"Fake?"
Wen Zhong nearly threw away the bamboo slips in his hands.
Chong Houhu said solemnly, "That's right. Fake."
"The contents recorded on these bamboo slips are clearly organized and logically arranged. Why do you believe they are fake, Marquis of the North?"
Fake? Could King Zhou have feared a beating and deliberately fabricated these Tang Punishments to distract me?
Wen Zhong eyed Chong Houhu suspiciously. These bamboo slips recorded the Tang Punishments from the early Shang period. The Tang Punishments currently used in Great Shang had undergone repeated revisions under Pan Geng and Zu Jia and were already quite different from the original. Chong Houhu...
It was not that Wen Zhong refused to believe him. Chong Houhu was skilled at fathoming the sovereign's intentions, but no one had known he understood criminal law too!
Moreover, these bamboo slips were extremely important. They could well supplement missing portions of the original Tang Punishments and possessed immense value as references. From every angle, they seemed more likely to be genuine.
"Could it be that you have studied the Tang Punishments in depth, Marquis of the North?"
"No, I haven't..." Chong Houhu scratched his head. "But precisely because I don't understand them and know nothing about them, I found them all the more suspicious."
Wen Zhong frowned. "What do you mean?"
Chong Houhu gathered his thoughts for a moment before saying, "I couldn't understand the contents of the bamboo slips, so I only read their headings."
"Take this volume of Fengzhen Formulae, for example."
"The Fengzhen Formulae consists of ninety-eight slips divided into twenty-five sections. The headings include 'Managing Prisons,' 'Interrogating Prisoners,' 'Securing Property,' 'Thief's Confession,' 'Horse Theft,' 'Disputed Ox,' 'Bandit Gang,' 'Taking a Head,' 'Tattooing a Concubine,' 'Relocating a Child,' 'Reporting a Child,' 'Pestilence,' 'Assaulting a Physician,' 'Hanging,' 'Tomb Robbery,' and