Announcing its revival: this one will be written alongside "Yi Ming 1561." Updates for Yi Ming tonight.
As a Ministry of Justice prison, the Prison God Temple had only one thing in common with the Wangjiang Restaurant at the street corner: "No commoners came or went."
Just after the eighth day of the eleventh lunar month, the Beginning of Winter, a heavy snow arrived right on schedule.
Even the Wangjiang Restaurant's business suffered somewhat because of it, while the area before the Prison God Temple suddenly became bustling.
People delivered bedding rolls, offered charcoal braziers as tribute, and brought winter clothes. The crowd stretched more than a hundred paces.
With the jailers deliberately putting on airs, by dusk many southern visitors still had not "passed inspection." They could only stand before the gates, rubbing their hands, stamping their feet, hunching their shoulders, and cursing.
It was not that the jailers discriminated by region. Northerners had long since prepared everything they needed for winter. Those who waited until snow fell to scramble for supplies were mostly relatives and servants of southern officials accused of crimes.
Especially this year, because they had been implicated by the Zhen Family of Jiangnan, there were far more newly imprisoned southern officials than usual, resulting in this strange sight.
As the sky gradually darkened, the jailer who had been shouting through the iron gate finally sauntered outside.
Yet when the relatives of the imprisoned officials waiting against the wall saw him, they were more alarmed than pleased.
The jailer casually swept his gaze over the crowd and, with the vague mumble of someone holding a mouthful of thick phlegm, said, "Disperse, all of you. That's enough for today. Come back early tomorrow morning."
As he spoke, he turned to go back inside.
But these "relatives" of