During the Jiaqing period, Li Zhengqing, a new official in the Ministry of Household Affairs, discovered something fishy in the grain accounts. This young official from the eighth grade carried iron weights to the granaries to check the scales. When he was listening to music in the teahouse as a child, he occasionally heard the drunken talk of the grain workers, and he could see the clues from the grain store's credit account book. He dealt with the greedy Hubu Yamen and the market with hidden murderous intentions, playing a clear tune with abacus beads. When the iron scale weighed out the official grain deficit of 500,000 stones, a contest involving six ministries and nine ministers quietly unfolded under the moonlight of Shichahai...
