The Smiling Tale of the Imperial Secret Police: A Dynasty of Spies

The Stick-Wielders’ Hilarious Tale: The Dynasty of Spies is a laugh-out-loud workplace comedy about transmigration. After Zhao Tiezhu, a modern office worker, dies from overwork, he unexpectedly transmigrates to the fictional Dayong Dynasty and becomes a low-ranking spy in the royal secret service, the Stick-Wielding Office: a Ba Tang’a whose job is to catch cicadas and dragonflies. Faced with the absurd daily grind of “guessing your way through KPI evaluations” and “getting beaten with a paddle for slacking off,” he brings modern workplace skills to the ancient world, including Excel spreadsheets (brush-and-bamboo-slip edition), PowerPoint presentations (hand-painted-on-rice-paper edition), and cryptography (wild-guess edition), setting off one chaotic palace storm after another.

He uses “data analysis” to investigate corrupt officials, only to mistakenly copy down the names of Jiangnan rice merchants. He interrogates the Qianlong Emperor as a spy and nearly loses his head. He introduces an “intelligence classification system,” which leads the whole staff to fake their reports and compete in an arms race of pointless busywork. He even uses modern over-the-top flattery, only to be mistaken for a mocker... Balancing clever survival with reckless self-sabotage, Zhao Tiezhu not only locks horns with Ji Xiaolan, a loyal patriot, and Heshen, a greedy power-seeker, but also brings modern memes like “996 is a blessing,” slacking off at work, and anonymous whistleblowing to the ancient court, exposing the truth about office life through absurd comedy.

With a rapid-fire stream of jokes, fast-paced plot, and ingenious collisions between past and present, this novel creates an ancient workplace that feels both familiar and fresh. It is an underdog power fantasy for overworked office drones and a tearful, self-deprecating satire for wage slaves, poised to become 2025’s most stress-relieving web novel hit!