In the twenty-third year of Yongjia under the Great Yin, top scholar Lin Yan speaks bluntly about the failings of the grain transport system during his palace exam, drawing the first drop of blood on the jade steps. From the Hanlin Academy to the Jiangnan bureaucracy, from the Ministry of Justice to the Cabinet's offices, he learns to forge evidence in a salt tax case and is forced to sacrifice his closest friend in a witchcraft scandal. By the time he reaches the highest ranks of the court, he discovers that the reforms he championed have become tools of exploitation.
When the cries of his disciple, sentenced to death by slicing, tear through the court, and his wife burns a secret letter proving treason before coughing up blood and dying, this idealist, who once vowed to “sweep the dust from the jade steps,” throws every memorial he has written into a brazier with his own hands. After thirty years of navigating the treacherous sea of officialdom, he brings down powerful clans, maneuvers around imperial power, and compromises with the barbarians, yet still cannot stop the dynasty from plunging into the abyss.
In old age, Lin Yan retires to the countryside. After witnessing the corrupt tactics he once denounced as a youth, he writes a final prophecy in the revised edition of his Records of Officialdom: “New flesh grows from rotten flesh, and the cycle turns for three hundred years without end.” As historians of the new dynasty debate his posthumous title, an unopened impeachment memorial gathers dust on the emperor's desk, while outside the window a children's rhyme repeats a warning from the policy essay Lin Yan wrote for his palace exam...
