Zhang Fan, a modern food delivery rider, unexpectedly transmigrates into a homeless vagrant on the streets in the twenty-third year of the Qianlong reign.
With no way out, he relies on the logic of a civil service exam candidate and modern bookkeeping methods, starting out as a junior clerk in the county finance office.
He discovers that the clerk before him didn't die because of a miscalculation. He was framed for embezzling eighty-seven taels and four qian!
With his knack for navigating people and his quick wits, Zhang Fan gradually brings down a powerful deputy county magistrate and becomes Wu County's “magistrate who serves the people.”
His bottom line: Corruption may happen, but never at the people's expense!
Yet when he declares, “The people are the foundation of the country,” Qianlong, traveling incognito, condemns it as “undermining the state!”
Zhang Fan: Your Majesty, I don't just want a rich and powerful country. I want to bring the Great Qing into the industrial age a hundred years ahead of schedule! If we can't agree on our principles, then I shall take the throne myself.
