At thirty-five, Zhao Weidong brings the hard-earned instincts of a special reconnaissance unit with him as he leaves the barracks for the world of politics. This is no glorious appointment to a high-ranking post: he has been “reassigned” to remote Shiqiao Town in Qingxi County, where he becomes a deputy mayor with an office in a storage closet. On his first day, a “natural accident” at the town quarry causes a cave-in. His sharp eye for demolition traces reveals the first suspicious detail: the missing worker was the very man who reported the misuse of poverty-relief funds.
From the township to the county, from the city to the provincial government, every step up the ladder comes with a case:
An original ledger documenting the embezzlement of poverty-relief funds lies hidden in a mine. Drag marks at a demolition site expose a criminal network. Substandard materials behind a reservoir collapse turn out to be linked to a supplier involved in a botched mission from his military days. A string of disappearances among development-zone workers reveals a tangle of clan feuds and land corruption. Fraudulent asset valuations during the restructuring of a state-owned enterprise implicate the relatives of city officials. The weapons used by a gang he takes down trace back to cross-border smuggling. And every case conceals a special military insignia, one etched with the shadows of his army career.
He uses battlefield-style tactical simulations to retrace the flow of money, tracks down murderers by analyzing footprints like a reconnaissance soldier, and exposes political frame-ups with psychological warfare. Yet his soldier’s refusal to bend also gets him ostracized and framed. The sudden death of an old comrade, the mysterious identity of county reporter Lin Xiaoyu, and the shadow cast by officials at even higher levels lead him to a shocking discovery: the “mission failure” that prompted him to leave the military was no accident. It was a trap set to cover up a military equipment smuggling route.
