Trust between people was something precious and scarce, something many could not obtain even by the time they died.
Suspicion between people was a poisonous seed that existed in human hearts at every moment.
Between sovereign and ministers, wielders of the highest power, suspicion always far outweighed trust.
Thus, the emperor's arts of rule-or rather, the manipulation of power-arose in response.
The Legalist School called it a hundred battles a day between sovereign and ministers, superiors and subordinates!
Now there was almost no trust between the sovereign and ministers of the Han Court. After years of continuous confrontation, the political atmosphere had grown as grim as it could be.
Relations between the emperor and his ministers had sunk to their lowest point in the Later Han's hundred-year history. The sovereign was no good sovereign, and the ministers were no good ministers.
The only thing still holding the Han Court together and keeping it moving forward was the inertia generated by the Great Han's three hundred years of political tradition.
Everyone went about their duties in the prescribed manner, advancing their own interests while jointly upholding the banner of the Han Dynasty and preserving the emperor's existence.
Zhang Jue was using the most violent means to overturn the situation throughout the realm. This was a moment when survival hung in the balance, yet the emperor was suspecting certain people.
The more critical the danger, the more they loved to fight among themselves. This was not confined to the present emperor; history held far too many such people. Back then, the Qin State had smoothly destroyed the various states of Shandong.
It had not merely been because the Qin State was powerful, but chiefly because those states were constantly embroiled in internal struggles. Was the Great Han now about to tread this