Inside the Prefect's Residence.
The Prefect, Garrison Commander, Record Keeper... all the important officials of the prefecture were present.
Several County Magistrates from the various counties were there as well.
Everyone remained silent.
This upright Prefect bore the surname Li.
Prefect Li had always been unyielding, a sharp sword of the dynasty.
He had served several times as an eighth-rank Imperial Inspector, once even bringing down the Governor-Generals of three provinces.
He had endured Court Bashings and been thrown into the imperial prison.
He was one of the rare officials whose words and actions matched.
He truly treated all those moral teachings and the dynasty's laws as principles by which to conduct himself.
Many high-ranking court officials and colleagues despised him in their hearts and mocked him aloud, yet they also envied him deeply—
Even these crafty, shrewd officials understood that a hundred or a thousand years from now, Prefect Li's name would surely endure.
Because he was sincere. He wanted what was good for the people and what was good for the court.
He genuinely wished to enforce those laws—though at their core, the laws served the dynasty, they at least maintained a measure of fairness on the surface.
For example, the law explicitly stated that when commoners accused officials, they had to be beaten first—but if the evidence proved true, the official would be punished as well.
This was plainly biased toward the scholar-officials.
Yet even so, the scholar-officials were dissatisfied and still violated the law at every turn—after all, wrongdoing still carried punishment.
For another example, the law also protected servants, who seemed to occupy the lowliest station—even indentured servants could not be casually killed without punishment, including fines, demotion, and so on.
At its root, this was naturally to protect the dynasty's labor force, military recruits,