A Slacker's Guide to Surviving the Imperial Court

In the third year of Jinghe under the Great Sheng dynasty, the new emperor has only recently ascended the throne. Factions vie for power at court, and undercurrents run deep. Shen Yanci enters public service as the third-place laureate, hoping to use his modest talents to land an easy post where he can drink tea, read the court gazette, and coast until retirement. But he comes from a respected scholarly family, and the court is in the midst of a reshuffle. He has barely turned down a cushy position at the Ministry of Personnel when he is sent to the Ministry of Revenue to audit its books, facing rooms full of accounts that could make anyone’s head spin and veteran clerks who look down on everyone.

He means to lie flat and do as little as possible, but keeps stumbling across court secrets by accident. Taking the blame for a colleague earns him the new emperor’s attention; an audit uncovers the shady dealings of a prince; even a simple bowl of noodles at a tavern brings him face-to-face with Censorate officials secretly investigating corruption.

From a minor official in the Ministry of Revenue to an attendant at the emperor’s side, Shen Yanci’s plan to coast keeps veering off course. He relies on jokes and banter to defuse courtly crises while carving out a precarious place for himself amid the tides of real history, from reforms to the grain transport system to new salt and iron policies. He doesn’t want to get caught up in the rat race, but everyone around him is fighting to get ahead. He doesn’t want to pick a side, but he keeps getting pushed to the center of factional struggles.

Through all the laughter and banter, he relies on his “coast-through-life” survival rules to make his way through the treacherous court. The laid-back minor official who only wanted to muddle through his days gradually becomes someone no one at court can afford to ignore. Even the new emperor jokes, “Without this loafer, my court would be a lot less fun.”