among the Three Judicial Offices—and indeed throughout the entire court—naturally declined step by step.

By now, it had even vaguely become an appendage of the Censorate. More than half the cases it handled each year were transferred over by the Censorate, and all it needed to do was render judgments according