The Eccentric Decree

The first formal ruling of the new Master of the Ninth Hell concerned a fish.

Specifically, it concerned a spirit carp of considerable age who had been held in administrative limbo for nine years due to a jurisdictional dispute between the River Division and the Creature Classification Bureau. The carp — whose name, according to its petition, was Old Perseverance — had achieved sufficient spiritual resonance to qualify for reincarnation as a lesser water spirit, but neither bureau would sign off on the transfer without the other bureau signing first, and so Old Perseverance had waited in a holding pool in the lower administrative annexe while the paperwork circled.

Wei Changming read the file in its entirety. He read the counter-filing from the River Division. He read the Classification Bureau’s rebuttal, which ran to forty-seven pages and addressed every point except the relevant one. Then he set the stack down, picked up his seal, and issued a decree.

The decree was three sentences long.

Magistrate Shen read it twice, his expression cycling through several stages of professional discomfort. “My lord. The traditional length for an administrative decree is—”

“Is it enforceable?”

“Yes, but—”

“Does it resolve the matter?”

A pause. ”…Yes.”

“Then it’s the right length.”

Magistrate Shen had served under four Masters of the Ninth Hell. Three had been cultivators of the highest order, steeped in centuries of spiritual refinement, and they had all issued decrees of appropriate solemnity and considerable length. He wrote a careful note in his ledger: New Master: unorthodox. Efficacy: to be assessed.

The second ruling of the day concerned a dispute between two ghost clans over territory rights in the Eastern Reaches. Wei Changming listened to both sides present their cases, asked three questions that neither side had expected, and proposed a resolution that required both parties to cede a small strip of territory to a third party — a village of wandering spirits who had been too quiet to advocate for themselves and had thus been overlooked entirely.

Both clans objected. Wei Changming pointed out that the alternative was continued dispute, which would require seventeen more hearings, none of which he had time for.

Both clans, after a consultation, accepted.

By the end of the day, Magistrate Shen’s note had expanded to a full page. He underlined unorthodox twice and added, in smaller script: The backlog may actually decrease. Do not inform the Bureau Chiefs until this trend is confirmed.