Chapter 226: Changing Tides
The Champion Marquis refused to admit defeat. After his initial pointless anger subsided, he gradually calmed down and began instructing his officials to launch concrete counterattacks.
The first official to take action was Minister of War Jiang Juying. Though Grand General Han Xing outranked him, he couldn’t act unilaterally – major military orders had to be reported to the Ministry of War, which would then forward them to the Emperor. During this process, if there were errors in the orders, the Ministry could return them for correction or, in cases of obvious mistakes, directly veto them.
These “errors” usually referred to grammatical mistakes, ambiguous meanings, or taboo violations that could be corrected. In extremely rare cases where military orders contained obvious ambiguities, the Ministry could temporarily veto them without reporting to the Emperor.
The Ministry officials gathered to repeatedly read the military orders sent by the Grand General until they could recite them backwards, but couldn’t find even a single stroke error. After staying up all night, they still vetoed the orders with a simple reason: the seal was unclear and possibly forged.
This was an absurd reason – unless the Grand General personally returned to the Capital with his seal, no one could prove its authenticity. The Ministry had run out of options and had to resort to such shameless tactics.
Meanwhile, the Ministry also sent direct messages to military garrisons everywhere, forbidding commanders from executing the orders.
Before dawn, Prince Donghai came knocking, his information very current thanks to the “Tigers of Guanghua.”
Han Ruzi had only about two hours to stop the Ministry of War. This was a close-quarters duel between him and the Champion Marquis, testing their quick wit and reactions.
Minister Jiang Juying was related to the Cui clan. Prince Donghai had already sent someone to contact him, but Jiang Juying only replied: “Duty comes before personal relationships.”