Daming Screws: a Guide to Hongwu Travel

Unsystematic time travel + suspense + hardcore survival in Ming Dynasty officialdom I would like to recommend this story to readers of "Fake your surname Langya": If Wang Yang "fake his surname" to survive in the open and secret attacks of the powerful, then Shen Mo is fighting for his life by "reconciling accounts" in the still waters of officialdom. Both of them use knowledge as their only blade and walk alone into the fog of history. The Jiangning County government office during the Hongwu period was like a web covered with cobwebs. Shen Mo, the new household secretary, originally thought that he would be taking over the ordinary financial and food accounts, but he did not know that he had stepped into a hole that could not be filled in eight years. The summer tax is discounted in silver, and the official price is 70%. But the price of silver in the market skyrocketed, and the people were miserable. But the numbers on the county government's account books were as clean as freshly washed bluestone. Shen Mo found a blank book in the musty-smelling files in the Jiage library - it was the last writing of the former official who jumped into the Qinhuai River, written with alum water. "Break silver and draw water to honor the Duke of Wei" - when the invisible writing appeared under the lamp, Shen Mo realized that what he had pierced was not the accounts, but the sky. The magistrate said, "We'll do it as usual," and he said it lightly. But what is the old rule? Is it a result of the devaluation of treasure banknotes? Is it a chain of interests connected by the merchants, the county government, and the nobles? Or did eight thousand taels of snowflake silver disappear quietly on the way to the capital? At this time, Zheng Shiyuan, the only official who dared to speak up in the Kongyin case, said his last words to Shen Mo in the dilapidated courtyard in the west of the city: "I accept this thing. But from now on, you have never seen me, and I have not seen you."