His father, Shen Weiyong, was an upright doctor in the Ministry of War. He was found guilty of corruption involving Wei Zhongxian's army salary of 300,000 taels, and was dismissed from office and imprisoned. The once scholarly family has become the laughingstock of the capital. Shen Zhou put away the collection of classics and history, mortgaged his ancestral home, and walked into the unmarked house in Xuanwumen - "Tingtian Pavilion".
This is the most secretive gambling game in the capital. The chips are not gold or silver, but information that can make the heads of princes and dignitaries fall to the ground. Mr. Gui Gu, who is wearing a ge robe, is sitting in front of the map. The bettors are either rich or noble: Wei Zhongxian's nephew Wei Liangqing used the water transport terminal to place bets, while the Donglin Party members were watching in the dark. As a scholar, Shen Zhou used his eye for collating ancient books to unravel the hidden dangers in the game. In the bet of "whether there will be chaos in Liangzhou Guards", he won his first breath by betting on his ancestral home.
In the file left behind by my father, the word "East Factory" was written in cinnabar, and the attached page contained evidence of the crimes of dozens of officials, from the cabinet bachelor to the border commander, weaving into an intricate web of corruption. Shen Zhou's pen ran across the list, and finally landed on the name of "Tongzhou Water Transport Commander Li Si" - this chess piece placed by Wei Liangqing was smuggling iron materials and salt, and was the first crack in the wide web.
He pretended to be a wealthy businessman from the south of the Yangtze River and used thousands of taels of silver and the beauty Hong'er as bait to lure Li Si into the jar. He set up an "empty boat strategy" and used pebbles as contraband to lure the state officials into rounding him up. He used Hong'er's mouth to nail the word "Wei Mansion" on the evidence of guilt. When the torches of the river patrol boat illuminated the canal, and when the memorial from Yang Lian, the censor of the Metropolitan Procuratorate, was delivered to the imperial court, Shen Zhou knew that this game, with the capital as the chessboard and life as the bargaining chip, had just begun.
