During the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty, Zhou Yanqing, a ten-year-old farmer, started to dream of taking the imperial examination with a broken copy of "The Analects of Confucius", but he did not know that this road would take thirty years. From the first to six failures in the county examination, from being high-spirited to having frost on his temples, he carried the taunt of "Fan Jin" and the promise of Shen Zhitang, the daughter of a merchant, to "bet you to win the Jinshi". He was ups and downs in the whirlpool of imperial examinations and human nature, purity and power.
When Zhou Yanqing finally stood in the Golden Palace to pass the imperial examination, the Jinshi documents in his hands were soaked in the blood of his mentor and hid the injustice of his best friend. And Miss Shen, who sold her dowry and became a medicine woman for him, had already lost half of her fingers due to the Jiangnan epidemic...
