Public parading did not strike ordinary criminals very hard, but to all scholars, it was fatal. Its deterrent effect on the scholars watching also surpassed that of the death penalty.
Scholars valued their literary reputation above all else. Public parading dealt a devastating blow to that reputation.
Since the Imperial Examination emerged, not a single scholar who had been publicly paraded had ever advanced in literary rank, not even those blessed with heaven-defying talent.
Among the present Ten Old Masters of the Hanlin Academicians was one such former genius, a kingdom's Zhuangyuan. But because he had offended a Half-Sage Family, he was sentenced to a day of public parading. Though he had once been certain to become a Great Scholar, he had remained a Hanlin Academician ever since. He had used countless methods to temper himself, even cultivating a Metropolitan Graduate War Poetry to the Fourth Realm, bringing its power infinitely close to Great-Scholar War Poetry, yet his literary rank had never broken through.
As a result, he often acted mad and deranged, and people called him the Mad Elder.
This Mad Elder had once participated in the renowned Three Valleys Battle and, remarkably, had won once.
The more renowned the Mad Elder became, the more scholars feared public parading. It was a punishment capable of ruining a genius.
Stripping away literary rank, public parading, and exile for decades—three punishments piled atop one another. Such a sentence was rare in Human Race history, much less when imposed upon someone not yet twenty.
Right and wrong were no longer the focus of the crowd. What mattered was that the youths and children who witnessed this scene were secretly swearing that they must never fall to such a state because of academy bullying.
While the five criminals were being publicly paraded, Fang