Accounting for the Journey to the West

In the thirteenth year of the Zhenguan era, beneath the splendor of the Tang dynasty, dark currents stirred. The floods in Jiangnan had yet to recede, and disaster relief funds had vanished amid layers of accounts. A forged ledger bearing the grain transport commissioner’s fingerprint tore open the festering wound beneath the gilded splendor of the High Tang. Every abacus bead in the ledgers of the mansions was stained with the blood and sweat of the people.

Tang Xuanzang, a PhD in accounting, had witnessed the tragedy of his father being driven to death by forged accounts. When he took a fragment covered in secret codes from beyond the frontier from the hands of an official who had died suddenly, he discovered that this case was tied to his father’s old case by the same thread. The Ministry of Revenue’s archives were robbed; shops in the marketplace kept ledgers made to look old; a poisoned, gleaming abacus spike flashed from a foreign merchant’s sleeve... A web of corruption spanning ten years had ensnared the imperial throne, the bureaucracy, and the western-region trade caravans.

To unravel this scheme, Tang Xuanzang embarked on a journey more perilous than his pilgrimage for the scriptures.

When Tang Xuanzang finally stood before the battered face of the Ghost Abacus, marked with burn scars, he was shocked to discover that at the end of every forged ledger lay the most painful connection between himself and this game of chess...

This novel and its characters are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. Do not imitate.