In the late spring of the seventeenth year of Zhenyuan, Shen Yanci became the number one scholar in a new subject, but did not enter the court to enjoy the glory. Instead, he became a joke in Chang'an City - he wore a third-grade crimson robe, followed the servants of the Lin family back home, and became the son-in-law of the Lin family in the south of the city.
Three years ago, when he was going to Chang'an for a scientific examination, he ran out of money and turned to his father's old friend Lin Shouye for help in exchange for becoming a wife. The title of the gold medal was originally to find out what his father Shen Zhongshu (the former censor, who was demoted because of impeachment of a powerful official) was. However, he was deeply scorned and controlled by the Lin family: the servants in the palace were contemptuous, his brother-in-law Lin Wenxuan was humiliated, and the food was only green vegetables and white porridge. Even the key memorials of his father's impeachment of powerful officials were destroyed by Lin Shouye.
When Shen Yanci accidentally uncovered Lin Shouye's plot to "surveil him and cover up the truth", he finally understood that the "funding" he received back then was actually house arrest. He suppressed his anger and pretended to be an "obedient son-in-law" to paralyze the Lin family. At the same time, he secretly wrote to Su Mingyuan, an old friend of the Ministry of Civil Affairs, asking him to trace the relationship between his father's old case and Lin Shouye and Li Song, the minister of household affairs.
The incomplete jade pendant with the word "loyalty" on the desk reflected the dim light of the oil lamp, and also illuminated Shen Yanci's determination: the laughing stock of the son-in-law of the number one scholar in the Tang Dynasty would eventually break the situation with power, avenge his injustice with the truth, and start his own counterattack.
