However, his respect for law and order was soon called into question.
It happened as Zeng Mu passed an alley during his walk.
A group of officials and soldiers dressed in red were moving in and out of doorways. Their words and the papers in their hands made it clear that they were there to collect taxes.
Farmers paid agricultural taxes, merchants paid commercial taxes, and even beggars paid relief taxes. Rich or poor, whether they had an ingot of gold or a single copper, no one escaped taxation.
He saw a merchant's shop smashed by the soldiers because he could not pay this year's taxes; he saw an elderly farmer dragged out of his home and beaten on the backside with long boards in the street because he could not pay the wheat seedling tax and pork tax; he saw a beggar who could barely walk without swaying-presumably from prolonged hunger-stripped of his clothes for failing to pay this month's porridge-begging tax. They stamped a large red mark on his forehead, a cruel prohibition against begging for porridge or taking steamed buns from the relief pavilion that month.
The dark side of harsh laws was laid bare before Zeng Mu, delivering a stinging rebuke.
He could not help sighing and said to Okelo beside him, "Laws must be strictly enforced, and everyone treated equally. Only then can a nation in troubled times hope to become strong, and a nation in peaceful times hope to achieve harmony and stability.
"But the one flaw in the law is that it makes no allowance for human feeling. It asks no reasons, considers no process, and cares only about results. Like the back of an icy mirror reflecting brilliant sunlight, its unseen coldness chills the heart most deeply."
"Perhaps you're thinking too much.