Di Luonan fled in terror at the thought of working overtime, leaving only Pan Long and Cang Yuan in the carriage.
After a while, Pan Long remembered the work Cang Yuan had mentioned and asked curiously, "Brother Cang, was all that work you mentioned real, or were you joking?"
"How could I joke about official business?" Cang Yuan looked at him in puzzlement, as though he could not understand why Pan Long would think so.
"If it's official business, why not handle it at the Censorate?"
Cang Yuan smiled. "What you don't know is that those matters concern the Reform. They have nothing to do with the Censorate's work. If I insisted on handling them there, probably no one would object, but as the saying goes, 'When the name is not right, the words do not ring true.' If it isn't Censorate business, it's better not to handle it there."
Pan Long nodded, but the answer still felt incomplete. He could not help asking, "Is it really that simple?"
Cang Yuan paused and gave him a surprised look. "Of course it isn't that simple. The Reform has a thousand tangled threads. Tug on one, and the whole body moves. A document that looks perfectly ordinary may contain a matter affecting the fortunes, even the lives, of hundreds or thousands of families. If I handled it at the Censorate, outsiders would inevitably have a hand in it. What if someone interfered and ruined everything?"
He sighed. "The Reform will greatly benefit both the country and its people, but it also upends the interests of many. Some people in this world care about nothing beyond the harvest from their own little patch of land. Whatever we do, if we touch that patch, they'll make trouble for us—even regard us as mortal enemies!"