Varies From Person To Person

After delivering his son to the Chang'an County Office, the middle-aged man gave him one last, deep look, then turned and walked away without looking back, as if the young man were not his son.

That made his stance clear.

Whatever sentence the county office handed down, he would accept it.

By then, the onlookers had already erupted into a buzz.

"Was that man just now an Official of the Ministry of Personnel?"

"He said his surname was Wang. The official in charge of the Ministry of Personnel's Merit Evaluation Office is surnamed Wang!"

"He really brought his own son here!"

"Why would he do that?"

The people could not make heads or tails of it. If the Official of the Ministry of Personnel were the sort to put justice above family, his son would have been punished by the authorities six months ago. He would not have waited until today. So why, after this new Magistrate of Chang'an investigated the case, had he immediately sent his son to submit to the law?

Could this new Magistrate have powerful backing?

Li Nuo could vaguely guess why the Official of the Ministry of Personnel had acted so decisively: it was probably because of his father.

After all, he was only a fifth-rank official, while the Minister of Justice was a Third-rank Official.

A single rank could crush a man, and there were four full grades between Principal Third Rank and Principal Fifth Rank. What was more, the Court of Judicial Review was in charge of criminal law.

In Great Xia, Principal Third Rank could be called the pinnacle of officialdom. Though there were still Second Rank and First Rank above it, those two grades were more symbolic than practical, and most of their positions were honorary. Principal Third-rank officials, such as the heads of the Six Ministries and the ministers of the Nine Courts, were pillars of the Imperial Court who wielded real power. Apart from the emperor, no one could appoint, dismiss, or punish them.

Over the past few days, Li Nuo had been studying the Great Xia Codex. By now, when judging a case, he sometimes no longer needed to consult the book.

The Great Xia Codex stipulated that adulterers, both male and female, were to receive an Imprisonment Sentence of a year and a half. If a married woman committed adultery, the sentence rose to two years. A rapist received one degree more punishment—in other words, three years in prison.

Great Xia imposed relatively light penalties for rape, with the maximum being three years' imprisonment. In later generations, the same crime carried a minimum of three years and a maximum of the Death Penalty.

This case, however, had one special circumstance: the woman violated by the Official of the Ministry of Personnel's son had been driven mad by the trauma. Since this counted as grave harm, a supplementary clause to the law allowed for a harsher sentence.

After discussing it with Pei Zhe, Li Nuo decided to sentence Wang Yue to one hundred strokes of the cane and Three Years of Imprisonment, and to order him to pay the victim one hundred taels in compensation.

The three-year prison term was the base sentence. The hundred strokes were an added penalty within the bounds of the law, while the hundred taels in compensation were an additional ruling made in light of the case. Within the limits permitted by the Great Xia Codex, Li Nuo and the Magistrate of Chang'an had handed down the harshest possible sentence for Wang Yue's crimes.

The people were furious, and many shouted for him to be beheaded.

But that was impossible. Punishment had to be prescribed by law, and sentences could only be imposed within its bounds. Anything beyond them would be invalidated by the Ministry of Justice and the Court of Judicial Review, and officials who issued unlawful sentences would be punished as well.

Wang Yue had already received the maximum sentence. The Wang family could even refuse to pay the extra hundred taels and take the case to the Ministry of Justice.

But it did not look as if they would.

An Imprisonment Sentence had to be reviewed by the Ministry of Justice before it could be carried out, but the caning did not. After Wang Yue's crimes and sentence were announced in public, two constables loosened his bonds and pinned him facedown on a long bench. Two more constables carried out the punishment before the crowd.

Wang Yue looked like a weak scholar, but his body could take a beating. Even after several heavy strokes, he did not make a sound.

Li Nuo was surprised. A flicker of interest appeared in Steward Wu's eyes, too. "He's got talent. He's barely twenty and has already cultivated Inner Breath. And he isn't even using it to protect himself. He has some backbone..."

Li Nuo watched Wang Yue being punished. Steward Wu had said that he was at the Martial Arts Second Realm, also known as the Internal Breath Realm. One's body produced the rudiments of true qi, which could protect it. If Wang Yue used his Inner Breath to shield himself, an ordinary cane would have no effect.

Li Nuo could not help lamenting the injustice of Heaven. Even scum like this had decent talent in the Martial Dao, while he had none at all.

The constables administering the punishment showed no mercy. Without Inner Breath to protect him, even a Martial Artist would have trouble enduring it.

Yet Wang Yue did not utter a sound from beginning to end, even after his buttocks and back had been beaten into a bloody pulp.

The onlookers watched with satisfaction. Amid the crowd stood a woman in coarse clothes, her hair in disarray. She stared blankly at the scene. The silly smile on her face gradually faded, replaced by grief and indignation. That grief slowly turned to satisfaction. She ran to the Old Madam, dropped to her knees, and cried out through her tears, "Mother..."

The disheveled woman was the victim in this case. Seeing Wang Yue punished seemed to have jolted her once more, and she had regained her senses. It was a heartening turn of events.

The Old Madam held her daughter and stared blankly at what was unfolding before her.

Over the past six months, she had gone from one government office to another, wearing through countless pairs of shoes, and still had not won justice for her daughter.

She had nearly given up. That day, she had come to the county office to watch the public hearing, carrying one last sliver of hope. She had never imagined that the beast would actually be punished!

She took her daughter's hand and suddenly dropped to her knees before the young gentleman. Tears streamed down her face as she kowtowed again and again. "Thank you, just judge! Thank you, just judge!"

"Just judge!"

"Just judge!"

The onlookers began shouting excitedly, too.

Li Nuo kept his expression fairly calm, but he could not suppress the faint smile at the corner of his mouth.

For a judge, what could be more satisfying than earning the people's gratitude?

People in other professions could never understand what those words, "just judge," meant to legal workers.

They meant the people's recognition.

They were also the reason they had first studied the law.

Even as their power and status grew, many had long since lost sight of that original aspiration. Yet hearing those words could still stir something in them, an echo of the feelings they had once held.

Standing behind Li Nuo, Pei Zhe seemed to remember something and wore a wistful expression.

Steward Wu tilted his head toward the sky, hiding his embarrassment.

Behind the crowd, Song Jiaren stood quietly. Her gaze passed over the people and lingered on that figure for a long time.

The people's cheers shook the heavens. Even the prisoners locked in the county jail could hear them clearly.

The young woman in prison garb lifted her head and peered outside through the narrow window. "Brother Zhang, what's happening out there?" she asked the jailer.

The jailer smiled. "The young master's holding a hearing. I heard it was the son of some Ministry of Personnel official who raped a woman. No one dared touch him for over half a year. Once the young master found out, he had the man dragged straight to the county office. They just gave him a hundred strokes. He should be brought in here soon..."

As soon as he finished speaking, two jailers dragged in a figure whose back was soaked in blood and whose body hung limp as a heap of mud. They threw him into a cell.

The young woman looked at the figure lying unconscious in the cell opposite. The face of a handsome young man flashed through her mind. At last, a trace of regret appeared on her face. She clenched her fists, her nails digging deep into her flesh...

Outside the Chang'an County Office.

The sun had already set, and darkness had fallen.

Though Li Nuo still had not had his fill of judging cases, the Magistrate of Chang'an and several constables had been busy all day and had work again tomorrow. In the end, Li Nuo had to halt the line of people waiting and tell them it was too late to continue today; they could come back tomorrow.

The Old Madam and her daughter were temporarily given a place to stay at the county office for the night.

The Wang family had yet to pay the hundred taels in compensation. The county office would help them pursue it until the case was fully settled.

In the county office's rear hall, Madam Pei had just returned when she heard what had happened. Though she felt a rush of satisfaction, she looked at Pei Zhe and asked worriedly, "Lord Wang is an official in the Ministry of Personnel's Merit Evaluation Office. You've offended him, my lord. Will he make things difficult for you later?"

Pei Zhe gave a slight tug of his lips. "Don't worry. He won't get the chance..."

Li Xuanjing, the Minister of Justice, was famous for never letting anyone off, even when they were in the right.

No—even when he was in the wrong, he still never let anyone off.

Every official in Chang'an who had not broken the law was terrified of him.

Now that Wang Duo had committed such a serious crime and Li Xuanjing knew about it, all he could do was pray for Heaven's protection.

If Wang Duo had any sense, he would resign and retire that very night.

Otherwise, in a while, what he lost would not be his official hat but his head.

There had been cases like that before.

But thinking of the people's fervor that day and the commotion outside the county office, Pei Zhe sighed softly. "Tomorrow's going to be a busy day..."

At that moment, on the carriage taking him back to Li Manor after a long day, Li Nuo casually glanced at the Code of Law. The next instant, shock was written all over his face.

The Code of Law, visible only to him, floated silently before his eyes.

On its cover were the same two familiar lines of seal script.

"Name: Li Nuo."

"Lifespan: Forty-two days."

Li Nuo rubbed his eyes carefully, making sure he had not misread it. The number on the Code of Law really was "forty-two."

But he remembered clearly that before he had judged Wang Yue, his remaining lifespan had been thirty-one days.

Based on his past experience, Wang Yue's sentence of Three Years of Imprisonment should have added three days to his lifespan. But instead, it had gone from thirty-one to forty-two—an increase of eleven full days, more than three times the usual amount.

Li Nuo glanced at Wang Yue's portrait in the Code of Law.

It was dark.

That meant he had no outstanding strengths.

Yet he had added more lifespan than other people.

Could the lifespan granted by the Code of Law vary from person to person?