Kyoto was far warmer than the Northern Territory. The spring arrived on the branches early, coaxing out countless blossoms. Every night, the lights of myriad homes illuminated Spring Bridge, creating a lively scene. Ten miles of red candles reflected in Flower River, presenting a spectacle of beauty and indulgence. It was the perfect season for enjoying the spring, admiring the spring, playing with the spring, and even... desecrating the spring.

However, during the day, Kyoto was rather quiet. It seemed that whether it was the common people or the officials, they were all succumbing to the drowsiness of spring, too lazy to move much. Therefore, there weren't many pedestrians on the streets.

Around noon, a scholar with a gloomy expression, supporting a woman, walked into Kyoto from the east city gate. The expressions and actions of these two didn't resemble those of a mother and son. They also didn't stay at an inn, but instead went directly to an inconspicuous residence in western Kyoto. Only a very few people knew that the true owner of this residence was a Censor-in-Chief of the Imperial Censorate.

The drowsiness of spring was irresistible, but it could be startled awake. On a certain day in mid-March, just like the day after the imperial examinations, several unprovoked claps of spring thunder roared, and a light spring rain fell, soaking every building and every alley in Kyoto.

After the Supervisory Council recovered the relevant corrupt officials and salt merchants from Jiangnan, the imperial examination cheating case was finally adjudicated. Apart from a Vice Minister who was sentenced to exile three thousand miles away, a total of seventeen implicated officials were sentenced to capital punishment. This was His Majesty's decree, and the evidence was irrefutable. No force dared to say another word, and no civil official dared to offer the slightest objection.

Guo Youzhi, the Minister of Rites, was also sentenced to be beheaded. This was the highest-ranking official to receive the death penalty since the founding of Qing Yu Nian. When the news came out, the court and the public were shocked. It was said that even the Empress Dowager went to His Majesty's palace to plead for mercy. However, after Emperor made some gentle remarks and shed a few tears of the Son of Heaven, the sentence was changed to strangulation in prison, leaving Minister Guo a whole corpse. The Empress Dowager then retreated in disappointment, saying no more.

Accompanying Guo Youzhi to death were sixteen other officials.

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...

Raindrops slowly fell from the sky, landing on the ground of Yan Shi Kou (Salt Market Intersection), usually the busiest place in Kyoto, but they still failed to drive away the Kyoto residents who braved the rain to watch the execution.

Sixteen officials, dressed in white execution clothes, knelt on the wooden platform that had already been set up. Their clothes were already stained with blood, indicating that they had suffered a lot of torture. These officials, who were once so glamorous, now had defeated expressions and tangled hair, looking extremely miserable. It was unknown what methods the Supervisory Council had used, but some of the more resilient convicts forced themselves to open their lifeless eyes, trying to find their relatives in the crowd of onlookers, their mouths wide open, but they couldn't utter a word.

Mu Tie, who was jointly handling the execution on the orders of the Three Judicial Offices and the Supervisory Council, sat under the awning, watching the scene before him. Mu Tie was expressionless, but the other civil officials had some discomfort on their faces. The convicts waiting to die under the execution platform were once their colleagues, and they had enjoyed themselves together on flower boats and got drunk together at banquets. Now, they had to watch them die with their own eyes.

Rainwater fell on the eaves of the wine shop next to Yan Shi Kou, and then flowed down the waterway along the edge of the tiles, forming a small waterfall from the sky. There were many buildings here, so there were also more than ten small waterfalls, striking the bluestone ground like white dragons, making a "pa pa" sound.

A high-ranking official stood up and loudly announced the imperial decree, but it was somewhat inaudible due to the interference of the "pa pa" sounds of these small waterfalls. The crowd of onlookers only saw his mouth moving, but didn't know what he was saying. They only saw the high-ranking official's face become stern, and he shouted sharply, "Execute!"

The crowd of onlookers heard this word clearly and immediately became excited, shouting and squeezing forward, wanting to get closer to the wooden platform to enjoy this rare spectacle.

The executioner on the wooden platform spat out a mouthful of saliva, wiped the rain off his face, carried the large knife behind him, took a step forward, extended his left hand and gently pressed the back of the first convict's neck, confirming the position of the bones, and then roared loudly, the knife flashed!

When the knife fell, it made a muffled sound like a sharp knife cutting into pork.

With a "shua" sound, fresh blood sprayed out from the headless cavity, splashing far away. The head of the convict fell limply onto the wooden platform, seemingly still fearing the great knife of the Qing Yu Nian court. It rolled around, gurgling, and actually, relying on the flow of rainwater, it rolled continuously, rolled to the edge of the wooden platform, and fell down.

Seeing a head full of blood and bewilderment falling at their feet, the Kyoto residents, who had previously been so excited, took a big step back in fright.

The head left a trail of blood where it rolled, but it quickly faded away without a trace after being washed away by the rain.

...

...

It wasn't until this moment that the onlookers let out a cheer, but there weren't many people cheering, and it wasn't very uniform, seeming somewhat desolate. On the high platform, Mu Tie, who was supervising the execution sitting on the lowest chair, showed a look of displeasure on his face.

Immediately afterwards, the executioner struck again with a knife, another head fell to the ground, another blood light shot into the sky, another burst of exclamations, and another life was gone forever. There were a total of three executioners, and in just a short while, sixteen convicts were beheaded one after another, leaving only a ground of blood and corpses.

As the beheadings progressed, the crowd of onlookers gradually became bolder, and the cheers became louder and louder. When the head of the Vice Minister of Rites finally left his body miserably, the cheering sound was even more earth-shattering! Even the rain was frightened and floated away.

Several constables from the Kyoto government office were busy searching for the heads of the convicts that had fallen earlier, but they couldn't find them after searching for a long time.

After a while, a black dog ran out of the crowd, carrying a head in its mouth, its sharp teeth biting the ear of the head, its dog eyes glancing around, but the light in its dog eyes made people feel a chill for no reason.

"Woof!" The black dog was hit on the butt with the sheath of a knife by a Kyoto government office constable, and it let go of the head in its mouth in pain, whimpered a few times, and scurried into the heavy rain.

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In the following days, a series of actions were taken again. The Minister of Justice was found to have been accepting bribes and perverting justice. The Supervisory Council found a quantity of gold and silver and contraband in his third concubine's villa, reported it to the court, and transferred it to the Court of Judicial Review for deliberation. He was stripped of his post and demoted to the magistrate of Yizhou, directly from the first rank to the seventh rank.

Yizhou was far in the south, with a lot of miasma and heat poison. I'm afraid that this Minister of Justice, Han Zhiwei, would never return to Kyoto.

And Guo Zheng, the Censor of the Imperial Censorate, didn't seem to be affected much on the surface, but he was still sent to Jiangnan by the court on some pretext. Although Jiangnan was a place of beautiful waters and beautiful women, the Fourth Division of the Supervisory Council had already filled it with personnel. It was just a matter of when to act and how to deal with him.

The civil official system in the court didn't band together and attack the Supervisory Council because of this matter, partly because of the Prime Minister's relationship and partly because they felt that the Supervisory Council had solid evidence and wasn't being too ruthless.

But all the officials knew that this was revenge, this was the Supervisory Council's naked revenge for the matter of the Ministry of Justice's main hall, because of that Supervisor Fan Xian who was far away in the Northern Territory.

...

...

Revenge and counter-revenge, control and counter-control, until finally reaching a tacit balance, was the unchanging theme of the Qing Yu Nian officialdom for decades. Therefore, no one thought that when the revenge of the Supervisory Council and the Prime Minister was very tolerant and remained within a certain limit, the counterattack from Xinyang and the Empress would still come so quickly.

The young scholar mentioned earlier was He Zongwei, who couldn't participate in the imperial examinations this time because of the death of his father. He was a student of Grand Secretary Zeng Wenxiang and had always been close to the Guo family. He didn't expect to hear the explosive news when he was in his hometown. The Minister was waiting to die in prison, his family property was confiscated, and his friend Guo Baokun didn't know where he had gone. What made He Zongwei a little angry was that the Crown Prince of the Eastern Palace didn't lend a helping hand in this matter!

The woman who entered Kyoto with He Zongwei had an even more bizarre background. She was actually the wife of Wu Bo'an. Wu Bo'an was a strategist planted by the Princess Royal in the Prime Minister's mansion. Last year, he persuaded the second son of the Lin family to join forces with the Northern Qi side to assassinate Fan Xian on Niu Lan Street, but unexpectedly, he died tragically on the grape trellis in the end.

Lin Ruofu, as the Prime Minister, naturally hated Wu Bo'an, who had killed his only normal son, to the bone. Although Wu Bo'an had died early, the Wu family still had a lot of property in Shandong. The local officials were students of the Prime Minister, so they followed the will of the superiors and tortured the Wu family well. In just half a year, they didn't know how much silver they had searched, and they even imprisoned Wu Bo'an's biological son for no reason, torturing him to death.

Although this woman didn't know how to read, she also knew that the Prime Minister's power was great, and the Wu family couldn't compete with him. But heartbroken by the tragic death of her son, she hardened her heart and broke into Kyoto alone to prepare to file a lawsuit.

When she was resting outside the city, this pitiful Wu happened to meet He Zongwei, who was returning to Kyoto, very "coincidentally."

He Zongwei was a smart person. After hearing about it, he knew that this matter had great potential, so he comforted the Wu woman and said that he would definitely find a way to seek justice for her.

After entering Kyoto, He Zongwei temporarily settled the Wu woman in the mansion of an old Censor by relying on his teacher's connections. In those days, some mysterious figures often came and went from the mansion, asking Wu in gentle voices about some details of the tragedy in her hometown.

He Zongwei watched all this indifferently, but only when Wu asked him with some trepidation would he put on a full smile and comfort her, saying that the righteous officials of the court were working on it, and the Prime Minister would collapse soon.

The garden of the old Censor's mansion was somewhat dilapidated. Standing behind the artificial mountain, a trace of slight satisfaction flashed across He Zongwei's face. He destroyed the secret letter from Xinyang in his arms, and when he thought of the Kyoto officialdom after the Prime Minister's downfall, he couldn't help but think of Lord Fan, the Prime Minister's in-law, and the somewhat indifferent Miss Fan. His heart warmed slightly.