The southern candidates top the list alone, and the northern scholars erupt in revolt! He uses his “Heavenly Eye” to see through the imperial examination’s dark secrets, only to be drawn into the emperor’s bloodiest game of chess!
In the thirtieth year of Hongwu, Nanjing is thrown into chaos! The spring examination results reveal a list made up entirely of southerners. Northern scholars, who have studied hard for ten years, erupt in fury, and the Temple of Confucius is stained with blood! Chen Yan, a scholar from Fujian, possesses the mysterious “Eye of Truth.” He can see the original handwriting on copied examination papers, discern the true quality of an essay, and detect hidden political motives for murder!
When chief examiner Liu Sanwu is exiled, review official Zhang Xin is subjected to death by a thousand cuts, and even Chen Yan’s most respected clansman, the newly crowned top scholar Chen An, is led to the waist-chopping block, Chen Yan finally realizes: this is no mere case of unfair examinations. The Hongwu Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang is using lives as pieces in a bloody game to balance north and south and reshape the empire!
Idealism collides with ruthless political maneuvering, and a scholar’s passion is no match for an emperor’s schemes. Together with Su Yingxue, the daughter of a bookseller well versed in the examination system’s dark secrets, Chen Yan wields the “Eye of Truth” as a blade amid the raging tides of imprisonment and assassination, the reopening of the northern examination list, and clan rivalries:
From “Confucius Weeps at the Temple” to “Separate Examination Papers for North and South,” witness the starting point of a transformation in the six-hundred-year history of the imperial examination system! See how a humble scholar uses blood as ink to demand the highest standard of fairness, caught between an emperor’s executioner’s blade and the noose of factional strife! High-stakes political intrigue X real historical tragedies X a unique examination-paper-reading golden finger X romance between a young man and an older woman amid desperate circumstances. A mind-blowing storm no fan of historical fiction for male readers should miss!
Tags: #HistoricalIntrigue #HighStakesMystery #ImperialExaminations #ImperialSchemes #GoldenFinger #NorthSouthConflict #InstitutionalReform #MustReadForMaleReaders
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