The Road to Greatness: A Poor Scholar's Journey to the Top

In the twelfth year of the Yongchang era, a great drought struck. Yun Zhan, the son of a farming family, was orphaned by famine, but his gift for remembering everything he saw brought him to the attention of a reclusive scholar, who took him in and set him on the path of the imperial examinations. He showed early promise in the county exam, only to be framed by the sons of aristocratic families. This made him sworn enemies with Zhao Hong, the son of a grain merchant. At Qinglu Academy, he entered into a rivalry that was both friendly and antagonistic with Xie Qinglan, a gifted young woman from Jiangnan, and became unexpectedly entangled in an old examination scandal from the previous dynasty.

From being framed in the provincial exam and nearly disqualified, to getting caught up in a struggle between rival princes during the metropolitan exam, Yun Zhan won the emperor's favor with his insights into the Book of Rivers. But he discovered that his mentor was deeply implicated in the “Ji Mao Examination Scandal” of twenty years earlier. Half of a jade pendant engraved with “Chongwen” linked his and Xie Qinglan's mysterious origins and exposed a cheating operation that had continued for two decades.

In the golden palace, a powerful minister laid a deadly trap. Yun Zhan struck at the deep-rooted failings of the imperial examinations with his “Twelve Strategies for Governing the Realm,” joining forces with Xie Qinglan to rip open a web of vested interests that stretched across the court and the country. In the end, the scholar from a poor family shed his youthful naivete, held fast to his principles amid the maelstrom of power, and, at the height of his official career, chose to turn away. He fulfilled his vow in his own way: “To establish the heart for Heaven and Earth, and the destiny for the people.”