Fang Yun bade farewell to the dragons of the East Ocean and left with the help of the eye of the sea. He then went to the nearest city, Jade Ocean City, and used the temple to teleport back to the capital.
Fang Yun once again buried his head in his desk and dealt with government affairs.
Unlike ordinary reforms, the reform of the judiciary was the most crucial and it was not an exaggeration to say that it was the cornerstone of a nation.
Hence, the cabinet officials began the most boring life as they discussed one decree after another. Some of the changes in the content of the laws were so drastic that they often couldn't come to a conclusion even after an entire day of discussion. In the end, they had no choice but to suspend the implementation.
The Punishment Hall was indeed an institution of the Sacred Academy that was second only to the War Hall in terms of execution. In just ten days, all the bandits in the Jing Kingdom had been wiped out. The remaining bandits would be listed as long-term targets. This was not something that could be done in a short time.
The crackdown on bandits was an extremely effective deterrent to the various lawbreakers in Jingguo. Even the thieves stopped committing crimes and the number of vicious incidents in the country decreased drastically. There was even a day when no one in the hundreds of counties in the country reported a case.
The officials of Jingguo originally thought that the Punishment Hall would hold a celebration, but to their surprise, the Punishment Hall merely told them to continue working hard and announced that the crackdown had entered the third stage.
The law belonged to the nation and they were cracking down on private prisons.
Different from the last time when the whole nation was happy, the third stage of the severe crackdown aroused opposition from the ranking board.
Due to the fact that the human race still retained the patriarchal system, there were many matters that the people would not go to the government and would usually look for the respected patriarch of the clan to resolve. Hence, the patriarch had a considerable amount of power.
The grass-roots organization of the Jingguo or the Ten Nations was like a piece of paper that could be broken easily. However, the reason it could barely maintain stability was mainly because of the existence of the patriarchal system. Clans that were maintained by bloodlines could maintain a strong sense of cohesion.
It ensured the cohesion of the grass-roots and reduced the cost of the imperial power governing the grass-roots. Besides, apart from the Legalists, the Confucians supported such a conservative grass-roots form. Hence, the patriarchal system had been thriving for a long time.
If the nation was the embodiment of the monarch and his subjects, the patriarchal system was the extension of the father and son. Sometimes, the two were distinct, but sometimes, they were intertwined.
It was the best choice for the imperial power not to go to the countryside before the productivity reached a certain level.
The grassroots without imperial power was the most fertile soil for the clan system.
In certain historical periods, humans would always make choices that suited themselves. For a period of time, this was completely correct. No matter how the later generations criticized it, under the circumstances at that time, no one could find a more effective alternative.
However, once this choice was deeply rooted, it would be difficult to adapt to the development of the new era. The slightest carelessness would bring a calamity to the clan.
With the increase of the Star Power of Literature, the Notre-Dame's control over the human race has been strengthened to an unprecedented degree. It is no longer a technical problem to strengthen the grass-roots rule. If the Notre-Dame's plan is allowed to develop, the grass-roots will be separated from the upper class, the communication between villages and towns will be blocked, and the productivity of the grass-roots people will not be released. That will be the time when the human race will face a crisis.
Rather than waiting helplessly for death, he might as well deal with it first.
Therefore, when Fang Yun listed out the advantages and disadvantages of the clan system, the elders of the Agriculture, Works, and Law Halls all supported it. They did not care about the reaction of the Rites Hall in the future.
This was not just a matter of family law and national law. If the cabinet's decision and the Supreme Court's return to the Notre-Dame were to weaken the imperial power and strengthen the 'law', then the crackdown on the death penalty prison was essentially to weaken the clan's power and target the 'rites'.
In the Saint Origin World, it was common for some powerful clans to set up their own prisons. The proportion was even more than seventy percent.
If they lost their prisons, the power and deterrence of many clans would be greatly reduced.
Therefore, some astute scholars noticed this point. In order to protect their clans' power, they began to express their opposition on the rankings.
Fang Yun had long expected this, so he had been paying attention to the rankings and summarized the reasons for their opposition.
The simplest reason was that it was a problem left behind by history. They hoped that the Punishment Hall would not be too radical. Even if it was a reform, it should be done slowly. After all, it could harm the innocent.
There were even more vehement arguments. They believed that the Punishment Hall was going against human ethics and destroying the clan system. It would inevitably lead to a disaster in the future.
There were even more vicious people who pointed out that Jingguo's financial problems were serious and that it was difficult to maintain the country's operations. They used this method to steal wealth from the people. Jingguo and the Notre-Dame should hide their wealth from the people and not compete with them.
The day after the Punishment Hall announced the crackdown on the death penalty prison was the day the Water Hall was established. It was led by the Dongsheng Pavilion. Kong Cheng of the Ten Nations and the Dragons of the Four Seas jointly established the Water Hall. Fang Yun was the Hall Master of the Water Hall. The Dragons sent four Great Dragon King Pavilion elders and five Great Confucian Pavilion elders to be in charge of the construction and management of the world's water network.
While Fang Yun and the Water Hall elders were discussing the basic rules and regulations of the Water Hall, the Punishment Hall received an uninvited guest.
All the elders of the Hall of Rites arrived at the Punishment Hall and negotiated with them. They asked the Punishment Hall to postpone the crackdown on the death penalty prison and forbid them from interfering with the clan system of the human race.
Hence, the elders of the two halls had a heated debate in the Punishment Hall. It even caused all kinds of strange phenomena. The sky above the Notre-Dame changed rapidly. In the end, the Dongsheng Pavilion had to mobilize its forces to suppress the strange phenomena and participate in the mediation.
However, the Punishment Hall was well aware of the importance of this operation. If they failed to crack down on the death penalty prison, not only would their plan with Fang Yun be thwarted, but the laws that the Punishment Hall was going to promote in the future would also be ruined.
Hence, the Punishment Hall used a premeditated method to solve this problem.
They would drag it out until the deed was done. At that time, the Hall of Rites would naturally give up on interfering.
Fang Yun had already expected this result, so he did not panic.
The next day, the People's Newspaper was published and half of the page was devoted to the news about the death penalty prison.
The first part mainly listed detailed cases, such as a clan leader who failed to divorce his wife and beat her to death on the pretext that she was not a woman. Another case was that a clan member crippled his own brother in order to seize property. Some people did not like a woman and slandered her for adultery. Finally, without any evidence, they drowned her in a pig cage and killed her.
The second part published some content on the dissemination of the law and the harm of the death penalty prison.
The last part was a long article. The author deeply analyzed the harm brought by the death penalty prison and said that it was an obstacle to the development of the human race. However, the writing was very clever. There was no mention of the clan system or etiquette, making everyone instinctively think that it was a matter of the Legalists and had nothing to do with other schools.
The author of this long article appeared in the form of a pen name and did not use his real name.
Duo Ling.
Once the new People's Newspaper was published, it sparked a worldwide debate. Many people with lofty ideals rushed to spread the news. This was because the death penalty prison had long accumulated a strong public resentment. In addition to the various cases in the People's Newspaper, many righteous people were filled with righteous indignation and fully supported the abolition of the death penalty prison.
The debate on the rankings escalated and became even more heated.
In the end, the focus of the debate became the struggle between the clan system and the national law, the struggle between etiquette and law.
However, there were still people who discovered the pen name of the author of the article and guessed who wrote it and who dared to use such a bold name.
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