Evening.
The dusk was like wine, filling the capital city as the evening drum sounded—just reaching its seventy-second beat.
When the drum sounded eight hundred times, darkness would fully settle.
The nine gates would close and lock, and no one could enter or leave without an official document from one of the six ministries.
Outside Anding Gate of Luo City, townsfolk on their way home waited in front of the gate archway.
There were scholars carrying book boxes, laborers pulling coal carts—they all felt the weight of the drumbeats as they returned to the city, yet they all subconsciously gathered around the posted wanted notices on the city wall.
A middle-aged literate man slowly read aloud: “The criminal Chen Ji is suspected of attempting to assassinate the Crown Prince. Registered in Shuntian Prefecture, aged eighteen…”
Someone exclaimed: “Assassinate the Crown Prince? Such audacity!”
The middle-aged man furrowed his brow and said solemnly, “To lose manners and be no different from animals—when order is disrupted, the family and country will fall. Please let me finish; show some respect!”
The laborer pulling the coal cart grumbled: “Go ahead, keep reading…”