Overworked office drone Li Mo dies from working overtime, only to wake up as Li Chengsi, Crown Prince of the Tang dynasty, a reimagined version of history's infamous deposed heir.
From the start, it's hell: the short-tempered Emperor Li Shimin (his boss) berates him for falling off his horse and making a spectacle of himself; the living demon Wei Zheng (the HR manager) hounds him every day to copy The Zhenguan Essentials; and his smiling but treacherous younger brother Li Tai (his rival at work) is always ready to take his place.
To make matters worse, he can't even hold a writing brush, blurts out “KPI” in court, and gets all of Chang'an hunting for him after he dismantles Cheng Yaojin's front gate to make a plank for his “shared carriage”!
To stay alive, he's forced to launch his “idiot-proof self-rescue plan”:
- Explain court affairs with PowerPoint jargon and fold memorials into paper airplanes for the emperor to review;
- Talk the gullible Cheng Chumo into starting a “Didi Escort Service,” using a door panel as a shield and smearing lychee jam on the walls as an advertisement;
- To escape Wei Zheng's corrections, invent “shared ghostwriting,” which somehow makes paper prices soar in Chang'an;
- Defend himself in court with a “soul sketchpad,” using a pie chart to argue that “shared censors” can fight corruption...
Just as he thinks his ridiculous schemes have secured him a comfortable, lazy life, a bloodstained ledger hidden in a dog hole and a lychee pit stained with rouge drag him into the “Red Silk Mystery.” A corpse in a dry well, secret signs in the streets, a mysterious woman's red mark behind her ear... Every clue points to a hidden undercurrent in the imperial court.
Meanwhile, Prince Li Tai smirks as he closes the net: “Elder brother, there are some accounts you can't afford to look into.”
Watch this modern-day attention seeker, the crown prince, navigate a vortex of political schemes:
He uses PowerPoint to avert deposition and solves a cold case with soul sketches.
