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Related Novels (1)
Related Chapters (5)
Closing the Back Door
Words: 2998 · Source Novel:: The Emperor's Loophole
Ma Yuan escapes through a forgotten ventilation shaft with the diary and a confession signed in blood by Liang Ping's father, who dies sealing the main tunnel behind her to stop the pursuing guards. She reaches the capital and submits the evidence to a newly appointed censor. Emperor Ming, son of Guangwu, uses the scandal to abolish the Grace Exception clause and posthumously restores Ma Yuan's honors, placing his portrait among the Cloud Terrace heroes. But Ma Yuan refuses to return to the now-opened village; she orders the tunnel mouth sealed with a stone carved with the word "Remember." The legal back door is closed, yet she knows another will be carved elsewhere. The wall still stands, but the coix seeds are planted on both sides. Her crime was not smuggling grain—it was believing that law could exist without power's secret passage.
The Witness Beneath
Words: 3024 · Source Novel:: The Emperor's Loophole
Trapped in a dry pocket of the collapsed tunnel, Ma Yuan and Liang Ping find a sealed lacquer box containing the diary of the law scribe who drafted the Grace Exception. The diary confesses that Emperor Guangwu ordered the clause to "cleanse meritorious threats without staining the dragon robe." Liang Ping's father digs from above with guards, but he is not there to save them—he has come to bury the secret. In the suffocating dark, Ma Yuan forces Liang Ping's father to listen to the diary at sword point. He falters, revealing that his own father Liang Song died cursing the clause he helped create. A side passage is opened, and the three make a pact to carry the truth out, but only two will leave the tunnel alive.
Crimes in the Dark
Words: 2976 · Source Novel:: The Emperor's Loophole
The inspector increases patrols, and the tunnel becomes a passage for survival crimes. Ma Yuan forges transit passes, conceals a wounded fugitive from a rival clan, and stages a false grain theft to mislead the guards. Her actions mirror the very abuses the Ma clan was once condemned for, and she realizes she is invoking the mirror image of the Imperial Grace Exception—committing crimes under a necessity that only a hidden emperor could pardon. Liang Ping steals an original case file proving that the coix seed slander was knowingly fabricated. But as they prepare to smuggle the evidence to a loyal censor, the tunnel is partially flooded by a storm, trapping Ma Yuan and the proof beneath the wall. She must now break every law she knows to surface alive.
The Clause of Kings
Words: 2647 · Source Novel:: The Emperor's Loophole
Ma Yuan secretly meets Liang Ping, who is burdened by his family's guilt and reveals that the "Grace Exception" was added to the statute on false accusation shortly before Ma Yuan's downfall. Together, they begin trading through the tunnel—herb lore from the Ma clan in exchange for food. Liang Ping finds an old household record hinting that his grandfather Liang Song had bribed a law scribe to insert the clause at the direction of Emperor Guangwu's inner circle. Meanwhile, a border inspector notices discrepancies in grain stores, and Ma Yuan must turn the tunnel into a hidden archive, concealing stolen ledgers. The loophole was never a flaw; it was a lever for absolute power, and the emperor's own hand wrote the permission for murder by decree.
The Sealed Village
Words: 2847 · Source Novel:: The Emperor's Loophole
In the winter of 50 AD, the imperial border wall stands complete, sealing off the Ma clan's settlement from the rest of Han. Ma Yuan's great-granddaughter, Ma Yuan, watches her people starve under the watch of the Liang family guards. Following her dying father's last words, she finds a hidden tunnel inside the village well. Crawling through, she emerges in the Liang family granary and overhears young master Liang Ping reading aloud a strange passage from a dusty legal scroll—a clause labeled "Imperial Grace Exception" that allowed the emperor to pardon false accusers if they acted in the throne's manifest interest. She steals a sack of grain and a terrifying question: was her ancestor destroyed by a trap written into law itself?