The world of film and television begins with Hikaru no Go

At noon, they stopped for a bite at a roadside inn. Di Chun prepared two bowls of mutton soup and some flatbread.

A layer of glistening oil floats on the mutton soup, and the flatbread is fresh out of the oven; you can hear the sesame seeds crackling between your teeth when you take a bite.

The taste was actually quite good, but it might be a bit too rich for older people. After eating more than half a bowl, Di Gong put down his chopsticks, leaned back in his chair, and slowly drank his tea.

Zhang Rui finished the mutton soup at the bottom of the bowl and put down his chopsticks.

"Grandpa, there's something I'd like to ask you."

"speak."

"You mentioned the structure of the Three Departments and Six Ministries before, with the Secretariat making decisions and the Chancellery reviewing them. What about the Department of State Affairs? And how are the responsibilities divided among the Six Ministries?"

Di Gong put down his teacup, took out a few bamboo chopsticks from the chopstick holder, and laid them out on the table.

"The Ministry of Personnel is in charge of implementation, and the Six Ministries are its six arms, namely the Ministry of Personnel, the Ministry of Revenue, the Ministry of Rites, the Ministry of War, the Ministry of Justice, and the Ministry of Works."

"The Ministry of Personnel is in charge of the selection and evaluation of officials. Who gets appointed, how well they perform, and whether they are promoted or demoted are all decided by it."

"The Ministry of Revenue was in charge of household registration and land tax. It bore the weight of how many households there were in the country, how much grain they collected each year, and how much tax they levied."

"The Ministry of Rites was in charge of sacrifices, the imperial examinations, and relations with tributary states. It controlled when to hold sacrifices to Heaven, how to conduct the imperial examinations, and which gate foreign envoys should enter."

"The Ministry of War is in charge of military registers and the selection and appointment of military officers. How many soldiers are in each military command? How are the troop rotations arranged in the border towns?"

"The Ministry of Justice is in charge of laws and prisons. According to the law, how many death sentences have been approved this year? The Ministry of Justice reports these, and the Ministry of Justice reviews them."

He arranged six chopsticks in two rows of three on the table. After arranging them, he picked up a chopstick and placed it horizontally on top of the others, pressing down on both ends of the horizontal chopstick with both hands at the same time.

"The three departments are built on top of this: the Secretariat drafts the edict, the Chancellery reviews it, and the Minister executes it. From the Emperor's will to its implementation, a matter needs to go through the Secretariat to draft, the Chancellery to review, and the Minister to execute. But between these three pillars and the six arms below, it is not a matter of one governing the other."

"The Secretariat drafts a proposal, but the Chancellery says it's unacceptable and rejects it for a new draft; if the Chancellery rejects it twice, the Secretariat drafts another one and submits it; if the Minister discovers something amiss during implementation, he can submit a memorial to the throne, which in turn influences the decisions of the Secretariat and the Chancellery. This mutual competition is a form of checks and balances."

Looking at the few chopsticks on the table, Zhang Rui's thoughts suddenly became much clearer.

Drafting, verifying, handling, rejecting, petitioning, and re-drafting—each step involves interactions between people.

After dinner, Judge Di looked through several documents in the official gazette under the oil lamp.

Zhang Ruipiao stood aside and silently read the passage he hadn't been able to understand during the day again.

There were still a few unfamiliar characters that I couldn't recognize, so I moved closer, broke down the strokes in my mind, and tried to trace them. It felt much smoother after that.

When the candle had burned halfway, Judge Di put down the official gazette, got up, walked to the window, and pushed it open about a hand's width.

The night wind blew in, cold and hard, carrying the slightly dried, fishy smell of earth that had been frozen all day.

It was quiet outside when a dog from somewhere in the distance suddenly barked once, then stopped.

"Grandpa," Zhang Rui suddenly spoke up, "Today we were talking about the Three Departments and Six Ministries, and you said this system prevents people from making arbitrary decisions. But in Youzhou, Fang Qian emptied the treasury all by himself, and Wu Yizhi controlled the Five Cities Garrison. The system clearly has checks and balances in place, so why did these things still happen?"

Di Renjie did not answer immediately. He leaned against the window frame, backlit by the moonlight, making his expression unreadable.

"Because systems are implemented by people. If people are not upright, even the best system cannot prevent them. Fang Qian had been operating in Youzhou for many years, found loopholes in the system, and then pried them open one by one. The disaster relief funds proposed by the Secretariat were reviewed by the Chancellery and approved by the Ministry of Revenue. Each level had its seals, signatures, and records. When the money arrived in Youzhou, it was deposited into the governor's treasury, and not a single penny was missing from the accounts. After it was deposited into the treasury, he was the only one in charge of supervision. No one checked the accounts or verified the actual amount of money in the treasury. The system can control the account books, but it cannot control the person who lays out the account books to look at them."

He pushed the window open even wider, and the night wind blew in, causing the oil lamp on the table to flicker.

"Therefore, solving a case is not just about finding out what a person did, but also about finding out what loopholes they exploited. Filling in a loophole is more useful than killing a corrupt official."

"How do I fill it in?"

Di Renjie did not answer immediately. He returned to the table, took out a few sheets from a stack of papers, and spread them out on the table.

They were several drafts of memorials; the ink had dried, and the paper was slightly curled by the heat of the lamp flame.

Turn to one of the pages, trace the lines of text with your fingertip, and stop at one spot.

"After the Youzhou case was closed, I began drafting these articles. One is to establish permanent inspectors in each circuit, rotating them periodically. Another is for the Ministry of Revenue to audit the treasuries of each prefecture twice a year." He handed the paper to Zhang Rui. "Now look at this one."

Zhang Rui looked down and saw that the writing was even more concise. The gist of it was that the accounts of the banks in various prefectures should be included in the scope of the government treasury's verification, and that all loans made by banks to officials, regardless of the amount, should be reported to the Ministry of Revenue for record-keeping.

"Tianbao Bank?"

"Yes, the official silver is transferred to the bank, and then from the bank to the private account. On the surface, the official silver is still in the treasury, but in reality, the treasury is empty. If this policy can be implemented, every transaction in and out of the banks in each prefecture will be recorded by the Ministry of Revenue. It will not be so easy to go through this channel again."

Judge Di gathered the drafts together, tapped them on the table, and aligned the edges of the papers.

Zhang Rui looked at the stack of draft memorials on the table, then glanced at Di Renjie.

The old man slowly sipped his tea, his face showing no particular expression.

The next morning, they continued their journey. Di Renjie took out an old official gazette from his book box and asked Zhang Rui to read it aloud.

The carriage swayed and rolled over the ruts on the official road. After passing through the territory of Luzhou, Di Renjie began to add a new lesson to his studies in addition to learning to read.

"Two men at the market are arguing over a sheep, each claiming it as theirs. One says the sheep has a notch in its left ear, the other says it has a white spot on its right leg. Upon closer inspection, the sheep does indeed have a notch in its left ear and a white spot on its right leg. How would you determine its ownership?"

"Both of them got one feature right, but that doesn't prove who owns the sheep. Let the sheep go and see whose house it runs to."

"What if two sheepfolds are next to each other, and a sheep wanders into the wrong pen?"

Zhang Rui was stumped by the question.

"Evidence." Judge Di put down his teacup. "Where the sheep ran to is one piece of evidence, but not conclusive proof. To find conclusive proof, you have to ask others—who recently bought fodder? Who has ewes in their sheepfold? Whose neighbor heard sheep bleating in the middle of the night? If one piece of evidence isn't enough, find ten. If there's even one contradiction among the ten, the whole chain breaks."

This was something Zhang Rui had never learned before. The so-called case-solving was about finding connections from a bunch of seemingly unrelated trivialities and distinguishing which of everyone's words were lies.

The carriage continued south, and the loess plateaus on both sides of the official road receded completely to the horizon, replaced by fields of winter wheat. The wheat seedlings had just sprouted from the soil, lying low on the ground, looking like a thin layer of green velvet from a distance.

The villages we passed by became more and more densely packed, with more tiled houses and fewer cave dwellings, and the dry, cold air gradually became damp.

We've entered the Fenhe Plain.