Lu Jiying, county magistrate of Shanyang, can still feel the agony of his head rolling from the executioner's block. Then he suddenly jolts awake at his desk: he has been reborn! In his previous life, he was a pawn planted by the Iron Hand Society. Once they had wrung all his value from him, they cast him aside without mercy, leaving him to die decapitated. In this life, fear and resentment blaze into a raging fire: he will never again let himself be prey to others!
Knowing how cold-blooded the organization is and how deep his own crimes run, Lu Jiying resolves to take a perilous path to save himself: betrayal. Using his foreknowledge from being reborn, he becomes a “shadow courier.” On one hand, he carefully lays his plans, gathering damning evidence against his superior, the provincial inspector, then secretly reports him to the court. On the other, he treads on eggshells as he sends anonymous letters to the man he once feared above all others, his nemesis, Lord Di Renjie. The letters mix truth with lies, revealing the organization's schemes and the crimes of Cui Liang, the governor of Yangzhou. He even exposes some of his own past, presenting himself as a “tainted witness” who has seen the error of his ways and is now making amends.
He stakes everything on the hope that when Lord Di uncovers the truth and crushes the organization, his crucial intelligence will earn him a measure of leniency and spare his life, even if he must live in obscurity from then on. When news arrives that the Iron Hand Society has been destroyed and a host of officials executed, Lu Jiying breathes a sigh of relief. Convinced his gambit has worked, he awaits a light sentence or exile.
But what arrives is no pardon. It is a cold imperial decree! Brief and to the point, it declares: “As an official of the court, he willingly served as a lackey and abetted evil. His crimes admit no pardon. Though he has shown remorse, it cannot erase his wickedness. He is hereby...”
Well written, please support me. It's just that I haven't watched Dee Renjie, so I don't know the background very well. But the writing is good.
I listened to a few chapters and it was well written. Five stars will be given to the new book first.