Sun Liancheng, a transmigrator who remembers the entire script of In the Name of the People, becomes the famously “lazy” district chief of Guangming District, Handong Province. He knows that “the tallest tree catches the wind,” so he uses the disillusioned philosophy of the “universe district chief” as the perfect cover, playing the laughingstock of the political world in full view of everyone.
Yet beneath the surface, he is using Handong as a chessboard and the people as his pieces, setting up an astonishing “game within a game.” With his foreknowledge, he precisely nudges key events like a ghost: anonymously warning the Dafeng Factory, engineering evidence to bring down Chen Qingquan, secretly assisting Hou Liangping, and even influencing the contest between Sha Ruijin and Li Dakang. He turns “lazy governance” into camouflage, uses his obsession with astronomy to hide his deep calculations, and wraps deadly schemes in philosophical ramblings.
Caught between Qi Tongwei’s madness, Zhao Ruilong’s greed, Sha Ruijin’s iron fist, and Yi Xuexi’s keen insight, Sun Liancheng treads carefully on thin ice. His goal is not personal power or position, but to use an invisible hand to correct the course of history and plant seeds of anti-corruption reform far ahead of their time in Handong’s political world. This is an ultimate adventure that changes history without being discovered by it, a dark legend of a lone player wagering his life against fate in the depths of the power struggle. When the storm finally passes, who could possibly see what breathtaking game was once reflected in the eyes of that “lazy official” gazing up at the stars?
I read it for a long time but still didn't understand it; perhaps the author's writing was too profound.
I don't know why the author made the protagonist so cowardly, but I feel it makes some sense.