Chapter 488

"Clearing out entrenched abuses is only right in principle. Yet this is a chronic malady of ten years, with deep roots and tangled branches—pull a single hair and the whole body moves! You have opened a case to investigate the former Chief Justice, Chen Taisu. Though the old man has already stepped down, his disciples and former subordinates are scattered throughout the court and the bureaucracy. How many local officials and entrenched local gentry are tied up in these decade-old backlog cases?" "You used the force of thunder, borrowing outside help to comb through the Court of Judicial Review's files of years past—this breaks a century of established precedent! How will those conservative old ministers in the court, those whose own hands are not clean, view you? How will they attack and slander you?" "'Youthful and arrogant,' 'ignorant of worldly ways,' 'undermining the decorum of the law and administration'—such labels could be pinned on you in an instant!"