This book is a historical novel that re-constructs the legendary life of He Shen, the most powerful official of the Qing Dynasty, from a first-person perspective. The story begins in the fourth year of Jiaqing. He Shen is on death row and facing a three-foot white silk. At the last moment of his life, He Shen looks back on his ups and downs from an orphan to the powerful "Second Emperor".
The novel boldly fictionalizes He Shen's life experience, setting him as the illegitimate son of Emperor Yongzheng and Concubine Nian (Nian Shilan). This secret blood relationship became the source of Qianlong's favor for him for twenty years. From the humiliation of family decline and living in a woodshed in childhood, to the ambition of studying hard and determined for revenge in his youth, He Shen gradually alienated himself into the embodiment of desire. Not only was he Qianlong's "shadow" and "butler", he also used advanced financial thinking to establish an underground money dynasty that was extremely wealthy through means such as "Sin Bank" and "Thousand Windows and Hundred Treasures Pavilion". He tried to kidnap the imperial power with money and maintain the appearance of a prosperous age with greed.
The whole book profoundly describes the complex bond between Heshen and Qianlong that transcends monarchs and ministers, as well as the endless power game between him and Emperor Jiaqing. In the end, after the death of Qianlong, Heshen completed his final revenge and education on Jiaqing with an empty city plan of "800 million taels of silver", and headed towards the destined destruction. This is a cruel confession about greed, power and alienation of human nature. It shows how a peerless genius grew crazily in the cracks of feudal imperial power and was eventually swallowed up by the torrent of the times.
