The constables' room at the yamen was silent. The Constables, who should have been making a racket, were unusually quiet.
It was not that they had suddenly grown refined. They had all been knocked unconscious and left on the floor, and quite a few had verdicts written on their faces with a brush.
One burly man, whose arms were thicker than an ordinary person's legs, had "brutish and unreasonable" written on his face. Beside him, a lanky fellow with shifty eyes bore the words "swindler and cheat."
Of all the Constables, the chief had the most writing on his face.
The others had only a few words. His face was covered with an entire essay in tiny, densely packed characters.
"A heart of compassion, a heart that knows shame and loathes evil, a heart of respect, a heart that distinguishes right from wrong... All people possess these. A gentleman knows his heart and preserves it; his conduct stays within bounds, and thus he has benevolence, righteousness, propriety, and wisdom. A petty man knows his heart and casts it aside..."
The essay was famous: "Preserving One's Innate Goodness," one of the Ten Essays on Encouraging Learning written by Di Jiazi in years past.
The Ten Essays on Encouraging Learning were primers of the Great Xia Dynasty. Everyone who had attended school had studied them; their place in the curriculum was much like first- and second-grade textbooks in another world. Across the Great Xia Dynasty, there was no one working for the court who had not studied them.
...Whether they could still recite them was another matter.
Pan Long could, at any rate. He could write them out from memory, too, and in a fine hand.
Back when he attended the Official Academy in Dingfeng Town, the other children needed the occasional