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On this winter afternoon, the sun remained hidden.
The snow had turned into a light drizzle—tiny, millet-like flakes that stung faintly when they landed on the skin.
Elsewhere in the capital, people swept the snow off the streets, but the road in front of the Demon Suppression Bureau needed no such efforts. Over the past two days, this street had been trampled so thoroughly that a path had naturally formed.
On the first night alone, over 1,300 people had been arrested and detained in the Demon Suppression Bureau. That number was just a fraction of the people who were detained. Thousands more were scattered across the prisons of the Court of Judicial Review[1] and Jingzhao Prefecture[2], bringing the total number of detainees to well over 10,000.
For reference, both the prefectural governor of Jingzhao and the court minister of the Court of Judicial Review were among those imprisoned.
This recent rebellion in the capital had entangled an astonishingly broad swath of society. Nearly a third of the capital’s officials and their affiliated families were implicated. Sorting out who had been actively involved, who had unknowingly contributed, and who had merely dabbled in double-dealing without committing fully would require an extensive investigation.
Such was the quagmire of aristocratic politics—when the major aristocratic families of the capital...
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