却以曾立军功为由 只是小施惩戒
“On the pretext of your military merit, you were given a minor penalty.”
THE DIALOGUE REEL
“By law, you should have been executed.”
却以曾立军功 为由 只是 小施惩戒
“On the pretext of your military merit, you were given a minor penalty.”
“I also want to ask you. Who made that rule?”
“You shielded a criminal using military merits as a cheap excuse, and I am calling you out on it.”
Traditional Chinese imperial law allowed military and civil merits to offset punishments (Ba Yi system), but it was frequently abused by factions to protect allies from capital crimes.
LEARNING CHUNKS & PARTICLES
on the pretext of... / using... as an excuse
A formal grammatical construction used to cite a formal reason, often implying it is an excuse rather than a valid justification.
to administer a mild disciplinary punishment
A formal and literary phrase used in legal, bureaucratic, or judicial contexts to describe light sentencing.
