Zi Shou heard Bo Yikao's words and instantly felt rather less sober.
Did the Sobering Mat come with a built-in detector for drinking at court?
Wen Zhong calmly returned to the ranks and stroked his long beard.
Half a year. That was long enough.
He could not help marveling at his grandmaster Sect Master Tongtian's divine foresight. A Sage truly deserved the title. Without his grandmaster's guidance, he probably would still have failed to grasp the subtleties and instead disrupted His Majesty's brilliant scheme.
Chong Houhu, who had come to court despite his illness, understood.
Not drunk, but pretending to be.
Whether he was drunk no longer mattered. This was a vast game of chess!
As early as half a year ago, he had already formed his suspicions about King Zhou attending court drunk.
With His Majesty's wisdom and martial brilliance, he could never do such a thing. Besides, how could a drunken man handle affairs of state with such a clear head?
At the time, he had felt that King Zhou might be using his drunkenness to put his ministers on their guard.
But now that he thought about it, that had only been the first layer.
Coming to court drunk once or twice could serve as a warning to the ministers. Doing so for half a year straight was taking things a step further and testing them.
Could the ministers still fulfill their duties under such circumstances and persist in offering painstaking remonstrations?
Clearly, the answer they had given was less than perfect.
Even a legendary critic like Yang Ren had failed to persevere and had instead grown accustomed to it.
That was the worst part!
Today, the ministers had merely grown accustomed to him attending court drunk. But what about the future?
If King Zhou developed faults