Breakthrough

The Imperial Palace.

Great Celebration Hall.

The reigning Son of Heaven of Great Song was in his forties. Refined in appearance, he excelled at meticulous flower-and-bird painting and was fond of cultivating the Dao.

The morning court had already ended. He had deliberately retained several men and summoned them to the rear hall to discuss affairs.

"The northern barbarians have breached the border again..."

"A great drought ravages the Central Plains, yet the disaster relief funds have somehow been embezzled to the last coin..."

By the end of the discussion, even the Emperor's face could not help showing a trace of weariness.

How could he fail to see that the court was declining by the day, that the nation's fortunes were crumbling?

But... though he had the heart to slay the traitors, he lacked the strength to turn back the heavens!

To be honest, the previous several chancellors had all been outstanding talents of their age and had proposed many workable measures. Yet once those measures reached the lower levels, the officials always found a hundred ways to twist their meaning.

This was also the bureaucratic bloc's supreme art in dealing with imperial orders: either stall and ignore them... or add layer upon layer of demands...

In short, if grassroots enforcement was ineffective, even the finest plan to save the nation was useless!

Thus, throughout every dynasty, rectifying officialdom had been regarded as the foremost task of the court.

Yet no matter how a feudal dynasty reformed itself, it was ultimately rule by men, unable to escape the vicious cycle where policies died with the people who made them.

Even the Emperor knew that the court's accumulated maladies were too deeply rooted to reverse. Like a gravely ill man weakened to the bone, he could not be treated with